“My life is like a stroll on the beach… as near to the edge as I can go.”
~ Thoreau
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What’s better than sinking your toes into warm sand, soft as velvet or the feeling of cool grass underfoot as you walk around your backyard or local park? When’s the last time you dangled your feet off the edge of a dock into fresh cool water? All together now! Ahhh… It’s time to kick off your shoes and do a little barefoot’n with the beach farmgirl and family!
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”.
I wish I was there!!!
Debbie: We don’t have the ocean here in Minnesota but I spent many hours at the beaches. You make me want to set out there soon. But we just had frost again last night and they say spring won’t come until the third week of May. Until then I really enjoyed your trip to the beach. Great pictures! Bonnie
Love your photos! Please, please do your beach cottage next. Some of us are living vicariously through you!
Awwwwww, thanks, I could just feel the warm, wet sand between my toes. Love your blog:)……….Raynita
Oh, I’m SOOOOOOO jealous! I love to walk the beach, get sand between my toes and under my toenails and feel the surf on my legs!! I AM a Colorado Rocky Mountains girl, but I do love walking the beach. Your photo reminds me of one I took in September of the feet of my daughter and me on the Santa Barbara beach (you can see it on my "From a Celtic Heart" blogspot). Our toenails aren’t are pretty in pink as yours. Thanks for sharing!!!
Ahhh!I miss living close to the beach! Tomorrow I hit the road to take my daughter back to CA. I will definitly get my toes into that warm sand! Barefooting, ‘my one weakness’!
Hi Farmgirl . Good to see you folks on the beach again. I have to admit its the first time I have seen the Bos without the two white cheeks facing the lens. I’m not sure you can quote Thoreau to a Nevada teamroper(heeler). Did he write when Tony Hillerman wrote? We love you and your beach.
At spring break I got to pick up shells on a NC beach to bring back to KS to show preschoolers, who have never seen the ocean. The bag sat on my desk, leaked sand, and remains. Who could love the beach so much as to leave it beach sandy for months?
Linda
I live in Michigan which as you know is almost completely surrounded by water except for that southern state line that will take you to Indiana where I grew up and there is very little lake areas. My favorite day out in the summer includes a walk on the beach. I crave it but do not get to go as often since my daughters have all grown and started families of their own. My hubs is a home body and it is hard to drag him from our wooded acreage. Funny thing is I never learned to swim growing up on Indiana farmland. But to walk the beach is heaven. And to sit and watch the sun set on the beach is even better. Add a glass of wine…
Oh, this came just at the right time! I am so excited, I can’t wait! We leave early, early tomorrow morning to go to Grayton Beach State Park in Florida where we will be camping and kayaking and spending lots of time walking on the beach. Your pictures are beautiful!
Becky G.
Farmgirl Sister #1941
Newly married, first trip to the Oregon Coast…fresh crab legs, chosen squirming, hot brine baked, pliers to ‘catch’ the meat, sunny, chilly, wearing coat, alittle spirits to wash down, and then…..time to tip the toes into the Pacific…oh my, so cold I leaked alittle!!!! Wonderful memory for a new bride…don’t you think? Lots of Laughter that day…..
I have always loved going barefoot! And I may not have an ocean near by but I do have the Great Lakes of Michigan, and boy I love walking them barefoot. I lived out west for a few years and though I loved the Rocky Mountains, I missed the great lakes, and when I moved back I went up to the nearest one and just walked it and let it soak in so to speak. "Guess you can take the girl out of the Great Lakes but you can’t take the Great Lakes out of the girl"….lol!
Love your toes in the sand picture. I have my favorite "toes in the sand picture" too. Last year I was down for all the gray and rain of winter in te Northwest, unemployed, my son was unemployed and my daughter had moved out of state looking for work. For Mother’s Day my husband took me to Oahu for a few days so I could walk on the beach, soak up the sun, and of course walk barefoot in the sand.
Love your pictures. When my son married I acquired a wonderful new family, one of whom has a house on the ocean on the Outer Banks. This lovely lady always gives us the best guest room in the house, at the back, facing the ocean. What joy it is to fall asleep to the sound of the waves crashing. I can’t wait to go back.
As I sit here – with a forecast of 3-4 days of cold,wet,white stuff – I am wondering is there really a BEACH out there? but then I shook my head and cleared the cobwebs of YEARS gone by when I 1st saw, smelled, felt an ocean – oh thank you Debbie for helping my memories come to the forefront and am going to get into the foot bath with all your great ideas – then maybe the dull, white days won’t seem so bad. Thanks for letting me live vicariously through you.
Great photos of the ocean and your beach. We used to live in Rockport/Fulton TX (6 blocks from the Fulton Mansion) on the Texas coast and often took the ferry to Port A for our beach fix with long walks and shell gathering. We traded that in for our home in the TN mountains. I do miss the smell of the dunes and the beauty of the coastal birds and purchasing fresh shrimp from the local folks but not the beach tar in the sand. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and photos.
Hi Deb, LOVE the photo of you and your Corgi walking on the beach! I can feel the sand between my toes! Yeppers, soon it will be time for painted tootsies for sandal weather. We’re not there yet here in WYO. My computer is dead, have a new one ordered. So, I’ve been down for a spell. Talk more soon. Hope you have some hyacinths to enjoy. Shery J
Hi everyone! So glad you popped by to say hello and share your barefoot’n times and beach memories with me. Your comments always bring a smile to my day!
Beach Blessings,
Deb