by lady-farmer | Nov 23, 2018 | Reflections, Slow Living
The season of celebration and festivity has begun, and with it a blast of cultural messaging telling us that it’s time to get busy and buy lots of things! Meanwhile (here in the northern hemisphere) the light is waning, the plants are shifting into dormancy and animals are going into hibernation. Nature– our nature– tells us it’s time to go inward to seek respite and restoration while the voices of commerce would have us believe that peace and joy come with going out and shopping. While we know that’s not true, avoiding it altogether usually isn’t practical.
Celebrations and gift giving are true expressions of the heart — but the real and meaningful behind it all is too often entangled with consumer habits that drain our energy, our resources and our joy. We experience this conflict in our minds and our bodies and end up exhausted. So how do we navigate this season where nature, our traditions and our consumer culture are pulling us in so many different directions?
In recognition of Black Friday and all that it stands for, here are some suggestions for keeping the buying in balance.
A Guide for Slow Shopping
- Think about the holiday traditions and activities that bring you the most enjoyment such as planning gatherings, cooking, baking, gift giving, traveling, attending special performances, listening to seasonal music, etc. Make it a point to plan your time around these as much as possible.
- From the above, make a list of which ones actually require purchases.
- For instance, if you’ve having people over, take a good look through your cupboards to see what you already have before making your list. Challenge yourself to use things you already have to reduce what your have to buy. Consolidate your shopping trips and plan them during a time when you aren’t as likely to be tired or rushed.
- For gift giving, consider giving experiences rather than material things.
- This is a great idea for anyone of any age. Promise tea with a friend, an evening of Netflix with your teenager, an afternoon of making cookies with a pre-schooler. If the presentation is important to you or the recipient, you can cleverly gift -wrap a note of explanation!
- Be conscious of who and what you are supporting with your purchases.
- Think about materials, sourcing and labor practices and seek alternatives for those things that you feel don’t deserve your dollar.
- Try to observe when the outside noise of advertising and false expectations are draining your energy and joy.
- Focus again on the things that you know you love about this season and center your activities around those.
- Remember that The gift of kindness is free to everyone!
- Look for the beautiful, peaceful, and joyful expressions of the season and you will find them!
We’re intentionally having a slow holiday week with family, but we’ve curated some lovely sustainable, responsibly sourced lifestyle items as “slow shopping” choices for you. Look for them to be up in our online store by Wednesday. In the meantime enJOY this special time of year.
Lady Farmer Love,
Mary and Emma
by lady-farmer | Aug 20, 2018 | Farm Life, Reflections, Slow Living
I feel like I’ve blinked and the summer has passed completely. With one day left at my internship with Lady Farmer, I thought I would share a little bit about what I’ve spent my time working on and what I’ve learned as I walk away from Three Graces Farm.
Lady Farmers Vanessa, Mary and Emma enjoying a little front porch time
My excitement for Lady Farmer began months before I started working with Mary and Emma; I found LF on instagram and absolutely swooned over the Persephone dresses and every beautifully edited photo they had posted. As an environmental leader on my college campus and a two-year employee at my school’s small, education-focused organic farm, I totally aligned with LF’s purpose of shifting consumer culture through well-sourced and responsible clothing.
During my time here I’ve filmed and edited the product videos you’ve been seeing around (more to come!), written blog posts, and helped wrap and ship out your orders. Emma has shown me how to use software that manages LF’s social media platforms and given me access to online classes that have helped me pitch the brand to magazines, draft the perfect instagram caption, and more. All of which is immensely marketable experience that’ll likely help me find work after I graduate; I couldn’t be more thankful.
On the other end of things, Mary has given me advice whenever I needed it, taught me about backyard herbalism, shown me how to ferment vegetables, make kefir, explained the importance of raw milk and foraged foods, and been a real-life example of how a busy person (a mother, author, and business owner) can actualize Slow Living. She’s given me life skills that I will be able to take with me wherever I go in the future, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.
