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Hello, friends! What a beautiful time of year it is. I’ve been thinking about so many things I’d love to share with you this week, and over and over my thoughts keep coming back to one favorite holiday recipe—so I decided that’s exactly what I’d share!
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Merry Merry, Dear Farmgirl Readers! This year flew by like a flash, for sure! With only three weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the season has had a bit more “hustle and bustle” than past years, but I LOVE it! Home smells so delicious with all the holiday cooking and baking, and though the days are short, the evenings are cozy with holiday lights and decor.
With Thanksgiving falling so late, we decided to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving this season, and get our tree that weekend. It’s still hard to believe that this year marked fifteen years blogging here, as the Suburban Farmgirl! One of my first ever blogs, in December 2010, was titled, “To Tree or Not to Tree”. It was about the decision to go from a fake tree my husband hated, to a real one, and the funny antics that ensued from our first real tree.
For years, we went ‘round the corner to my neighbor’s farm to cut our tree. After she passed, the new owners decided not to carry on the tradition of the tree farm, but we found another local farm that we love, and have been going there ever since.
We make a day out of it – after breakfast we head out to the farm. We no longer cut our own tree down, but choose a fresh cut one, check out the holiday store in the “barn”, and visit the farm’s vineyard store. It’s become a fun family tradition, with the tree stuffed in the inside of the car for the ride home. We are “The Griswolds”!
This year’s tree is one of the biggest, fluffiest trees ever! Back home, we put the tree in the stand…only to have it fall over. The three of us worked as a team, my daughter and I holding the trunk, while my husband stretched beneath the tree, adjusting the stand. The tree leaned, and slowly fell down a few times more, once even after we decorated it, making a huge mess – water, ornaments, and needles spilling onto the carpet. The frustrated thought went through my head a few times, that maybe… just maybe, I would get a faux tree next year. At one point, I thought it might crash through the window. Finally, my husband secured it in the stand straight and tight, and we bolted it to the wall on the other side. You can’t see the bolts or the line, so it’s fine {wink wink}.
In the end, with the tree up and lit, I knew once again that getting a farm fresh tree is the best for us. It smells amazing and looks so cozy. Maybe next year we should get a new tree stand?
Speaking of tree stands, I love decorating with vintage ones. The lithographed ones are my favorite. Metal inside and out, with beautiful graphics, they were popular in the fifties and needed no “skirt”. I can’t imagine putting a tree in one, however!
Likewise, can you imagine ever using this little fifties stand for an actual tree? Water, a hot C9 Christmas bulb and electricity – yikes! What a combo! (We only use a “cool” LED light in it). The graphics are so sweet and whimsical – why I love all things “vintage”. Decorating vintage style makes home feel cozier and jolly. The outside world may be hectic, but inside my home, it’s 19-something!
So much has changed in the last fifteen years since those first blogs, but some things remain the same. We visited the St. George’s Episcopal Gingerbread Village, in the quaint town of Middlebury, Connecticut. In its FIFTY-SEVENTH year, we have been going for as long as I can remember, and I have written blogs about it in past years. This year did not disappoint, and while we are always “wowed”, the gingerbread castle this year was jaw-dropping spectacular!
Winter has set in, and with the darker, shorter days, we see more wildlife. We often hear coyotes at night; it is at once beautiful and unnerving. We also spied this beauty in our yard one morning. Healthy and fluffy, we watched him sniff and casually walk around the yard (although I did eventually step on to the deck eventually and “shoo” him away. I don’t want him to get too comfortable here. My pets and chickens come first! Still, it was awesome to see).
We also had that weird, distinct feeling we were being watched one evening when we were hanging up outside Christmas lights…ha ha!
As we close another year, I wish you all peace, love, and all the joys of the holiday season. Thank you all for being here with me the past fifteen years. Farmgirls are the best! “See” you in 2026!
REMEMBER TO LEAVE ME A COMMENT SO I KNOW YOU VISITED! LOVE YOU ALL!
The Farmer’s Almanac has predicted a “cold and snowy” winter for the Midwest, and so far, the predictions are spot on. This weekend the expected overnight temperatures are 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrr!
From the basement (or is cellar a better word for a room you can’t fully stand up in, that sports a dirt floor, and several trees are support beams holding up the house? No kidding.) I hear the busy chatter of a local crew installing a new furnace…I’m so grateful that it will be in place to keep this 161-year-old farmhouse toasty before the winds howl and the snow piles up around the doors. And while the new furnace and a cozy fire are perfect for these shivery December days, they’re not all that will take the chill out of a month that can be bitterly cold. Both homes and hearts can be warmed by the glow of the holiday season.
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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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