the plurkette hencircle

In our Farmgirl newsletter, Mary Jane wrote this little note.

It’s time for our farmgirl posse to ride again! Or in my case, write again. I’ve signed a contract to begin delivering weekly columns to newspapers across the country, and that’s where you come in. I’d love your help. Here’s how. Get in touch with your local newspaper (letter, phone call, visit) and nudge them into carrying my column, “MaryJane’s Everyday Organic.” Let them know you’re on board and why—that you’re someone who cares, who dares, and most importantly, who loves to share what MaryJane represents for you; that you want to see more of what MaryJane has put voice to; that her simple solutions for buying less, eating better, and getting more out of life are something you’d like to see them carry. That’s it. It’s as simple as that! Good luck and let me know WHO you contacted and WHEN by dropping me a line at column@maryjanesfarm.org

Here’s the little bit of info you’ll need:

“MaryJane’s Everyday Organic” weekly column is distributed by United Feature Syndicate, the same people who bring you features like Miss Manners, Sense & Sensitivity, Animal Doctor, Peanuts, and Dilbert). Newspapers can email lwilson@unitedmedia.com to find out more.

Why don’t we all see what we can do to get her column in newspapers across the country!

I love to write real letters and to get real mail. I am signed up for the MaryJane’s Farm Pen Pal group over on the main MJF website and I thought that it would be really nifty to have a pen pal group with our own Hencircle. This will be a fun way to make friends within the group and to get to know each other better. The rules will be fairly simple and straight forward

1. The pen pal groups will last for six months. At the end of the first session, if you still wish to continue, you’ll be assigned a new penpal. You can continue writing to  your old pal, but you must write to your new pal.
2. You may send little gifties to your pen pal if you wish, but please don’t over do it. This is NOT  a secret pal swap. Things like seed packets, postcards, refrigerator magnets, and small trinkets that say “I saw this and thought of you” are good, but not required.
3. It is encouraged that you write to your pal at least once a month, but even more would be better.
4. Sign up’s begin now and will end August 1, 2008 and you’ll receive your pal’s address in an email soon after. Signups for this session of penpals will close on August 1, but if you miss this session you’ll be able to get into the next session in 6 months. Please check the PenPal Page for the form to fill out to join.

I think this will be great fun and a way for all of us to get to know each other better. Lets bring out the farmgirl in all of us and get that chatter going!

KnitSteph

I have a confession, fellow farmgirls. I have a black-thumb when it comes to gardening. But this year I’ve decided to give it another go: I’ve planted a few herbs in containers on my apartment patio. (Keep your fingers crossed for me!)

In researching how to care for my plantings (and perhaps have a more successful gardening experience, for once), I ran across MyFolia.com. It’s like Ravelry, for gardening! You can use the site to create gardens, then organize your plantings within those gardens (for instance, I have my “Patio Container Garden” and my “Houseplants Garden”). You can record journal entries to remember important things like when you transplanted, harvested fruits/vegetables, etc. Best of all, and again much like Ravelry, there are groups where you can discuss gardening — perfect for me because I need all the help I can get!

Anyway, I just wanted to pass this along to all my fellow farmgirls who might be interested in growing some of their own fruits, vegetables, or herbs!

Well, after the website had trouble accepting my being overseas while joining the Farmgirl sisterhood…… I resorted to good old phonecalls and the assistance of the lovely Sunny at Mary Janes Farm and voila….. I’m in! I think (not confirmed yet) I am sister #262 but……. I am also the FIRST non continental America sister! I love this! This is so exciting. Badges- where DO I start? I think now that I have more time, sewing will be called for. Hello, Pfaff! NADINE (NADKNITBLOG)

This’ll only work if you’re a farmgirl member (supposedly, though I’m not 100% familiar with the way it works yet…), but here’s a little interactivebit, since I’m looking for some direction on which way to move first.

Feel free to fill it out and then explain further in the comments if you have ideas! This is OUR group, not MY group, so I want to hear from YOU!

.

 Loading ...

.

If you need a refresher on what all the categories are or what’s in each one, head on over to the farm RIGHT HERE and peruse that listybit.

Hi there, yes I am one of the blogless ones. One day I may gather enough courage and knowledge to start one. I’m Laurilee, pleased to meet you all. I can always think of things to say when it’s not about me but I will give it a shot. I’m Canadian, married, over  the years I’ve survived raising 5 boys, the usual assortment of goldfish and turtles and now one darling dog.  Yarn is my passion, fibre crafts are my little oasis of sanity. Don’t listen to my family who insist on calling it an obession and claim that my yarn is attempting to take over the house.  I love the idea of having a community and one where I can let my little inner farmgirl come out to play.

Welcome to the henhouse!