My favorite part of working with the Kingsleys was their ritual lunch; no matter where we were in a project, at 11:30 one of us would set a table in the shade of a walnut tree while the other two would bring out an inevitably delicious combination of foods from the fridge or garden: toasted sourdough, fresh tomatoes, raw cheese from the Tuesday afternoon markets, pesto made with sweet basil and lambsquarters, fermented beets and cucumbers, sauerkraut, boiled eggs, dandelion salads. With Mary’s tulsi tea in hand, we’d eat and “talk shop,” discussing the fashion industry, influencers we admire on instagram, the Slow Living Conference, new discoveries about the benefits of such-and-such. The ever-present thread that connected our conversation, us, the company, and everyone who follows Lady Farmer was the question: How can we live slowly, consume consciously, and work to better the planet while still going through the motions of “normal” life?
I don’t know the answer, and I doubt any one person does–even Emma and Mary. But another value they’ve impressed on me during my time here is community. And beyond just selling clothes, I believe that Lady Farmer is working to foster a community of women who are equally baffled by the above question and want to come together to discuss it, whether that’s through social media or in person.
I’ll be studying in Madagascar this fall, and while I’m there I hope to interview the women who head households, work in agriculture, and heal their communities–meeting the Lady Farmers of another culture! One of the few drawbacks about my upcoming trip is the fact that I’ll not be here in November for the Slow Living Conference. After hearing so much about it, writing about the speakers, food, and location, I’m very disappointed that I can’t go myself. What the conference seeks to accomplish is to start answering that lifelong question, even if it’s only in select areas of our lives. It will provide people with new tools to achieve the life that we all dream of, while introducing the unique and inspiring Lady Farmer community to meet and love and learn from each other, as I have been fortunate enough to do with Mary and Emma for the past two months.
I’ve loved this summer, loved my wonderful bosses, and loved getting to know you all! Thank you for reading and watching my work. I hope the descent of autumn brings you closer to the communities of inspiring women you have already in your lives.
Signing off for the last time!
Vanessa Moss
by lady-farmer | Jul 18, 2018 | Circular Mindset, Slow Living
It’s still mid-summer, but the wheel of the year is turning, my friends, and it’s not too early to be thinking about fall plans. It’s so easy to get caught up and let time just fly by without slowing down to notice your life. That’s why we’re here, and we’ve got something very special planned for you!
Our Lady Farmer Slow Living Conference Retreat is November 9th-11th at Zigbone Farm in Sabillasville, MD, a beautiful mountain retreat less than 1.5 hours from DC/Baltimore and 30 minutes from Frederick. Our participants will be treated to a lovingly curated weekend of amazing workshops and awesome speakers, helping us all go deeper into the things that have called us into this community – sustainability, slow living, self care with journaling and affirmations, learning to live into your own inner seasons and cycles, and self discovery through nature immersion – preparing ourselves for the full and often demanding season that follows. Get an introduction to our presenters and what they’re offering here. In addition to an abundance of learning opportunities, the weekend will be a wonderful experience of friends old and new coming together to be nourished, restored and inspired by all things slow living, including ample time to enjoy this peaceful rural environment.
As for the meals, our vision of this event includes exceptional food that meets our standards of delicious, nurturing and sustainable goodness in every bite. We welcome Green Plate Catering to our gathering, a “Green America Gold” certified business which shares our passion for locally sourced, nutrient dense foods and zero waste. Remarkably, they are fully on board with our goal for a single-use plastic-free weekend! All of our meals will be farm-to-table (sourced from the farmer down the road!), organic, seasonal, and lovingly prepared with the utmost care for your enjoyment and well-being as well as the sustainability of the land, and shared communally in the green-built event hall.
In order to maintain a relaxing, community atmosphere where people can get to know and enjoy one another during this shared experience, the number of participants will be limited to less than one hundred people. So if this opportunity is speaking to you, please visit the Conference and Retreat page for everything you need to know and then sign up to join us!
We are so very much looking forward to seeing you there.
by lady-farmer | May 18, 2018 | Farm Life, Real Life Lady Farmers, Reflections, Slow Living
Meet Lauren Rudersdorf, one half of Raleigh’s Hillside Farm. She farms on seven acres of leased family land outside of Evansville, Wisconsin with her husband Kyle. They are in their sixth season of production growing high quality, organic vegetables for their growing CSA and area restaurants. In 2016, they added their first part-time employee to their operation and in 2017 scaled up to having two part-time folks. This year, they are adding two kickass female powerhouses (with many years of experience) to their farm team!
