I sat there and wished I had my camera. I fumbled with my phone, trying to figure out how to take a photo with it. No go: too advanced for my feeble tech-challenged brain. It was a mall Santa who had caused this “need to photograph.” He was gorgeous; the perfect Santa. I stood there and watched him with the children on his lap. Babies didn’t cry. Kids weren’t scared. He was spectacular. Could it be?
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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”.
Hi Rebekah,
Enjoyed your post. I used to go to Lenox mall when I was a child to ride the pink pig. That felt like Christmas then.
Now, my husband and I love to stay at our "farm" – our house in the country where I garden and he does his art – for the holidays. This year I’m finally putting up a greenhouse, so I’ll be spending long hours poring over my seed collection and getting some newbies started.
I love the long winter nights when I can read next year’s seed catalogs and dream of spring gardens.
We’ll put up a tree, bring some holly in from the yard, and open some jams and pickles we put up last summer. We’ll do presents and call family and friends, but probably our favorite tradition now is relishing the solitude and restoration we find in having a quiet Christmas at home.
Happy Holidays!
Laura
I plan on making practically all of my christmas gifts this year. I just hope I can get it all done, most of my gifts though will be table runners. Since I am a brand new sewer and quilter hopefully these will go by pretty fast. Since my husband and I have our own home this year we will be getting a real christmas tree. I had wanted to make a popcorn and cranberry garland however with our cat and dog my husband thinks it would become food. lol, however I might still make one and having it somewhere they cant reach.
This was a wonderful article. I think often we have "christmas" pushed at us so hard by all the retail/commercial scenes, that we have to fight to not lose the meaning to Christmas.
By the time December gets here many are all ready done with all the decorations/music & pressure that have been thrown at them since September/October.
I intend to not stress & fret over Christmas this year. I will be thankful for fun times spent with the family.
Baking cookies and other treats to share with friends. Finding other family memories to create that don’t center around the latest gizmo or gadget that "we have to have" if we believe the all the commercials.
Christmas is reading the Christmas story to my 4 year old grandchild and playing with the nativity, acting out the story with my two 1 year old’s grandbabies, Knowing about the greatest gift of God’s Son.
Less is the key this year for me…less family, less baking, less decorating, and that is fine with me. Been kind of fun doing more for others who’s needs outweigh mine. I know that isn’t a humble statement but it is the reason for the season.
Less is the key for me, too. Most volunteer-run organizations are overwhelmed with holiday signups only to be desperate for help again come January. So this year, I’ll postpone the helping until January, go shopping for pet supplies with The Boy and then drop them at a local shelter, and replace some of the gifts with heartfelt calls. We’re also…
…
GASP! Picking up a few pans of catered food to eat on Christmas Day! I know, I know–it’s especially alarming since I love to cook. But I do it every day–always healthy, always homemade. If a catered Christmas ends up being the less that’s actually more, then I’m all for it!
Well, I know exactly what you mean. Our family is always in danger,this time of year, of missing the "good stuff", because of the pace that seems to come with Christmas. My favorite way to keep Christmas is to celebrate the Advent season. We get hot chocolate and read our Advent story and light our candles (sometimes there’s a blazing fire in the hearth) But, for 20 minutes, every night for a month, we are all together….really together. We also home school, so I work in time to make cookies and paper chains.
I’m in agreement, less is really best. Have a Merry Christmas!!
Hi Rebekah, I know just what you mean about the holidays…I just had the most unbelievable experience I know I will never forget. I do volunteer work for various org. and was nominated to go to the White House to attend a Holiday Open House. I received a personal invitation from the First Lady, I went and had a very unforgettable time! The food was fabulous, and I was able to get a hug and handshake from the First Lady!!! This is my first blog (if that is what I am doing) ever, and what a great way to start. I will never forget this Christmas ever. All of the volunteers there were wonderful and friendly. Anyway, I am back to peacfulness on our farm and have cookies to bake now, so I need get back to normal. Thank you for a wonderful writing about using and reusing. The First Lady had lots of recycled ornaments and I got great ideas to use on my own home. Merry Christmas!
