Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Sarah Hall!!!
Sarah Hall has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning a Beginner Level Horse Dreams Merit Badge!
“I live in an area where horses are not hard to find. My husband and I took a bike ride a few miles from our house and looked at the fields of beautiful horses. I really liked the American Painted Horses and swooned over all of the miniature horses!
I scheduled an hour-long ride near Rocky Mountain National Park and brought a friend along with me.
This truly turned out great! My first and only experience with a horse prior to this was at summer camp when I was a child. The horse stepped on my foot, crushing it, and I had many months of recovery with added complications due to my type I diabetes. I was traumatized by the experience but have always still admired horses (from afar). When I saw this badge, I knew that it was time for me to try to get over my fear of being too close to them (I do know that what happened to me as a kid was due to my inexperience and not the horse, but I was fearful none the less).
I was very nervous being near the horse and getting on it, but once I was in the saddle, my fear went away. The horse I rode was gentle and the ride was amazing (AND she was an American Paint Horse by chance). I really had the time of my life and would love the opportunity to go again! (I am in the white shirt with the huge smile on my face!)”
One hundred and eighty-four years after its original publication,
Mackenzie’s Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts
is making its Kindle debut.
My, how times have changed …
Or have they?
Complied by an anonymous source known only as “An American Physician,” this book is a mighty mish-mash of intriguing—and remarkably useful—miscellany.
In the course of 460 pages of small print and black-and-white diagrams, Mackenzie’s covers everything,
and I mean everything,
from beekeeping, gardening, metallurgy, pickling, and preserving
to watercolor paints, medical cures, chimney cleaning, brewing, cooking,
and about a bazillion other timeless topics.
Okay, so the application of leeches may not be relevant to most readers, but there is enough trivia in this tome to keep you entertained, and maybe even enlightened, for hours on end.
Who knew you could make acorn coffee?
And wouldn’t you love to try the “Cream of Roses” facial recipe?
Fortunately, farmgirls, the book has a “most copious index” (the physician’s own words).
I’ve been having fun just thinking up a topic and seeing if it’s listed.
Drying flowers?
Check.
Manure application?
Yup.
Waterproofing shoes?
Indeed.
The Kindle release is slated for July 16, 2013, but you can also pick up a paperback reproduction of the original or even reference it free online.
Now that you’ve read my book, Glamping with MaryJane, you need to find a fabulous place to get your campin’ glam on.
And so, we’re back for a 7th day of where to glamp in 2013.
While my glamping B&B is on hiatus after eight years (my DIL and indispensable B&B maitre d’, Ashley, and my son, Brian, are having their second child any day now), here is another organic glamping farm to tide you over. Kinnikinnick (I just love saying the word) Feather Down Farm sounds picturesque!
Kinnikinnick Feather Down Farm
Illinois
Visit this charming organic farm with roots that date back to 1849. Streams and dreams created Kinnikinnick Feather Down Farm, named for the river that runs through it.
Photo courtesy of Kinnikinnick Feather Down Farm
An entry in the recent Instructables Green Design Contest caught my eye:
Photo courtesy of IamWe via http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Free-Things-Box/
This simple little stroke of genius
(and generosity)
is just the sort of gesture we can all accomplish with just a dash of creativity and community spirit.
It’s called a Free Things Box.
The box’s inventor, a Dutch fellow named Berto, designed his freebie box to be placed in a person’s front yard or in a central location within a neighborhood.
What goes in it?
Small items that are no longer wanted by their owners but are still useful.
Think books, tools, toys, DVDs, garden seeds, fabric scraps, knick-knacks, etc.
“You can arrange with residents of the street that they can also put freebies in the box,” says Berto. “More people become aware to keep things out of the trash and from the landfill.”
Neighbors can add or take anything they want as long as they follow these simple rules:
In Berto’s video (below), he shows how to make a sturdy weatherproof (and vandalism proof) box, complete with a “window for a quick look.”
Do you think this would work in your neighborhood? I’m definitely getting a box going here at the farm.
Brian gave me certificates to sign for Sisterhood membership renewals recently and I was moved to tears when I realized we have Sisters who’ve been with us seven years. S-e-v-e-n years.
Noelle Miller #111, Vicki Meeds #120, Rene Groom #185, Mary Setzer #378, and Samantha Douglas #449, we would love to send you a set of our MaryJane’s Home organic bed sheets as a token of our deepest appreciation (not to mention our intense need to want to pamper you).
Please email Brian your bed size and color preference (white, blue, green, yellow) and they’re on their way, brianogle@maryjanesfarm.org.
Coming up on year seven in one more year are 27!!!!!!!! Sisters! I love you!
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