I do what I do because I know there is a better future out there. Our food system is beyond broken and farmers around the world are working tirelessly for too little money and next to no respect. Those tides are changing and I know my voice is an important one in this movement.
Lauren’s Story:
I grew up on a diversified, conventional family farm my whole life, but I don’t think my farm story can really begin there because I didn’t really understand or appreciate any of it at that moment in time. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my childhood and I loved where I was raised in beautiful southern Wisconsin, but I never really grasped the complexity of the way my parents earned a living. I never comprehended the love and the passion that fueled them. I often saw their farming way of life as inconvenient: far from everyone, dependent on elements outside their control and too much work for not enough money.
In 2007, I graduated high school and moved away, sure that there were “much bigger” things in store for me than life on the farm. I started college at a private school in Ohio and traveled a ton. I met amazing people and learned so much about our broader world, but after two full years away I realized how totally and completely in love with the Wisconsin rural way of life I really was. I loved all the places I visited and all the inspiring people I met in those two years, but nothing felt quite as right as home.
I moved back to Wisconsin, fell in love with a hard-working, soil-loving, passionate-as-hell Wisconsin man, transferred to the College of Agriculture & Life Science at the University of Wisconsin (the same school my mom had graduated from twenty years prior) and began to study public health, food systems and community sociology.
It was a couple short years later that my now husband and I learned about the concept of CSA farming: a style of farming the worked endlessly to connect people to their food again. We took a leap of faith in 2013, borrowed some land from my parents and dove right in to starting a farm of our own. The rest is history I suppose.
Why farming?
I do what I do because I know there is a better future out there. Our food system is beyond broken and farmers around the world are working tirelessly for too little money and next to no respect. Those tides are changing and I know my voice is an important one in this movement. That’s the altruistic reason I farm. But the reality is, try as I might to fight it from time to time, I cannot NOT farm. I love to build things. I love to work outdoors. I love to watch things grow. I love working alongside my husband and dreaming towards a better world with him. I love eating good food and teaching people how to cook healthy, nourishing meals. I love being part of the good in this complicated, messy world. I love the simplicity of putting something good on the plates of the people in my community. I suppose that means the passion fuels and inspires me, but I’d be lying if I said sometimes I don’t get broken and defeated from time to time. I’m not certain what keeps me going. I think its my husband and the strength of my relationships. I’m surrounded by immense generosity, kindness and support. I couldn’t do what I do without my friends, family, partner, farming friends and amazing customers. They lift me up in the hard times. They keep me going.
For me slow living is all about making time for the things of value: our minds, our bodies, our heart, our relationships. This means eating well and nourishing our bodies, taking time to read and learn, listening to music, taking time for the people that matter to us, working our bodies in ways that are healthy, meditating, loving, experiencing, indulging from time to time, being present.
Essentially I think that to live slowly means leaving space and time for the things that matter; not getting rushed from one thing to the next without thought. Slow living means living intentionally. For someone like me, who thrives in chaos and is inspired by stimulation, it probably doesn’t look slow at all. I don’t think anyone who looks at my life or follows me on social media would ever think I live slowly, but its a daily practice of taking time to slow down and leave time for thought.
Advice for future Lady Farmers
For those thinking of going into farming: Get a tribe and hold them close. Be vulnerable with your community and ask for help. We’re not meant to always be strong or do anything on our own. This thing we’re building is broader than us and we need to learn to lean hard on the folks who support us. I’m so grateful to have friends stronger than me to teach me that lesson.
For those wanting to support this movement without farming themselves: Just know your farmer and learn what it means to truly support local. Don’t fall for the gimmicks. If it doesn’t take a little work, it isn’t building community. Be a fan, be a walking billboard for the farms you support, be a voice in your local community for a better way of doing things. Stand up for a better future and a better world.
Who inspires you?
My mother, my grandmother, my aunts, my best friend and fellow farmer Bethanee Wright, my off-farm boss Kimberlee Wright, my friends and mentors Lisa Kivirist and Kriss Marion, all the lady farmers who came before me.
