Here’s where you can count on me for a quick pick-me-up post from one of my 12 categories, penned in honor of us girls and that letter of the alphabet we’ve all laid claim to, G. My goal is to gladden your heart and add some glisten to your life.
Today, I’m feeling grateful for our farmhand Abigail and want to say so right out loud. Known as Abby to her university cohorts, she’s Abigail to me. Abigail responded to a help-wanted ad I placed on Craigs List two summers ago looking for someone to help me run my B&B. Having worked hard to obtain her PhD in math and then secure a professorship at one of our local universities, she bemoaned the fact that she had “next to zero practical knowledge.”
She’s still working here part time during the school year and full time in the summer, and as it turns out, she and I make a darn good team. When needed, she pitch-hits order fulfillment in our food facility, with a smile and a willing attitude. Always. Plus she’s really good at navigating computers and I am anything but.
And when one of my granddaughters, who excels in math, said she was bored in school and needed help beyond what school had to offer, Professor Abigail came to the rescue!
And Abigail was enthusiastically willing to pitch in when I put together a team of helpers to plant native flower plugs in my prairie using an auger. It was hard, hot work, and the days were long.
And then there was that wintery day she was itching to be outside so I lent her my insulated suit and out the door she went to move help move lumber and firewood.
For my b-day, she gifted me a precious rendition of Farmgirl that she painted free hand.
Last summer, she chose our Valley Lutheran church for exchanging vows with her sweetheart. The night before her wedding, her gaggle of girlfriends camped out here in the B&B venues that Abigail fusses over.
Now you know why I’m grateful for Abigail’s friendship and help.
I have a sweet little step-back-in-time gift box looking for a home that has Donna Everhart’s book, When the Jessamine Grows, recipe cards for two of the recipes mentioned in her book (Joetta’s Switchel and Idiot’s Delight), an engraved wooden spoon, a hankie, Donna’s upcoming book-signing schedule, plus a few other bookish surprises.
My gift box is all yours if you’ll share why Donna’s book appeals to you. I’ll toss your name into a hat and voila, it might be headed your way.
I wasn’t sure what to think when I took a call from a woman late last summer representing an agency hired by a chain of retail stores saying she wanted to rent my farm for a couple of days for a photo shoot. When I hesitated, saying I didn’t really have my B&B “open” and in good enough condition for a photo shoot, she said, “They told me to beg if need be.” Once she told me a little bit more about the kinds of photos they’d be taking, I jumped at the chance to host them, thinking it would be a playful, fun-filled two days for me, my employees, and my granddaughters. I wasn’t wrong. Why? Manners. Gallant GOOD manners! They worried about their impact on plants and they cleaned. Actually, they left my farm cleaner than they found it. And one week later, one of them wrote to say she’d ended up with one of my hand towels and would drop it in the mail. “I’m so sorry.”
It was pure delight loading people and gear into the back of our farm trucks and/or our little utility “golf cart” vehicle for delivery to a forest and/or field location that one of their many scouts had picked out. Abigail and I prepped our guesthouse for their make-up/hair technicians; and I put the woman in charge in touch with a local restaurant for meal catering. It, of course, made us smile when we heard them talking on their cell phones, saying things like, “The brunette from the UK has arrived at the airport, ETA 30 minutes.”
It was hot. And dry. And in some of the shots, the models were wearing sweaters! Those attending to them rushed forth in between shots with ice packs and cotton towels for dabbing away beads of facial sweat. Did they complain? They did not. Not even once. Did my modelesque granddaughters take in every detail and nuance? They did; some of models were only a few years older.
And then, a few months later. There it was! Pieces of my farm were everywhere on their website. Their scouts really had an eye. In one instance, they chose an old tree stump off to the side of my wood shed, right next to my clothesline. Who knew!? But the photos turned out fabulous. They wore fall clothing so my farm isn’t currently featured on their website, but I did snap a few photos from the two days my farm became famously glam.
Here’s one of my granddaughters afterward utilizing her newfound skills. Right before they left, they pulled my granddaughters aside and let them pick out several outfits.
The April/May 2024 issue of my magazine, MaryJanesFarm, will have two pages that showcase my fresh-air B&B, along with an invitation to come! Join me! For more details, go to the B&B section of my website:
(To read the text on the two pages below, scroll down.)
Outside, even if only a fantasy, can be better than an endless dose of inside. And a little bit of outside can go a long way toward improving your outlook on your inside life. If you get outside, you’ll more easily grow into its companionship, its comfort. It needn’t be a trip or a planned excursion, gear, and lots of outdoor know-how. A sleeping bag thrown down in your back yard can do the trick.
My mother gave me outside at an early age (often only a flannel bag and a pup tent 30 feet from her door), and it made an empiricist out of me. In other words, rolling gracefully with life’s punches isn’t all that complicated, because I know I always have the moon, the wind, or my own two feet … a soft place to rest, a walk alone at night. Nothing outside resembles the complexities of four walls and a roof, when behind the everyday modern-day door lurks an array of gadgetry—devices that overschedule, over-obligate, and overwhelm us.
Armed with my mother’s outside nourishment, I left home at age 19, headed for the wilds of Idaho. I landed my first outside job saving trees as a fire lookout, perched atop a 100-foot tower. After that, I moved back to Utah for two summers to work as a wilderness ranger in the Uinta Mountains. Then I came back again to Idaho to live year-round in the heart of the wilderness—the Selway-Bitterroot, 27 miles from road’s end, all of it before cellphones, before the excess of constant yammering, before the angst of 24-hour news.
Years later, I put what I had learned from my outside work into sharing what my mother and others had given me—outside how-to.
