I knew he was gone before the car even stopped. I heard the engine slow on the road in front of the farm, and it made me turn in my chair. Cars rush past our place all day, and they only ever slow when they’re pulling into the driveway, but everyone was already here as Bible study was nearly over; no one else should be arriving.

The car eased to a stop on the shoulder. I stood. A door opened. And I just knew.

I stepped away from the circle of sixteen people discussing John chapter 3. Jen, my dear friend and farm hand, rushed past me, she knew too. She screamed and I froze where I was, tears already running down my face, I wasn’t ready for the moment that waited for me.

Our barn cat Sarge died in my arms on the way to the vet. He kneaded the air with his soft little feet as I stroked his head and prayed for Jesus to ease his pain. I felt his body loosen in my arms; the shudder that comes when a life goes.

I’ve held so many animals in their last moments on this farm, more than I could ever count. Sometimes I’m the one who ends their life because we raise our own meat and this is part of how we feed ourselves. Other times, like tonight, I’m simply the witness. The weight hurts my heart either way, it was a friend that was loved, a relationship that was formed. Now it’s just an empty space where a life once fit into the grooves and day to day of mine.

I have not always seen death with steadiness or any kind of understanding. When I was fourteen, my father’s suicide carved a fear in me so deep I could barely breathe around it. His death didn’t just take him, it took away my hope and the small amount of faith that I had. I quickly came to the belief that there was no God, that I was completely on my own in this world and once someone died there was only darkness. I was terrified of endings, I was terrified of being left, I was terrified of the deep, painful grief that follows loss.

But God, in His mercy, has been unraveling that knot in me thread by thread. On this small farm, with its births, its butchering, and all the many goodbyes, has been the place where God has taught me that death is not darkness and I do not need to fear it. Death is simply another part of His creation; death is held in His hands justas life is. It is not the end; it is the beginning of something new, something beyond me and my small understanding.

I still grieve loss and it hurts, it leaves an ache in my heart and can send me into despair. A sudden loss makes me cry out to God at the unfairness of the relationship gone, the loneliness that comes from a connection torn away from me. But then I settle, because I trust Him. I trust His plan, I know He only has good for me and my heart is comforted in a way I never knew was humanly possible. His gift to me. What was once my greatest fear, He blanketed with peace and understanding. My hope restored!

When a life is gone and emptiness settles in for those who are left behind, I think we should celebrate because it means it was a life that was well lived. I no longer fear my own death the way I once did. I know that whenever my time comes to leave this world, it will be because my work here is finished. Truly, what a gift I have been given, to know such loss and grief at a young age, and to have it redeemed in the only way God can.

Thank you for reading,

Angie

With the slower paced days, I have found that I have so much more time to contemplate life. I did not realize just how much brain space the farm stand took up until I closed the doors and suddenly no longer had to think about producing, making, sales, ordering, customers, cleaning, finances, marketing, merchandising and tracking. I feel as though I have gained hours in my day and remembered back to a time when I used to ponder life and all its great mysteries.

Today I was thinking about a conversation I had last week with a friend about marriage and relationships. She asked me how Jon and I have stayed together so long and still seem to love each other. I get this question often, especially the happy part which kind of makes me sad, shouldn’t marriage always be happy? So, I started wondering if there is a overall secret to a happy marriage? Is there a common thread between couples who stay not just married but happily married?

Jon and I aren’t perfect, we’ve had some doozies in our marriage, we have hurt each other and done things we wish we could take back. We get frustrated and impatient, we do things that annoy each other and can be quick to have our feelings hurt, and cause hurt, just like everyone else. That’s just living with another human being 24/7 for twenty-nine years, I don’t think any marriage is free of hurt.

Well then, if we aren’t perfect people and we are just like everyone else then why is it, we have stayed together so long and have yet to give up on our marriage when times get tough? In my opinion there is only one reason why and if I am perfectly honest Jon does this much better than me. Jon has been the example in our marriage, it was my dear husband who cracked the code and figured out our secret, I just followed a long these last twenty-nine years.

You see, my personality is I push people away when I get hurt. My go to is to retreat inward and run, I am so stubborn and prideful that I just keep running with my middle finger in the air, no matter what. My mother used to say that I would cut off my nose to spite my face and she was right, I would. No, it certainly wasn’t me who kept us together all these years.

Somehow Jon figured out the secret to a happy marriage is this… always put your spouse first, period. We put each other first in every decision we make, in every action we take, we absolutely always want the best for each other. We don’t put our wants and feelings before the other person; we strive to be selfless instead of selfish in all our actions and situations. It’s not about you, it’s about them. When we don’t do this, the foundation of our marriage weakens.

