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Good morning friends! I’m so happy to introduce you to Dennison’s Family Farm and my new friend Wayve (don’t you love that name?) Dennison. Guess how I met Wayve? Through this Farmgirl blog of MaryJanes! She was reading along one day wondering what part of Tennessee I lived in, then after realizing it looked close to home, she emailed me and asked where I live… and here I am. On a tour of their family strawberry farm!
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Good morning friends! I’m so happy to introduce you to Dennison’s Family Farm and my new friend Wayve (don’t you love that name?) Dennison. Guess how I met Wayve? Through this Farmgirl blog of MaryJanes! She was reading along one day wondering what part of Tennessee I lived in, then after realizing it looked close to home, she emailed me and asked where I live… and here I am. On a tour of their family strawberry farm!
Continue reading
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Did you know that Pyrex Glassware is 100 years old this year? I don’t know about you, but I love my vintage Pyrex. I’ve been enjoying doing a little reading about the history of Pyrex and this comes directly from their website:
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“The idea for Pyrex Glassware came from the industrious wife of a Corning Glass Works scientist who was frustrated with her unreliable casserole dish. Knowing the strength of the railroad signal lantern glass her husband worked with, she begged him to bring home something she could use in the kitchen. Voilà, the Pyrex baking dish was born. Two years later, Boston department store Jordan Marsh placed the first order for Pyrex Glassware. The rest, as they say, is history.”
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I’m not very competitive by nature and when it comes to a competitive sport I’m usually quite happy to be the cheerleader on the side lines. But back in the Fall before this long, cold winter my daughter in law challenged me to run a half marathon. She and my son have run numerous marathons together and they recognize the power in the motivation behind it!
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Do you have a food that speaks to you? That tells you all is well and life is good? I’ve got several different foods that do that for me, but one of my very favorite is home-made, fluffy, right out of the oven biscuits!
Three best girlfriends – just happy to be together!
I’ve been very lucky in my adult life that I’ve had two best girlfriends that have been by my side in every experience – be it crazy fun or crazy terrible. Two of us have been best friends for over 30 years. You hear that saying – “three is a crowd” – but in our friendship it has never once been that way. Sometimes the three of us are together, sometimes it will only be two of us and although the one that doesn’t get to be there voices her “insane jealousy” it really isn’t like that!
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When you have weather like this it is time to sit and sew (after you sled with the grand-girls of course)! My craft room is my happy place. One of the things that makes me the happiest is to pull out some fabric scraps and create!
We are fairly new at this business of raising cattle and even though I have a cattle background I don’t feel that I know much. My husband, being a retired Engineer, is a book learner. He loves to read, learn and soak it up. I’m more of an emotional learner. So, I just learn by what I observe when I’m around the cows. They’ve taught me a whole lot.
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Today I’d like to tell you the story of our farm. As I’ve been pondering this blog post, I keep thinking I need to leave out the beginning of the story, as it is very personal, but it’s a big part of how we came to the place of buying our farm so I can’t really leave it out.
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The entrance to our farm
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I don’t know what it is about winter that makes me think in black and white. Do you? I have to just be honest and say that I’m a summer-time girl. I like green grass, green trees, bright colored flowers, red tomatoes and yellow squash in my garden. I even like the hot, humid sweat rolling off my face!
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is a certified farmgirl at heart. She’s happily married to her beach bum Yankee husband of 20 years. She went from career gal to being a creative homeschooling mom for two of her biggest blessings and hasn’t looked back since. Debbie left her lifelong home in the high desert of Northern Nevada 10 years ago and washed up on the shore of America’s hometown, Plymouth, MA, where she and her family are now firmly planted. They spend part of each summer in a tiny, off–grid beach cottage named “The Sea Horse.”
“I found a piece of my farmgirl heart when I discovered MaryJanesFarm. Suddenly, everything I loved just made more sense! I enjoy unwinding at the beach, writing, gardening, and turning yard-sale furniture into ‘Painted Ladies’ I’m passionate about living a creative life and encouraging others to ‘make each day their masterpiece.’”
is a “MaryJane Farmgirl” who lives in a large metropolitan area. She is a lawyer who has worked in both criminal defense and prosecution. She has been a judge, a business woman and a stay-at-home mom. In addition to her law degree, she has a Masters of Theological Studies.