Helen Butters (my mother), 1925
“To have a mother who loves you for being independent is to have a mother who fosters rebellion in your heart and revolution in your bones.” – Judy Chicago
Not just how-to, more an approach, a runway with a soft landing, a starting place, where outside is readily accessible, obtainable—a space and place without fear of failure or judgment. When I broke ground on my wall-tent B&B in 2004 and launched the term glamping, outside was more hardcore—backpacking, skiing, water sports, gear. And regular old camping was still the domain of guys-in-charge-of-the-know-how, if you know what I mean. I wanted to change all that. Twenty years later, I think I have changed all that, one reader at a time, one B&B guest at a time.
2004 wall B&B wall tent
What started out as a canvas wall-tent bed and breakfast in 2004 morphed into a bed and outdoor bath (providing guests with kitchens to cook their own meals). Given the number of different tent cabins, pavilions, cottages, vintage trailers, and RV hookups we’ve created, your spring/summer 2024 getaway farmstay will be based on several factors—family w/young children, family w/teenagers, soloist, girlfriends’ retreat, couple, family reunion, wedding party, etc. Each venue has an outdoor claw-foot bathtub, shower, flush loo, full-service kitchen, wood stove/campfire, organic bed linens, nap hammocks, and access to our farm store (chock-full of antiques and collectibles), U-pick gardens, and orchard. Right beyond your doorstep, our private 115-acre native plant and wildlife preserve provides stunning views anywhere you choose to wander.
Currently, we’re taking reservations for May 31 thru July 8. Depending on your needs and length of stay (we have a two-night minimum), creating your unique configuration will require going back and forth via e-mail (no phone calls please). For more details, visit the B&B section of my website.
Yesterday’s loaf of Dutch Oven wild bread (no store-bought yeast used, just 1/2 cup of my refrigerator sourdough mother) was so happy when it hit the oven it exploded sideways. This loaf was destined for my daughter’s household. I have perfected this kind of loaf so that it’s airy inside but super moist by working with a more wet dough when I knead and fold it. If you haven’t yet toyed with the idea of nurturing a sourdough mother, I encourage you to take the leap.
How about this book? Does it interest you? Maybe you’ve read it already. If so, let us know what you thought about it! Because I’m old enough to remember the impact of polio before there was a vaccine (two of the boys in my neighborhood were stricken), I’m not sure I want to revisit this topic, especially since we’ve just been through a modern-day pandemic. On the other hand, history is a great teacher and often helps broaden my perspective, while allowing me to cancel out all the current noise and notions that have a tendency to be politically motivated.
In the fall of 1918, 13-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant twin brothers alone . . .
I haven’t read this book yet, but historical fiction is a genre I’m drawn to. How about you?
Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins. They loved the same things and shared a deep understanding, but Rosemary—awake to every emotion, easily moved to joy or tears—seemed to need more protection from the world.
Six years after Rosemary’s death from pneumonia, Sage, now sixteen, still misses her. Their mother perished in a car crash, and Sage’s stepfather, Alan, resents being burdened by a responsibility he never wanted. Yet despite living as near strangers in their Staten Island apartment, Sage is stunned to discover that Alan has kept a shocking secret: Rosemary didn’t die. She was committed to Willowbrook State School and has lingered there until just a few days ago, when she went missing.
Sage knows little about Willowbrook. It’s always been a place shrouded by rumor and mystery. A place local parents threaten to send misbehaving kids. With no idea what to expect, Sage secretly sets out for Willowbrook, determined to find Rosemary. What she learns, once she steps through its doors and is mistakenly believed to be her sister, will change her life in ways she never could imagined . . .
“Powerful. Grounded in historical fact, it ends like a fast-paced thriller.” – Historical Novel Society
I don’t love the havoc the many wild rabbits at my farm create, like early this fall when they girdled an apple tree I’d recently planted. I always put protective wrap around my fruit trees before winter sets in to ward off rabbits but last fall they started nibbling mid-September.
But this is endearing. Over the years I’ve planted huge patches, entire lawns, in vinca minor (Myrtle). I clip strands of Myrtle sometime in October, line up dozens of canning jars filled with water, and over the course of the winter, each strand grows roots that I plant in the early spring.
Here is one of my patches, along my back path. It was one of the first places where the snow started giving way last week so a family of rabbits got busy and opened a bistro with Myrtle on the menu. After eating, they played on the dance floor (my deck).
Donna Everhart’s long-awaited novel When the Jessamine Grows has finally launched.
When the Jessamine Grows is set during the Civil War, but it is not a war story. Rather, it is a story about those whose fight for survival took place far from the battlefront, told from the rarely-heard perspective of a courageous Southern woman. It is a story about the impossibility of neutrality in times of war. And finally, set amidst the rugged beauty of rural 19th century North Carolina, When the Jessamine Grows is a story about a farm family and survival and standing by one’s values.
“Donna Everhart takes a complicated issue—neutrality during the Civil War—and gives an empathetic portrait of a family that tries to maintain it … compelling, harrowing at times, When the Jessamine Grows will keep you on the edge of your seat.” – Linda Hodges, Fiction Addiction (Greenville, NC)
“Historical fiction at its absolute best! Showing strength, courage and resolve in the face of the many cruelties of the Civil War, Joetta McBride is no demure southern belle. She deals with grief, starvation, and ruin. Everhart has created a new hero in the unflinching, steadfast, and ever courageous Joetta McBride.” – Sharon Davis, Book Bound Bookstore (Blairsville, GA)
“The divide of the North and South was like a great crack in the earth, a gaping maw of distrust, and the self-righteousness and determination that grew with each passing conflict only served to expand the differences. And here she dwelled, in this land divided, impartial, and nonaligned, hoping to remain thus until it was over.” – from When the Jessamine Grows
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.