To live slowly means leaving space and time for the things that matter; not getting rushed from one thing to the next without thought. Slow living means living intentionally.
Thank you for sharing, Lauren!
Be sure to follow Lauren & her team on their journey via Instagram & Facebook
Lauren also keeps a blog filled with incredible recipes and stories – make sure you check it out!
by lady-farmer | May 4, 2018 | Farm Life, Real Life Lady Farmers, Slow Living
Farming challenges me intellectually, physically and spiritually, every year and every season. I can’t imagine another profession where I could be learning every moment, where every year is another layer of the onion, an invitation to go deeper, do more, learn more.
Amanda is the lead farmer at Plow and Stars Farm located in Seneca, Maryland (next door to Lady Farmer HQ!). It’s a family operation that includes two awesome kids – Jonah (age 14) and Sadie (age 8).
Amanda began her career as a pre-med student working at a clinic for malnourished children and their families. While working to combat the symptoms of the disparities in access to nutritious food, she found her calling at the source: in farming. She worked as a community garden organizer and educator, a farmer at a homeless shelter for pregnant and parenting teens and their children, a farm apprentice at a beautiful educational farm outside of Boston, the urban agriculture manager at The Food Project, a farmer at a farm owned by a Buddhist college in Boulder Colorado, and the manager at Waltham Fields Community Farm for a decade before starting her own farm with her husband Mark in late 2014.
The realization that many families in my own city lacked the resources and/or knowledge to provide healthy food for themselves, combined with my growing awareness that I didn’t want to spend my days in a hospital or office, put me on the path to farming.
Reflections on farming, sustainability, and her role as a Lady Farmer
Farming challenges me intellectually, physically and spiritually, every year and every season. I can’t imagine another profession where I could be learning every moment, where every year is another layer of the onion, an invitation to go deeper, do more, learn more. The goal of being part of the creation of a healthy food system that provides nutritious, thoughtfully-raised food to people of all income levels and backgrounds is what continues to inspire and drive me as a farmer. I love feeding my community. I love the return on that investment in soil and sweat and tears, whether it’s goodwill, a box of canned tomatoes, a thank-you card from a 4-year-old, or the satisfaction of seeing a child take a big bite out of a turnip. I love growing food that people recognize, appreciate, cook up like their grandmothers did. I love raising animals that do what animals are supposed to do — graze, root, breathe fresh air, play and rest.
Ecological, economic, and personal sustainability are things that we are always striving for on our farm and in our lives. I feel like we are still working out what that means for us on our farm — particularly the personal part. What is the scale that will enable us to make a little income, contribute in a meaningful way to our community, and get a little break every once in a while? What are the products that are most fun for us to create? How do we bring joy into the world along with the food that we raise? And how do we do that in a way that does the least harm, and in fact maybe in a way that creates a little healing in the world? That’s sustainability to me.
I think that as I get a little older I’m re-thinking my role — I’m not the mother of tiny kids anymore, so that means I have a little more time and should have more to offer — but I definitely still feel like a learner. The term “Lady Farmer” doesn’t really connect with me because I have never felt much like a “lady” — I’m a hardworking woman with lots of experience to share and lots of things still to learn. I long for community though — we had a beautiful community of farmers in Massachusetts that I feel like I have yet to recreate here in Maryland. But it’s coming, slowly, and it’s easy to get stuck in your own day-to-day, especially if that’s farming, and not make those connections a priority — but they’re so critical especially as we get older!
Advice for Aspiring Lady Farmers
GO FOR IT. You can do it. Find a mentor and learn as much as you can from her. Become a farmer. Do it your way. Don’t be afraid to start your own business, or to work for someone else — both are totally fine and have their own joys and pitfalls. Support farms and woman farmers by buying local. Make a personal connection with the people that produce your food, flowers, as many products as you can. Take pride in doing more with less, enjoying the incredible bounty that you can find close to home. Give up labels — “organic” isn’t as important as we’d like it to be, especially if we can have a conversation with someone whose practices we might learn go beyond that label. Raise your children (if you have them) to be fierce advocates for justice and peace and restoration, whether ecological or social. Make your own beauty.
Who inspires you?