Loved this Rebekah! I think Christmas is what WE make it at home and what we open our hearts to seeing during the season. Not what is shoved at us from every possible angle months ahead of time. Maybe it takes getting a little older to realize it, I’m not really sure, but here it is December 7th… I haven’t purchased one gift ( I have a house full of loved ones to buy and bake for though )nor is my home decked out for the holidays… yet… This year I decided I’m having a SLOOOOOW and Creative Christmas…I baked my first ever ( from scratch ) pumpkin pie via Mary Jane’s Farm mag recipe and instructions last night by the light of a kerosene lantern as we wait for the last phase of our kitchen remodeling to be done …LIGHTING… ( that’s tomorrow)… anyway, the game was on in the living room, and I was alone in my almost finished kitchen baking and enjoying the smells and the quiet… it was lovely… and you know what? It FELT like Christmas to me! The tree is in the yard waiting to be brought in and decorated and I know right where my decorations are when I get ready to pull them out and get to it…For a different touch on our Christmas we’ll be adding some beachy shells to our traditional wreaths to celebrate the beautiful place we call home near Cape Cod…. and friends will be coming by for an early Christmas Brunch on the 19th….My hubby has dusted off the Christmas music ( that’s his thing ) which now rings through the house from now until the New Year arrives… I’d say we are all set!
Merry Christmas to you and thank you for all of your wonderful words through out the past year!
Look forward to more in 2011!
Beach Blessings~
Deb
I’m always blessed by your conversations with us. Thanks for taking your valuable time to share. Most of us don’t have the talent (let alone the time) to set their thoughts to pen and share like this. So if you’re having a stressful time one of these days and think "why am I doing the MJF blog on a regular basis?"…please don’t quit. … Just this one article has added to my personal Christmas enjoyment!
ps. That post on Zen habits? WONDERFUL AND ON POINT!
Thank you for including it in yours…
Beach Blessings,
Deb
Rebecca: I don’t think you can make Christmas slow but you can simmer it. A slow, steady infusion of all the senses; smells of cinnamon, spice, pine and egg nog. The feeling of wet snow on your face or the heat of an open fire and the warmth of mittens on your hands.The sound of wind in the trees,bells on horses and giggling children. The touch of a loved one or snuggling pets. Those are the simple joys. Enjoy
My husband and I have two barely grown children( early twenties) and two much younger children (ages 7 and 11). When our older two were little, my husband and I repeated a lot of what we had grown up with, which was commercialism and materialism. We did this without really thinking; it was just tradition. At some point, however, as our two youngest grew from babies into toddlers, we began to make changes in our thinking, and thus our traditions. ADDITION by SUBTRACTION became our goal. Last year, I knit something for just about everyone, not big things, but thoughtful things like neck cozies, berets, and organic cotton washcoths accompanied by a fragrant soap. I also had dates with my two oldest, eating lunch out with my daughter and getting her hair done at her favorite salon, and eating dinner out with my son and shopping with him for a cordoroy blazer. My husband picked out age appropriate wood working tools for our two youngest, since that was (and still is) a major interest for both of them, and then (this is the important part) he and they spent time together making items with those tools. This year so far, we have watched a gorgeous amaryllis grow from a plain brown bulb right before our very eyes. We also sketched it and sent the drawings to my grandmother in another state. We are reading Dickens’ Cricket on the Hearth, a little every day, which transports us back to a MUCH simpler time in terms of contentment. I have a decorated shoe box on the kitchen table which has the countdown to Christmas on the lid (I change the number every morning). When my little guys wake up, they check the box to see what I have put in there, which are activities that involve togetherness: 3 games of rummy, baking gingersnaps, hot chocolate for breakfast, etc. This gets the focus off getting "stuff" and on to time spent together enjoying the season. Once you adopt this mindset, it’s amazing how easily you detect the traps of commercialism and come up with an alternative plan pleasing to everyone in the family!