When you want what is best for your spouse, the relationship flourishes, your spouse feels loved and gives love back. At least that is how it has been in our marriage.

So anytime someone asks me what our secret is to a happy marriage this is what I tell them. Why wouldn’t you want to put the person you vowed to love until death do you part first and want them to have the best? We did this even before we knew Jesus. We didn’t invite God to our wedding, but surely, he was guiding our marriage, I have no doubt.

Often putting your spouse first is not what people want to hear; they make excuses and tell me how impossible and selfish their spouse is. When the response is not wanting to put their spouse first, well it makes me believe they have found the secret to an unhappy marriage.

With gratitude for reading my words.

Angie

The directional change life has feels more like stepping off a well‑worn path and onto the faint remnants of an old, forgotten foot trail. The kind of trail you only notice if you’re paying attention. It’s a little overgrown, a little wild, the sort of path that could lead straight off a cliff… yet something in me hopes it leads somewhere beautiful.

There’s a calm right now, a settling. It feels as though God has handed me an invitation to finally live the life I’ve been saying I wanted all these years. A life marked by simplicity. But an invitation still requires a choice. Will I make excuses? Will I feel guilty for slowing down? Will I keep carrying the weight of the world telling me it’s not enough? Or will I choose God’s invitation and trust that He knows the way better than I do?

This morning, reading John 1:6–8, I was struck by how clearly John the Baptist understood who God called him to be. He didn’t wrestle or second‑guess. He simply lived his purpose. I found myself asking God, why can’t You be that clear with me?

Then Matthew 6:33 came to mind: “But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

It really is that simple, isn’t it? Seek Him first. Trust Him first. Obey Him first. The invitation He’s giving me, the path He’s asking me to walk. I can choose the unknown trail He’s leading me down, or I can stay on the well‑worn path the rest of the world travels.

I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring, but today I know this farm belongs to God, and it is where my work is meant to be. So I step into the day He’s given me. I head to the barn, where the animals greet me with the familiar sounds of morning. Feeding them, cleaning the stalls, moving through the chores that steady me. There’s no rush, no noise in my head, just the quiet obedience of showing up to the work in front of me.

Then I walk to the garden, the air still cool, the soil holding the night’s dampness. Today I know the garlic needs to be harvested, so I pull the beautiful large heads of garlic from the soil and breathe in the scent rising from my hands, sharp, green, alive. On my way inside, I stop by the fruit garden and pick strawberries and blueberries for breakfast. River trots beside me, nose to the ground, watching grasshoppers leap through the paths. Even here, in the smallest moments, I feel God reminding me that trust often looks like paying attention and being grateful.

After breakfast, I take a couple of hours to write this blog post, to let my thoughts find their shape. Then I will tidy up the house, hang the laundry on the line, and let the breeze do its quiet work. The day stretches out gently, without hurry. I feel the sun on my skin, the wind threading through the trees, and I’m grateful for a quiet life.

And maybe that’s the deeper invitation: to see holiness in the ordinary. To trust that God meets me in the barn aisle, in the garden rows, in the small domestic tasks that shape a day. To believe that obedience isn’t always dramatic, sometimes it’s simply choosing the narrow, overgrown path again and again. To trust that simplicity isn’t lack, but abundance. And to know that this quiet life is enough because He is in it.

Thanks for reading these words,

Angie

The farm stand has been closed for a week now, and the land feels different, quieter, but not empty. For the first time in years, the driveway rests. No tires crunching on gravel at all hours, no voices drifting across the yard. When I’m in the barn I still pause, expecting the familiar shuffle of boots or the jingle of the door, but it’s only the soft rustle of hay and the animals breathing beside me.

I thought the quiet would feel lonely. Instead, it feels like the farm has finally exhaled. Maybe I have too.

I didn’t realize how much vigilance had woven itself into my days, how often I turned around expecting someone to be there. I didn’t realize the effects of having strangers shouting from the driveway or walking right up to the house calling through the windows had on me. The gates were meant to give us boundaries, but people tried them anyway. Over time, every unfamiliar car brought a tightening in my chest. So yes, I deeply miss the conversations with the people who became dear to us. But I also feel the deep relief of having our home be a home again.

We didn’t close the stand because of the anger or frustration of these things. A trial rose up in our life, and we needed to lighten our load. But if I’m honest, the closing was overdue. The stand changed when we stopped milking; the heartbeat of it shifted. What I loved most, the relationships, the sharing of this old homestead remained, but the business side grew heavier. Hustling, promoting, striving… none of that fits the way God shaped me.