Lee Langstaff. She’s incredible. Kevin Bowie. Harriet Tubman. Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’m searching for role models who are middle-aged women to help me take the next step in my own life too.
Thank you Amanda!
For more of her farming journey, follow Amanda on Instagram & Facebook!
Take pride in doing more with less, enjoying the incredible bounty that you can find close to home.
by lady-farmer | May 2, 2018 | Circular Mindset, Slow Living
Is your bathroom cluttered with dozens of plastic bottles, jars, tubes, and dispensers?
The bathroom should be a place that reflects calm, cleanliness and refreshment, but all too often the energy of the space is taken over with product chaos. Do you dread opening the cabinet when looking for something and rattling through the mess of half empty shampoos, expired medicines, mangled toothpaste and beauty products that didn’t work out?
Here’s a way to fix that.
Remember when we talked about how to reduce your kitchen clutter using these common household ingredients?
Guess what! They work just as well in the bathroom. See how many products can be replaced with these few, inexpensive items and you’ll have your salle de bain feeling like a spa in no time. All of these products can be purchased in bulk and stored in clear glass containers for clean, plastic, and stress-free storage.
How to use these easy homemade natural product replacements:
- Use baking soda instead of toothpaste for excellent oral hygiene. Add a drop or two of peppermint essential oil for a flavor.
- A small amount of baking soda on your fingertips makes a fresh feeling, gently exfoliating daily face wash
- Vinegar and water in a glass spray bottle work well for surface cleaning
- Lemon or lime essential oil makes a pleasant smelling disinfectant for the faucet and toilet handles
- Baking soda is a great toilet cleaner
- Baking soda and a few drops of the essential oils of your choice added to the bath water make a wonderful, relaxing soak. Make it deluxe with a handful of Epsom salts added as well.
- Citric acid makes a great shower and tile cleaner. Mix it in a spray bottle with hot water and let it work its magic on the grout. Makes a great toilet bowl cleaner as well.
- A cut lemon works wonders on rust stains around the fixtures and mildew spots on the shower curtain or the grout
How about all of those miracle creams, those solutions and ablutions and all of that make-up mess making you crazy? Check out Bea Johnson’s Zero Waste Home for all kinds of DIY beauty and hygiene product replacements.
So after you’ve rid yourself of all of your bathroom clutter and have your five ingredients lined up and ready to go, you can congratulate yourself for saving a lot of money (because you’ll never go back to the drug store habit) and making your bathroom a much more pleasant place to be. Now go take a soak and enjoy!
by lady-farmer | Apr 20, 2018 | Farm Life, Real Life Lady Farmers, Slow Living
Being a lady farmer in my community has opened up opportunity for me to share my story, put food on many tables, and be a listener and provider.
Lauren holds a bachelor’s in social work and a master’s in management. She couples her background in social work with a life-long desire to cultivate and provide the highest-quality organic produce while educating her community about the land and the importance of the food we eat. She also has a baby girl named Palmer, pictured below.
Lauren built Bloomsbury Farm in Smyrna, Tennessee from the ground up, and started by selling her organic vegetables and sprouts at area farmers markets. Since those early days in 2009, the farm has expanded, producing a wide array of fresh vegetables, fruits, sprouts, and herbs for the markets, local businesses, and wholesalers in and around Nashville and the greater region.
At Bloomsbury, lots of team members from markets girls to accounting and harvest crew make it all work. It takes a village to grow and move produce…365 days of the year growing and selling. Bloomsbury provides a CSA, wholesale market, restaurants, and farmers market.
Lauren started small putting seeds in the ground with her father who has a botanical background. She would go to a small farmers market with items she couldn’t sell to chefs she already knew. “The relationships started there and I was hooked growing food for creative people! Knowing what they were doing with it at home was so exciting. Growing unique varieties and fun colors really got people talking and one thing led to another with the addition of a CSA program and more food to chefs Bloomsbury was in many homes and restaurants,” she remembers.
Reflections on why she does what she does, living slow, and Lady Farmers –
WHY…I am simply feeding people. In more ways than one it feeds me too and people who eat Bloomsbury are family and it really is a close relationship.Teaching my daughter how to grow good food and take care of the earth is a huge reason why too. Hard work does pay off and farming brings the appreciation of seasons and that the hard times don’t last forever.
