Pleasant Valley Farm

Hello LocalHarvest readers!

I know it's been quite awhile since you've heard from me.  The truth is, after 200+ entries on this blog, I started to feel a bit burned out.  I felt I was repeating myself and struggling to come up with topics that seemed worthy of writing about.  As I was new to farming when I started the blog, it was easy to write about all the new things I was discovering.  As time went by, the cycle on the farm means the same things happen year after year.  It took some time off to get a feel for how I can make those things fresh again.  Blogging also fell down the list of priorities because, although LocalHarvest provides this forum for free to any farmer who wants to take the time to blog, we don't get any compensation for the content we're providing.  It began to feel like a job, and one that I wasn't paid for, so it was easy for me to adjust my priorities to things around the farm which actually provide income.  

My background is in social work & education, and I've always had a love of reading and a gift for writing, and I've found that I missed sharing my experiences with an audience.  So after much thought, I've decided to come back to the blog format to share my thoughts, to raise awareness about where your food comes from and why small farms matter, and share all the things that I'm passionate about.  I'm also looking to tweak my format, just a bit.   I love old cookbooks and cooking from scratch, so sharing more recipes seems like a fun fit, and something perhaps you can find useful.  I'm also thinking that including thoughts and tips on green and/or self-sufficient living make sense.  It's how I live and part of the farm's ethos, and again, I think something that may be of interest to folks who are excited to read stories about our farm.  Plus photos, of course, because while words can paint a wonderful picture, I love sharing images from the farm, too.  And this is a vision in progress, and I would love feedback, to create a forum where questions can be asked and answered, where alternate methods and great ideas can be shared.

Sound good?  I hope so!  I would sincerely love to have each and every one of you reading this to join this virtual community.   All you need to do is follow me to my new online home at http://pleasantvalleyblog.weebly.com .  I'm calling it "The Farmeress Blogs", and I'm working to make it someplace you'll want to visit more than once!  Bear with me as we get it off the ground, but I do have some content up already, including a wonderful story about the birth of our latest Dexter cow and a chocolate cake recipe from 1943!  I hope you'll join us, and let me know what you think of what you see!