The stand pulled me away from the life I’m meant to live. Away from being a wife. Away from the stillness of the garden. Away from the slow, holy rhythm of tending soil and creatures. I want to be the kind of woman who has time to sit on the porch with a friend in need, lemonade sweating on the table between us. More than anything else I want a life that continues to grow my faith, to learn who God is with more intention.

For a moment I wondered if I closed the stand because people can be hard and my heart felt bruised. But the truth is gentler: it was simply time to come home.

With gratitude,

Angie

The End of the Farm.

There are seasons in life and on the farm when everything seems to be shifting under my feet. I can always feel it in the air before I can name it. A kind of unsettledness. A slowing. A tug back toward the old paths, the quieter ones, the ones that don’t demand so much noise or performance. I’ve been feeling this coming for quite a while, I just didn’t know how or why until recently.

Our farm stand is closing in a few days. Life is changing in ways we didn’t expect, and we’re walking through some tender, uncertain days ahead. I won’t go into details, but I will say this; when life narrows, you start to see what truly matters with clarity. For us, that clarity keeps pointing back to home. To each other. To the gardens. To the rhythms of this farm that don’t rush, don’t compete, don’t ask us to be shiny or impressive.

A Return to Homesteading.

People talk about homesteading like it’s a movement, a lifestyle choice, a thing you “get into.” But for Jon and I, it’s going back to who we were. We are shifting from farming for others to tending this land for ourselves. For years, we’ve poured our energy into producing, providing, keeping up, meeting expectations, running a farm stand that served the community. And we loved that work. Truly we did. But now this land is inviting us back not to hustle, but to heal. Homesteading, in this new chapter of our life, is less about output and more about presence. Less about striving and more about settling back into a slow, content life.

We’re letting the gardens and animals be a place to breathe. A place to remember who we are without the weight of expectation. Homesteading is a return to how I feel we were supposed to live in connection to God. Not in self-sufficiency but in my learning to have dependency on God for my basic needs.

So, we’re stepping back. We’re simplifying. We’re tending to the gardens, the animals, and to each other. We’re resting, not in an easy life, but resting in trust. There is peace here, even in the unknown. And I’m learning to let that be enough.

Thanks for reading.

Angie

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Growing up the poor kid in a very wealthy town imbedded on me a sense of not belonging and a feeling of not being good enough. No matter how hard I fight it, satan uses this lie against me over and over again. I am getting quicker at recognizing the lie but in all honesty, I keep falling for it. I still don’t quite believe that I am enough just the way I am. It’s something Jesus and I are working though together; the journey is long.

I often struggle with not feeling good enough and tend to compare myself to the curated world of online and the people around me. I can get wrapped up in myself and all the things that everyone else has that I do not, my pure selfishness really. I start to feel like that embarrassed child that wants so much to live like the kids she goes to school with. To have their nice clothes, cool toys, expensive cars and vacations. I used to yearn for the shiny things they dangle in front of me, feeling like there is something wrong with me for not being like them. It’s not that I want what they had, more that I feel like there’s something wrong with me that I don’t.

I still feel the judging eyes of those kids when I look around at our pieced together farm and the old house that is falling apart. I feel the weight of judgement at everything from the cobwebs in the corners to the rust on my car’s fender. I spent so many years being judged, criticized and told I was trash that even at 48 years old I still wear that identity more often than I’d like to admit.

I have had the perfect house, the nice cars and lived in a world I carefully curated as a semblance of control. I wasn’t happy, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t who God made me to be. When you grow up with very little you have a deep understanding of how little you actually need and you become so profoundly aware of the extravagance of having too much that too much feels gross. It feels greedy and selfish and the weight of that is heavy. At least for me it is.

I look around my house and farm at all that we have and feel an enormous amount of gratitude. But as soon as the thoughts of gratitude come the devil whispers in my ear and says “what do you have to be grateful for? You should be ashamed of how you live, of where you live, this place is an embarrassment just like you.” Then I feel foolish for being content with so little. He’s a liar, just trying to take away my gratitude, because he knows what comes next, worshipping a Holy God. It’s where freedom is, it’s joy.

I think there are a lot of people like me, maybe for different reasons but we feel as though we don’t quite want what the world is selling us. Maybe like me, the devil is whispering in their ear telling them that there is something wrong with them too. Don’t listen to the lies, choose freedom in Him every time.

Grateful for you reading my words.

