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Hello Farmgirl friends!
Is this a good time to meet up with your closest life-long girlfriends? That’s a question that was heavy on my heart for two months this spring. Let me explain why.
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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”.
*seize the moment! I know it was just the best!♥️ And oh goodness, I could totally live in a place like that!!
Was right there with you on your girlfriend getaway. Loved the pictures, especially the goslings. My road happens to be caliche. Wish I had some gravel.
Thanks for sharing & I plan to drop a note to high school , 1962 grad., girlfriend today. . Donna
I live in Denver and don’t recognize this place. If it’s a rental I’d love to know where it is and how to contact the owners.
Hi Marlene,
It is not a rental! We had connections! 🙂 Its a privately owned property with a beautiful home and this is the little guest house (original home on the property) and they rent it out as a vacation spot to family and close friends of family. So it was our plan all along to stay here… knowing that it would be the perfect quiet and private place to rest and re-set. Little did we know how important that would be!
~ Dori ~
I feel the same about getting away with my long-time nurse friends. We are planning our trip this year as well! So much has happened since our last time together! We all are counting down the weeks…just texting last night about how in so many weeks we will be in a place together having great times…drinking our coffee, too! This made me anticipate even more my own trip coming up!
Sweet!!!
What a wonderful story!!! I’ve been thinking of doing a quilt retreat with a couple of friends sometime and you helped me realize we need to put it together sooner than later! Thanks so much for the wonderful story!!
What a wonderful experience in a time when the world is in such upheveal!! Bless you for sharing your little get-away with us…thank you!! It offered a little normalcy in all the un-normal times we are having. You write such a happy blog, thanks bunches!! Stay safe, Laurel
Glad you got to spend some time with your girlfriends. Looks like a good time was had by all.
Marilyn
Hi Dori;
Wow! what a beautiful place to hang out with friends. So happy for you all. I am a homebody but I think I would like to visit with friends in a place like that. Peaceful and quiet it looks like. Love the geese with their babies. We have a family of them up the road here that we see on the neighbors pond. They are here every year. Most of my long time friends live close by so get to see them often, though I do like to go on road trips once in a while to just get away for a day or a weekend. Glad you took pictures and have such good friends. Can’t wait for your next blog, you always inspire us to do something.
Loved the blog, the pictures and being able to share the experience. Thanks for putting together such a beautiful piece. Originally from Massachusetts, five of my friends (some
even from first grade) and I try to get together every two years. We had a wonderful
outing in Kennebunkport, Maine so I could get my ocean fix. However, coming from New
England, California and myself in Kansas, there was no way to organize that this summer.
But……………you gave me HOPE for the future, and I love the idea of renting a house!
Pamela
What a wonderful story, with pictures! I loved it. Glad y’all had a nice time.
I enjoyed reading your blog and could relate with it as well. Living in Michigan has been tough this past year. Our Governor closed everything from March to the present. I belong to a group of women of various ages that sewing is their hobby or addiction. There are 40 of us and we meet on the 1st Friday of every month to do a show and tell, have lunch and then learn what we are to make for the next month and bring. Covid put that on hold for quite awhile and made life difficult and sad. Then finally Pfizer came on the scene, most all of us have had our vaccines and we are now once again able to come together. Like you, friends are so important and healthy to our lives – and sewing! Bless you. Susan