Slow living to me is the understanding of time and respecting the day. I am very sun motivated so up with the sun and down with the sun. Do what you can with the day. I imagine a fast living to be work at all hours and not to ever be present. We take long walks on the farm and really listen to nature.
Sustainability is being able to make a smaller circle and giving back to those who work so hard with the farm. The small circle is keeping all needs close and building your own compost and saving your own seeds and not having to go elsewhere for as much as possible.
I hope to teach Palmer and other aspiring lady farmers that it can be done.
Being a lady farmer in my community has opened up opportunity for me to share my story and put food on many tables and be a listener, and provider. The farm has become a place of gathering and sharing and my hope is that it will continue.
Advice for Aspiring Lady Farmers
All the lady farmers out there…start small and find a niche. Support a lady farmer with all the positive words and by purchasing our farm goods. You can farm a community and gather people for good that can be done anywhere.Advice for aspiring Lady Farmers
Who inspires you?
My mother. True inspiration and taught me that I could do anything!
For more of her farming journey, follow Lauren on Instagram & Facebook!
by lady-farmer | Apr 10, 2018 | Circular Mindset, Slow Fashion, Slow Living
As with so many things in our industrialized world, we have a problem with excess clothing. Most of us have way more than we actually wear. This isn’t just an issue in our homes, it’s a problem for the whole planet. Americans discard an average of 80 lbs of textile waste a year. What doesn’t end up in the landfill is often “donated” and shipped to other countries where it overwhelms local systems and disrupts local economies by removing demand for domestic products. As well-intentioned as we might be in wanting to pass along our rejects “to someone who can use it,” the truth is that in many cases we are sending our waste to be a problem somewhere else.
Where does that leave us in terms of trying to simplify our own lives and spaces?
Slow Fashion and a Sustainable Closet
Here are some suggestions for addressing clothing clutter and passing things along in a less wasteful way.
- Refrain from buying anything new for a season and see how it feels. Do you find yourself lacking in things to wear, or do you find yourself using things you already have in ways you might not have before?
- If some items have been hanging in your closet unworn through a full cycle of seasons, box them up, write the date on it, tape it shut and put it out of sight. It’s most likely that you won’t wear it again, but if you find yourself thinking “Well, maybe when I lose weight… or go on a cruise… or get an invitation to the inaugural ball…” and so on, ask yourself this– is it worth the aggravation of having it in the way and taking up your limited space until those things occur? If in one year you haven’t missed any of those things, get rid of it without opening the box.
- To move things out of your house, donate them as locally as possible. For instance, local church rummage sales and thrift stores are more likely to be visited by people in your area who can actually benefit from the clothing you no longer need and keep them out of developing countries or the landfill.
- Shop at second hand and consignment stores to keep existing clothes in use longer. You will be saving money and keeping your dollars out of the fast fashion sector.
- When you do decide to buy a new item of clothing, consider sustainable fashion brands that can account for responsible sourcing and manufacturing. You will likely be spending more per item, but this is an opportunity to evaluate the significance of cost. What does it actually mean when we say something is a good price? In terms of slow fashion, asking this question can give us a new perspective. In making this shift in your awareness and subsequently in your buying habits, you will be using your purchasing power to help establish a new consumer paradigm!
by lady-farmer | Apr 6, 2018 | Farm Life, Real Life Lady Farmers, Slow Living
I am Arden (sometimes known as Garden) Jones and I live on a farm owned by my family in Bedford County, Virginia. I am farming 1 acre with my husband Michael and several seasonal employees (all young ladies this year!). We raise mixed vegetables for market and a small CSA and my husband bakes the most delicious wood fired sourdough breads. We are often crossing gender boundaries as he bakes and I take care of most of the construction projects on the farm. In the garden, we work together and our relationship has been strengthened by our learning to cooperate in this way.
I feel like I have always been a Lady Farmer at heart! Maybe it all started when my grandfather gave me a toolbox with real tools for my 7th birthday. Or when I learned about permaculture at Nature Camp when I was 13. After graduating college I was looking for a way to express creativity, make a positive impact on the world, be outside and be my own boss, and farming was the obvious choice. I learned from some amazing mentors and then I got out there and did it.
