“There are those who can live without wild things and there are those who cannot.” ~Aldo Leopold
I am one who cannot.
The Wood Frog–The only wild frog species in Alaska.
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Debbie Bosworth
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.’”
Rebekah Teal
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.
Cathi Belcher
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
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.
Mary Murray
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.”
Alexandra Wilson
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!
Nicole Christensen
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 see mud! Rich dark mud! Does the permafrost hamper your gardening?
Maureen
From fire scorched Colorado!
Alexandra, you hit it on the head for me with this statement:
"Small scale organic agriculture is a very happy medium between the untamed wilderness and the chemical killing of bigAg."
Tho it would be wonderful to return to our hunter-gatherer roots where we make no radical changes to any ecosystem in order to feed ourselves, our enormous population does not allow for that. ORGANIC agriculture is really our only hope, and that’s been proven in study after study despite what big ag manages to get published in the press to make the minions think otherwise.
I appreciate your insights very much as well as the photos of your beautiful Alaska. Keep it up, farmgirl, I love it.
"Happy radishes come from happy farms." 🙂 I think that’s adorable!
I loved your article and look forward to reading more. I would love to have a larger farm and plant to my heart’s desire. Instead I live in the suburbs right now and have a small backyard garden. We lovingly grow only a few of each type of vegetable we eat regularly. This year we put in kale!! The strawberry patch is threatening to take over the entire area within a couple of years. We have to figure that one out! (care if I share some strawberry plants with you?) 😉
Even though our garden is small, I still experience what you experience, but in a different (and smaller!) setting. The birds also greet us morning and evening, butterflies gather and flutter when the garden is watered, and catbirds taste our strawberries. Now we have to fence our garden in to keep out Mr. Groundhog and the little bunnies that abound in this area.
It’s beautiful and wonderful growing even the smallest garden of your own organic produce. Looking at a happy radish, one realizes they have control of the chemical and GMO onslaught that threatens our bodies and environment daily. The happy radish invokes in me a good, settling, connected, grounding and protected feeling. I think that’s what I’m seeking each year when I put in my garden!
Your quote "just hit the spot" this morning!
Your pictures are out of this world with beauty, how blessed you are.
It reminded me so of our lives in the wilderness of Montana!
Now that we are in the Ozarks, it is a little more difficult to find wild places, but there out there, even if it is in our own back yard, sitting out drinking our morning coffee in between raised beds and gazing at the stars before bed every night! Thank you for sharing your beautiful life with all of us!
Hugs from the Ozarks, Diana Henretty
Alex, I love your blog about nature, nurture, the land and being good stewards over it. I love the fact that you can find a place that is virtually untoched yet by man. I wish all of your generation could see the land like you do. I saw a good video about this man who asked God to show him how to tend his gardens. I thought you might like it, so I will include the link. I think I may have gotten it from another farmgirl blogger.http://backtoedenfilm.com/#movie
I love my little 2 acres of land and I try to be a good steward over it. I do not use any herbicides or pesticides in my garden, so I know when I go out there and I see something that is ready I can pluck and eat and not worry about it. I wish you and your new soon to be hubby lots of blessings and lots of farm to nurture. Be Blessed. Neta
That was a truly inspiring message from your heart about the land, agriculture, nature and growing all things organic. It put me in touch with how I really feel about what is happening all around us that is destroying the land and wildlife. I live in Idaho and am surrounded by yellow buzzing airplanes that spray pesticides on practically every crop. I hate that! I’m trying to have an organic yard and vegetable garden and it’s nigh unto impossible. You also sparked an interest I have, and that is learning about biodynamic farming. I just started hearing that word! Thanks for letting me see the passion and purpose you have. It truly inspired me and gave me hope.
What gorgeous views! Thank you for sharing with us a peek into your wonderful wilderness!
very nice. I knew a lady that loved to help shave llamas for their fur to make sawrtees. Had a spinning wheel in her living room.. was not to much fun to watch while I sneezed up a storm.