.
.
Happy Thanksgiving Day my Farmgirl Friends! I hope your day is full of all the good pies (my favorite thing ever!).
Do you remember my post where I told you about my Hoosier Bakers Cabinet that I bought last winter? Well, after I changed things up a bit to make it fit, I was suddenly in need of a unique coffee station! (You know how that goes right? One thing leads to another….!!)
Continue reading
As the year winds down, each day is a gift. Some mornings we wake to find the days are unseasonably warm with clear, vibrant, deep azure skies; other days are gray with the sound of rustling leaves and the soft tapping of rain on the roof. And while the garden has long been put to bed for winter, now is also the time to plant garlic for the next year. The cycle continues as one season slowly moves toward another; each with its own beauty and rewards. However; no matter the weather, as we move closer to the end of the year, we can sense a change, and find many reasons to pause and give thanks.
Continue reading
Greetings, readers! Do you love holidays? I do. But what kind of a holiday reveler are you? Are you listening to Christmas Carols the day after Halloween, and already ”decking the halls” , or do you still have carved jack-o-lanterns on your porch, growing “scarier” each day with rot?
I personally really do adore holidays – be it Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, or July 4th. My grandma always said “Holidays make life special”, and they do – a chance to spend special times with friends and family, make different foods, and change the scenery, so to speak, with festive decor. However, currently I am feeling a sort of “Holiday Purgatory” this month – fall decor seems a wee bit “tired” now that Halloween is over, but it’s not quite time to haul out the holly! What ever happened to decorating for Thanksgiving?
One of my favorite things about New England is that everyone decorates for the different seasons. As soon as there is a fall nip in the air, there are pumpkins and corn stalks decorating every porch and corner.
I also LOVE Christmas, with its lights and warmth and cheer, and the fact that I can completely cover everything with glitter and nobody bats an eyelash.
But when do you start decorating for “the holidays”, such as Christmas?
To me, Christmas is the start of winter, and Thanksgiving is still, technically, autumn and harvest time.
When it comes to decorating for any holiday, my favorite finds are vintage and thrift-shop finds from yesteryear. Once the ghosties and witches are packed away after Halloween, I pull out Thanksgiving-themed pieces, such as my vintage Gurley candles. Only a few inches tall, some were found thrifting, and some were a gift from a friend and fellow vintage-enthusiast.
Made from the 50’s through the 70’s, the figurine-shaped candles were once sold at five-and-dime stores. My small collection of Thanksgiving candles feature turkeys and pilgrims.
In the mid-nineties, my mom sent me a red glass, covered turkey candy dish from Williams and Sonoma. It graces the dining room at the start of fall, and with its deep ruby color, stays out on display through to New Year’s.
In the kitchen, the hoosier has a tray decorated in leaves, and a ceramic turkey that someone probably painted in a 1970’s ceramic class (I made one just like it as a child). Both were inexpensive Goodwill finds, relics of the “forgotten holiday”, that hardly anyone decorates for anymore.
Here and there are vintage early-1900’s Thanksgiving postcards, from a time when mailing cards and letters was the way to let friends know you were thinking of them.
I also think I am not “feeling” the Christmas decorating bug because this fall has been so warm. We’ve been melting on walks with 80+ degree heat, something unheard of for this time of year in New England. Nothing felt weirder than when I went to Hobby Lobby with a friend, the store all glittery and covered in “Christmas” like a giant, red-and-green-frosted sugar cookie, Christmas carols blasting over the speakers, and my friend and I dressed in shorts and sandals, the day after Halloween.
It’s a tradition on Thanksgiving Thursday to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on television, something I have done with family since I was a child.
The “official” start to the Christmas holidays for me has always been when the parade is about to end, and Santa Claus makes his appearance. That moment has me imagining reindeer, behind gates like racehorses, chomping at the bit for Christmas to start. That’s when it feels really exciting to decorate for the holidays! Full speed ahead!
I think Thanksgiving is even more lost, an invisible holiday in modern times, because of hectic work schedules, fast-paced modern life, and Black Friday. Honestly, to me there is no deal so special that I would go out shopping in the crowds and craziness on Black Friday, preferring instead to stay home and eat leftovers, and decorate the house fully for Christmas. If the Black Friday shopping rush is your thing, I say go for it! But for stores that open ON Thanksgiving Day, instead of waiting until our bellies are full and letting employees spend time with their families, I say shame on them! Stop pushing our festivities into one big blur.
Because Thanksgiving also falls so late on the calendar this year, many people are decorating for the holidays earlier than usual. I’ve seen full-blown lights and trees already twinkling away. I think this year, I will start to bring out Christmas gradually – bottle brush trees first, small pieces here and there. I just don’t feel like rushing things.
So, since I am not quite ready yet for reindeer and Santa, I will keep enjoying my pumpkins and turkeys for just a wee bit longer.
Tell me, do you decorate for Thanksgiving, or go straight to the holidays? When do you put out your decorations? What are your family traditions? Share with me in the comments, or just let me know you stopped by!
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”.
Weekly Blogs and Recipes