“Mustering up the courage to do the things you dream about,” she says, “is the essence of being a MaryJane Farmgirl.” Learning to live more organically and closer to nature is Rebekah’s current pursuit. She finds strength and encouragement through MaryJane’s writings, life, and products. And MaryJane’s Farmgirl Connection provides her a wealth of knowledge from true-blue farmgirls.
an old-fashioned farmgirl with a pioneer spirit, lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As a “lifelong learner” in the “Live-Free-or-Die” state, she fiercely values self-reliance, independence, freedom, and fresh mountain air. Married to her childhood sweetheart of 40+ years (a few of them “uphill climbs”), she’s had plenty of time to reinvent herself. From museum curator, restaurant owner, homeschool mom/conference speaker, to post-and-beam house builder and entrepreneur, she’s also a multi-media artist, with an obsession for off-grid living and alternative housing. Cathi owns and operates a 32-room mountain lodge. Her specialty has evolved to include “hermit hospitality” at her rustic cabin in the mountains, where she offers weekend workshops of special interest to women.
“Mountains speak to my soul, and farming is an important part of my heritage. I want to pass on my love of these things to others through my writing. Living in the mountains has its own particular challenges, but I delight in turning them into opportunities from which we can all learn and grow.”
Dori Troutman is the daughter of second generation cattle ranchers in New Mexico. She grew up working and playing on the ranch that her grandparents homesteaded in 1928. That ranch, with the old adobe home, is still in the family today. Dori and her husband always yearned for a ranch of their own. That dream came true when they retired to the beautiful green rolling hills of Tennessee. Truly a cattleman’s paradise!
Dori loves all things farmgirl and actually has known no other life but that. She loves to cook, craft, garden, and help with any and all things on their cattle farm.
describes herself as a goat charmer, chicken whisperer, bee maven, and farmers’ market baker renovating an 1864 farmhouse on an Ohio farm. With a degree in Design, Mary says small-town auctions and country road barn sales "always make my heart skip a beat thinking about what I could create or design out of what I’ve seen.”
Rooted in the countryside, she likes simple things and old ways … gardening, preserving the harvest, cooking, baking, and all things home. While you might find her selling baked goods from the farm’s milkhouse, teaching herself to play the fiddle, or sprucing up a vintage camper named Maizy, you will always find her in an apron!
Mary says, “I’m happiest with the simple country pleasures … an old farmhouse, too many animals, a crackling fire, books to read, and the sound of laughter … these make life just perfect.”
is a budding rural farmgirl living in Palmer, the agricultural seat of Alaska. Alex is a graduate student at Alaska Pacific University pursuing an M.S. in Outdoor and Environmental Education. She lives and works on the university’s 700 acre environmental education center, Spring Creek Farm. When Alex has time outside of school, she loves to rock climb, repurpose found objects, cross-country ski on the hay fields, travel, practice yoga, and cook with new-fangled ingredients.
Alex grew up near the Twin Cities and went to college in Madison, Wisconsin—both places where perfectly painted barns and rolling green farmland are just a short drive away. After college, she taught at a rural middle school in South Korea where she biked past verdant rice paddies and old women selling home-grown produce from sidewalk stoops. She was introduced to MaryJanesFarm after returning, and found in it what she’d been searching for—a group of incredible women living their lives in ways that benefit their families, their communities, and the greater environment. What an amazing group of farmgirls to be a part of!
Suburban Farmgirl Nicole Christensen calls herself a “vintage enthusiast”. Born and raised in Texas, she has lived most of her life in the picturesque New England suburbs of Connecticut, just a stone’s throw from New York State. An Advanced Master Gardener, she has gardened since childhood, in several states and across numerous planting zones. In addition, she teaches knitting classes, loves to preserve, and raises backyard chickens.
Married over thirty years to her Danish-born sweetheart, Nicole has worked in various fields, been a world-traveler, an entrepreneur and a homemaker, but considers being mom to her now-adult daughter her greatest accomplishment. Loving all things creative, Nicole considers her life’s motto to be “Bloom where you are planted”.
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