At the time I’m writing this, there are just about EIGHTY-FIVE of you who have joined up with this chapter. Eighty-five! I kinda thought there’d be a dozen or two of us sitting around on a group blog, talking about our gardens and our farmgirl (and wannabe-farmgirl) lives.

Ah, she of little faith.

I’m thrilled, though. So happy to see that the sisterhood’s struck such a chord with so many, and I can’t wait to get started, going through MaryJane’s books and merit badges together. I grew up without any sisters, and the only kids my age in the neighborhood were boys, so all that girly sisterhood time? Yeah. I spent it climbing trees and building slingshots with which to pelt said neighborhood boys from my perch in the trees. And to top it off, I was allergic to farms. Not just things ON farms, but everything from the animals to the weeds to the crops they grew. Let’s just say that farm life and sisterhoods? Totally not something I thought about back then.

As I’m getting older, not only are my allergies a lot less severe, but I’m realizing the importance of a strong community and family life, and a connection to where you live, whether that’s a hundred-acre farm or a boxlike apartment in a huge concrete sea-of-a-city. Actually, the older I get, the more I think that if people just reached out to each other, in a full-on spirit of kindness and compassion, the world would cease to be as scary as it can be. All we need’s more farmgirls!

The first step, both to this group and to the world at large, is getting to know each other. I know a few of you in person and a few of you online, but not well enough, and I’d venture that all eighty-five of you (!!!!!) don’t know each other, either. So with that in mind, here is:

PROJECT #1:

Introduce yourself.

I know, I know. That’s a little anticlimactic. Here were are, talking about changing the world from our rocking chairs on our porches with a little pie, and I’m asking you to just talk about one of the subjects you know best — you.

If you have a blog, make a post about who you are and why you want to nourish that inner farmgirl. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave it in the comments — there’s no limit on space. (And if you blog it — leave a link to the post in the comments, too.)

Speaking of comments — comment to each other, too. Nobody wants to introduce themselves to a vaccuum.

Over the next week, Steph and I are going to continue approving new members, get some more links over there in the sidebar for fun places to play, and I’m looking for some kind of voting code so we can decide what merit badge we want to do first. (….wait for it……..leave a comment if you have any thoughts on which one to do. I sound like a broken record with the comments thing, don’t I?) After this first initial post of introductions, I’ll also be putting up a page of “when to post”, meaning what kind of things you totally should share with us in a post, because I don’t wanna do all the writing either. It’s not a group for ME, it’s a group for ALL OF US. Yes we DO wanna see your new garden thingie, or your new apron, or your wickedly cool local farmer’s market, or pictures of that community party you went to, or a review of that new book that totally rocked the farmgirl vibe. That kind of thing.)

I AM SO CHUFFED.

Welcome, again. And I’m so, so, so glad you’re here. Have some pie.

—eliza /v

Okay, Plurkettes!  I’m just about done with the back-end of this thing, after the Giant Virus Fiasco of 2008.  (Reminder to all of you with WP blogs?  OMG…UPGRADE.  Seriously.  Pain. In. The. Patootey.)

Here’s what I’m hoping for this group to eventually do:

• bring all of us Plurkettes together off the 140-character Plurky limitation to be able to build a community for us all.
• give us a place to post anything relating to our inner Farmgirls — from knitting to other crafting to cooking to gardening to hangin’ in the out-of-doors.  The framework for posting is kind of set up in MaryJane’s “Cookbook, Ideabook, Lifebook” (link over there in the sidebar), and if you don’t have that book yet, pick it up!  It’s freakin’ fabulous.
• to maybe work on badges for those of us in the Sisterhood proper.  Or to work on the badges and make our own embroidered completion badges within just our Chapter.  (We could totally draw our own and put them up as PDFs for people who complete them.  Just sayin’.)
• to post resources for Farmgirl living…even if you’re in the middle of a city.  (YouGrowGirl.com anyone?)
• maybe even more — bartering maybe?  Put together our own Chapter Cookbook?  Come up with Farmgirl knitting patterns?  (Because what farmgirl doesn’t need more socks!?)

I’m open to more than just this, too.  (Can’t you just see us all getting together someday in the backwoods somewhere, sharing organic banana bread recipes!?  LOL….)

As a Chapter Leader, I get a newsletter from MJF every month, and I’ll probably be passing that right along to you all, plus some, because you know I can’t shut up to save my life.

Okay, now I’m so excited that I can’t sit still.  Make sure to blogline/googlereader this site, and email me (farmgirlsATmoderngypsyDOTcom) with your Plurkette username, email address, and your blog URL so I can get you entered into this database so we can get going!  SQUEE!  (insert dancing banana here!!!!)

–Eliza/Miz V

This is the test post of the Emergency Farmgirl Network.

If this were a real emergency, chickens would fly out of your ears.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog.