The average cost of health care per person, per year, in the U.S. is skyrocketing. But stats show that our health, as a nation, is on a rapid decline.

So, what gives? Watch the new documentary, Escape Fire, The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.

To watch the full documentary, you can purchase it through iTunes for $17.99 or go to their website here and click on “see the film” for more showing opportunities.

Escape Fire has already won a large number of awards, including Best Documentary (Newport Beach Film Festival), React to Film Social Issue Award (Silverdocs Film Festival), and Human Rights Award (Full Frame Film Festival). It was also nominated at the Sundance Film Festival for the Grand Jury Prize.

What do you do when you have a pregnant cow that’s breathing hard, falls to the ground, looks uncomfortable, and seems to be having contractions? Well, you assume she’s going into labor.

My dear sweet rotund Emma has about a month left before she gives us a little gorgeous boy or girl—according to our records (that may or may not be accurate). She looked a little, well, due yesterday and so we went into a tizzy—the news spreading like a head-to-toe farm rash. Ace and Karina hung about with cameras, farmhands kept an eye out, and everyone kept asking, “Anything yet?” Nothing compares to the excitement and sweetness of a newborn calf.

Royal pregnancies, Beyonce’s Blue Ivy … they don’t have a thing on our love of Jersey, cows that is! Not Shore. Today, our Emma is fine again but no bundle of joy. Yet.

to stop and smell the flowers. Just a friendly reminder from Miss Mia, who had no idea the adult meaning behind it when she asked me as we rushed through our day if she could please stop and smell the flowers.

Hubs took a load of bedding and fixtures to our store in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, yesterday. Why?

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What were my son Brian, SIL Lucas, and the guys from our food facility hauling onto the second floor of our building yesterday?

Why, my very own crafting …

bed!

Years ago, I found a gorgeous brass bed in an antique store, but when I got it home to put into one of my B & B units, it was an odd size. Sized in between a twin and a double bed, I couldn’t find a mattress to fit it. Planter box? Nah, too gorgeous to be outside. As I was finishing up my new Pay Dirt Farm School classroom where I plan to teach sewing classes, I thought, “Why not turn it into a crafting table on wheels?”

Right after it was put into place (it wouldn’t fit up the staircase—the reason my husband lifted it with the tractor to the height of our guys waiting on the roof), we received an order for a pair of our Raising Jane knickers. So Saralou, our resident seamstress, crafter, and graphic designer, gave my idea a test run.

I figure a bed is all about dreams, right? I dream a world in which I teach dozens of young women the joy of sewing, including my grandgirls. How and when did you learn to sew?

“Picture this,” invites night-beguiled blogger Moonfairy,

“It’s a warm summer night …

tree frogs and crickets are singing their night songs,

and the full moon is casting its glow on the landscape.

You wander through the moonlight until you come to a place

that seems to glow …

It is your very own moonlight garden,

and creating one is easier than you think.”

Cloud Study, Moonlight by Albert Bierstadt, c. 1860, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m entranced—how about you?

I wandered serendipitously into the magical world of moonlit gardens while wrapping up the latest issue of MaryJanesFarm, June/July 2013.

The theme of the magazine?

“Midnight Hour.”

So, I simply had to know …

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Happy National Wear your Pajamas to Work Day!

From a few of the (very comfortable) ladies of MaryJanesFarm!

All of your guesses were simply great yesterday. Your comments here and on the MaryJanesFarm Facebook page ranged from hog-bristle scraper, ice shaver, something that turns bulls into steers, vintage light-saber, kegel exerciser, old-style razor, vegetable peeler, cheese slicer, light magnifier, fancy cattle prod, colonoscopy tool, to cleaning item.

What fun! Then there were the smartie-pants that knew it all along (must be a generational thing).

Turns out … it’s a …

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Have you ever sat with someone who had an inquisitive ear (of corn?) and you’ve tried to explain what scientists are doing to our food to create genetically modified organisms?

If you’ve ever struggled to keep that explanation under 5 minutes, I hear ya.

Watch this one-minute excerpt from the Genetic Roulette movie for a pear-ed down explanation.