Reflections on why she does what she does, living slow, and Lady Farmers –
I think farming is so gratifying because it is so challenging. The practice of relinquishing control when mother nature takes hold is humbling. Yes, it can feel overwhelming at times, like when winds tear through our tunnels or rains have us ankle deep in mud, but that is all balanced out by a bounty the next season. The beauty of abundance, in our crops and in the living soil, is a most pleasing sort of wealth. And as we go farther on our farming journey, I am learning to treat the hardest of times as lessons in patience and faith. I am inspired so much by my peers-other farmers in our community and all around the world- by their ingenuity and benevolence. They are the best people!
To me, slow living is making the time to enjoy all the wonderful food we and our farming neighbors produce! Meal times are the best times, and when we are able to rest and recuperate, we go back to work with a more positive outlook, so the emotional sustainability is super important.
We work to build our soil with cover crops, compost, and minimal tillage, and result is that our farm becomes more resilient to pests, disease, and the forces of nature. We hope not just to sustain, but to improve our land with every season.
Is it too much to say that a Lady Farmer is who will save humanity? She uses her brain and her hands to solve problems and she cares deeply about nature and other people. In our community I am growing good food for people, but along with that I end up doing a lot of education and networking also. I see myself as just one part of the local food movement and I make an effort to encourage and support other farmers. We are really lucky here to have a monthly gathering where we see other farmers in our area and share food and ideas. This communication is essential to making progress and bringing more local food to more people.
Advice for aspiring Lady Farmers
My advice for any woman is to pick a partner that supports your dreams and who shares your vision for your slow lifestyle. Is it natural that farming is hard on relationships, but the first year is the hardest, and if you can survive that together, you will know more about one another than many old married couples do! And if you aren’t one for monogamous relationships, surround yourself with a community of people who love farming too. You can have the perfect farm, but you’ll be awfully lonely without friends to feed! If you can’t farm- JOIN A CSA! Seriously, just try it. It may provide you a way to connect with food and farming that you never imagined. Or if CSA isn’t for you, start shopping at the market the way you do the grocery store and keep your money in your community.
Who inspires you?
My 92 year old, fiercely independent, sharp as a tack grandmother.
Thank you Arden!
For more of her farming journey, follow Arden on Instagram & Facebook!
by lady-farmer | Apr 4, 2018 | Circular Mindset, Farm Life, Reflections, Slow Living
Kitchen sink cabinets can be scary. You know what I’m talking about, the mess of half empty bottles clattering around– soap, cleaners, scrubs, disinfectants, detergents–all containing numerous unidentifiable ingredients that are conjured and combined in a lab somewhere and bottled up for our convenience. Although the products themselves are consumable in a short period of time, most of their packaging is permanent and indestructible, leaving their legacy of plastic and cellophane for literally thousands of years.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Make Your Own Cleaning Products
Many of those products with limited uses, wasteful packaging and harmful ingredients can be easily switched with these items, used alone or in combination for dozens of product replacements and a multitude of purposes.
5 (Natural) Common Household Ingredients That Double as Homemade Cleaners
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- Vinegar
- Baking soda
- Lemons
- Citric Acid
- Essential oils
5 Product Replacement Ideas
1. Homemade surface cleaner
Half vinegar/ half water in a spray bottle. For a fresh fragrance, keep a quart jar ⅔ full of vinegar and add leftover lemon peels when you have them. Refill you spray bottle from the jar as needed.
2. Natural disinfectant
Use a few drops of essential lemon or lime oil around the sink faucet, under the backsplash and other areas where water tends to collect.
3. Homemade pot and pan scrub
Baking soda mixed with water or vinegar to make a light abrasive paste.
4. Natural homemade rinse-aid
½ cup of vinegar added to your dishwasher load (don’t put it in the little compartment, it might corrode the parts) will get rid of those water spots! For extra clean and sparkle, add ¼ cup of citric acid as well.
5. Garbage Disposal/Drain Freshener
Half a lemon peel cut into half again and tossed into your garbage disposal will freshen your drain naturally!
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