Merry Christmas!
Kathy
You’re so right… Christmas is within us…in our hearts. With each thing we do for someone else, each time we sing a carol, each time we slow down enough to really enjoy the sights, sounds, taste, aromas and most of all feelings of Christmas, we are truly celebrating.
I can definitely identify with your mall stall, Rebekah! After working retail for 10 Christmases straight, I truly needed a "Christmas Break". The joyful season was no longer joyful for me. So for the past few years, I have been on a Christmas detox. Family presents are exchanged at Thanksgiving, I send Happy New Year cards instead of Christmas cards to a few friends I don’t see very often, decorations are minimal, my husband and I take our vacation the week of Dec. 25, and I DON’T GO TO THE MALL! Your message should be shouted from the rooftops: Less IS Best!! I loathe what the Christmas season has become for so many: a Thirst for Things! Every day of our lives, not just at Christmas, should be like our Saviour–meek and lowly, kind and compassionate, with a heart for others. So I applaud all you sweet Farmgirls who are slowing down the pace and spending your time making memories with family and friends with simply LOVE.
This is exactly what I needed to read. I was beginning to feel the familiar frantic Christmas rush kicking in. This helps me put it into perspective. It shouldn’t be frantic, should it? Thank you for your inspiring words!
All one needs to do is spell Christmas to themselves and focus on the first six letters…and then the volume of the noise and busyness is shut out. Nothing is more "natural" or basic than focusing on the real meaning…CHRISTmas. Linger on that thought for as long as it takes to rekindle where all the joy began. The rest of holiday festivity is WONderful, it makes for a great contrast between celebration and a quiet peace…the kind of peace that drowns out the noise of the world and the hollowness you mention.
I love the holiday festivity…all of it, every corner, but if it were not for the birth of an infant King, there would be no Christmas. "White Christmas" would never have been made…Oh, now that would be awful! Stockings would never have been hung. No carols that make you feel at peace just by singing them, no Santa legend, no sparkling evergreen tree. Without Jesus, the "holiday" is just a shopping spree and the results offer no lasting or meaningful joy. I wrote more than I intended. I’m for all the wonders of the Christmas Season with THE central figure being, well, central. Merrrrrry Christmas everyone. Shery
Thanks for bringing back memories.
I remember riding the Pink Pig at the old downtown Rich’s store, shopping at the Santa’s Secret Shop and my chorus performing at a lighting of the Great Tree (before it was moved to Lenox). I took my friend’s little girls to ride the Pink Pig @ Lenox…fun…but not quite the same thing. However, Lenox still remains my favorite place to people watch.
Rebekah,
Thank you so much for all of your blogs through-out the year. I look forward to them all, but this one really struck a chord with me. I have been not feeling very Christmasy this year. In trying to have a simple Christmas, I kept decorations down to nothing and only sent out a few cards and very little shopping. Christmas was always very fun and exciting when my children were home. Even when I was a single mother with little money, it just seemed to be Christmas when my children were involved. It has been especially rough since my daughter Shannon moved to South Carolina with her Army Husband four years ago. We always enjoyed decorating and baking together. I did fly down to Columbia, SC on December 15th to go with my daughter to a very important doctor appointment. We finally got a referral to a specialist off of the army base for her chronic lyme disease. She was bit by a deer tick over 15 years ago and was never properly diagnosed until almost 2 1/2 years after. The best Christmas present ever was a doctor that finally knows what she is going through and did not tell us we are crazy! She has started IV anti-biotics and I am saying a little prayer that it helps her. We did get a little time to do some shopping and bake some cookies and decorate. I came home on the 20th feeling pretty Christmasy! I can always decorate next year! A very Merry Christmas and Hopeful New Year to you and yours!