This week’s edition of High Plains Prose began as a simple wildflower ‘show & tell’ article. Then, like my real-life landscaping project, it grew and grew…as you shall soon see. If flowers, history and a ride in the country tickle your fancy, hop on the Farmgirl Prairie Fairy Express for a nice, long outing. A lesson about “floriography” also awaits you. Oh, and this too…yes, we do have flower fairies out here…don’t you?
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It’s summer and I’m welcoming dinner guests who have just moved to my Southern town so – of course! — I decide to make peach-blackberry cobbler. I once had a whole peach tree in the yard to pull the sweet gold from, but now I have to hit the Farmer’s Market and pay for them. Luckily I do own another key ingredient: a magical pink recipe card on which a friend’s mother, a native North Carolinian, once wrote down for me the best fruit cobbler recipe ever.
My problem is that I am a slipshod follower of recipes and a hopeless improviser.
It’s garlic harvest time here in Elsinore! Over the past few weeks, our garlic patch has “ripened” from a patch of healthy deep green garlic plants to a patch of yellowing, drying drooping plants ready for harvest. Aside from hay and some grain, garlic is the largest crop we grow here on the farm (unless you call lambs a “crop!”), and it is always such a suspense-filled time when we dig and pull the first few garlic bulbs from the ground. Are they fully mature? Did they escape damage from pests? Are the bulbs pleasantly big and plump? Are their papery skins intact? This year the answer to all of these is a resounding “YES!”
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For years I’ve wanted to go to a place called the “Hike Inn.” It’s a lodge of sorts, perched high atop a mountain in North Georgia. The reason I’ve wanted to go is the same reason I’ve never been: the only way to get to the Hike Inn is to hike in. Yes, one must hike through the woods for five “moderate” miles to get there.
I’m all show and no go when it comes to being woodsy or outdoorsy. I read about it and dream about it and think about it, but that’s as far as it goes. Hubby is exactly the same way. Except he doesn’t do the reading, dreaming or thinking.
Is your life a busy mosaic of activities in the summer? I’m betting so. It is always a challenge for our Farmgirl chapter (High Plains Sage Hens) to organize a time when all of us can be present, but we did it and held our monthly get-together this past week. The hostess hen, Jenny, taught us the “how to” and provided most of the materials for creating mosaic goodies. Wanna see?
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When the strawberries and sweet corn are ripe, charcoal grill smoke fills the air, and days seem lazier just because they’re longer, I think more often about a particular kind of relationship. It’s less analyzed than the one with your parents or your menfolk, more fragile than the bond with your sibs (who, love ‘em, hate ‘em — or both simultaneously – tend to boomerang back at you your entire life), and yet potentially more enduring than ties with even the best of friends, because with this relationship, there’s blood involved.
Summertime has me thinkin’ ‘bout cousin time.
Have you noticed how a little-discussed byproduct of scattered families is scattered cousins?
It’s the main summer holiday in our valley – the Fourth of July. Now, we in Utah have Pioneer Day on July 24th, but that’s another story for another day. “The fourth,” as it’s known around here, is full of all things fun and wild, and at our farm it’s no exception. We had a bit of everything – the good, the bad, the ugly, the fun, the hospital, the racetrack… Pour a glass of something cold (green tea with mango is my current fave), have a seat and join my world – who knows? Maybe you’ll find a bit of your world here, too!
Yes, I know. You want to hear about the roof. My sweet blogging friends came through! Thank you! What excellent taste you all have! And great advice! I loved reading each and every comment and email, hearing what your thoughts are on it. And we’ll talk about the roof in just a minute. But first let’s talk about this, Friends.
Friends.
What about you? What kind of friend do you enjoy having? Do you have a large circle? Or a smaller, more intimate group? Are they all women? Or are guys in your immediate circle? Do you talk to your buds every single day?
I’ve been thinking about this because of the letters, B and F and F.
I don’t text. I don’t know how to text. I don’t care to learn how to text. Really. N4M (not for me).
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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