Angie

When gardening season rolls around, I always find myself thinking about the people who worked this land long before us. This farm has been a homestead since 1742-1743, known as the Benjamin James Homestead. From the very beginning it would have been worked out of necessity—gardens for food, herbs for medicine, fruit and maple trees, animals for meat and milk. Everything had a purpose. Everything mattered. This land fed and sustained the people who cared for it.

The world has changed; times have changed but we try to stay rooted in the past. It has led us to forgo some of the common modern conveniences that we don’t see as necessary to us, such as a clothes dryer, microwave, dishwasher and digital appliances.

We try to keep things much the same by keeping the land organic and growing heirlooms that would have been grown here centuries ago. We focus on perennials, plants that reseed themselves and produce seeds we can save and plant year after year. These choices aren’t aesthetic, they’re practical. They’re about usefulness, resilience, and staying closely tied to the land we depend on.

Life here revolves around the farm. The garden feeds us. The animals feed us. They’re not pets or ornaments, they’re part of the system, just as we are. Everyone on this farm has an important role to fill.

From the outside, homesteading can look romantic—and sometimes it truly is. There are beautiful mornings, quiet moments, and deep satisfaction that comes from the work and living this way. But it’s also real, raw, and demanding. It’s early mornings and late nights. It’s physical strain and emotional weight. There’s no pause button. The rhythm keeps going whether you’re up for it or not.

That rhythm is what has carried this place forward since 1742. It’s what keeps it productive, dependable, and alive. We’re not trying to live like everyone else—we’re living the way this land asks us to live.

We’re just one generation in a long line of people who have relied on this place for sustenance and purpose. Our goal is simple: care for it well, live honestly from it, and help it to continue doing what it has always done.

Before this farm I had shallow roots, never having a place to call home. How great is God, who brought me here and “set me in families” (Psalm 68:6), grafting me onto land that was deeply rooted long before me.

One thing that I have learned over the last 30 years of growing in the garden is that the land is much wiser than I am. I have learned to listen and take cues not from a seed packet or a calendar but from the garden itself, it tells me everything that I need to know. It’s when I stop listening and asking that I fail.

How I gardened for so many years and remained an atheist is shocking to me now. The more I learn to listen to God, the more aware I am that it was He who had been talking to me all along.

Oh, I could rationalize the miracle of life sprouting out of a seed to some scientific event that I wasn’t smart enough to understand. It was when I started to see past myself and my lack of importance that I started to realize that I was not the one in control of what happened to that seed. How silly of me, I thought I was in control of its life by planting it, watering it and controlling its environment.

There comes a point in every farmer’s life when we realize that no matter how hard we try, we have no control. I chalked it up to the “universe” and used terms I was comfortable saying like “mother earth” but never used the word God. I could believe in the universe and mother earth, that was acceptable by the standards of those around me, but certainly not God. I couldn’t even muster up His name. But who did I think the universe and mother earth belonged to? Whom was I giving credit to? I didn’t actually believe in anything and that wasn’t fitting what I was witnessing in the garden.

In the early years when I didn’t know better, I experimented with things like miracle grow and heavy-duty quick fix pesticides, especially on those dang pesky squash vine borers. We all want easy, quick fixes that are convenient and ask little of us, gardening is no different. At the time I didn’t know there was any other way. As I started questioning these methods and realizing the harm I was causing far outweighed any benefit, I veered down a different path. I opened my eyes to what the garden was telling me.

I started a gardening journal, took notes and watched the subtle cues of the balance and flow of the plants and creatures that lived in my garden. I learned to listen and watch. I started asking questions like “Why do forsythia bloom so early?” and “If forsythia come to life so early does that mean that other plants that grow early can get planted at the same time, like lettuce and peas?”

I paid attention to the soil temperature and what was blooming, I questioned everything that was happening around me. I experimented with my timing of putting seeds and plants in the ground to follow the plants as they came to life. I realized that the plants were so much smarter than I was at timing. As I paid attention to the soil and bugs I learn to see where I went wrong and where I coexisted with them in harmony. The more I intervened and pushed my methods on the life in my yard, the more I failed.

I saw how the forest and meadows bloom and grow without our hand and questioned why my plants ended up with diseases and were consumed by bugs. I was too often ignoring what I was seeing and followed pictures of perfect rows I saw in magazines and books. I had to learn to stop following what the world was telling me in order to listen to what my garden was screaming at me. What I didn’t realize at the time that what I was doing was Biblical.

God speaks; He speaks to me in the garden. He speaks to me in the animals. He speaks to me even when I refuse to listen. God taught me how to trust Him in the garden even before I knew Him.

With gratitude,

Angie

I really enjoy writing, but it also completely terrifies me. Putting my thoughts down for others to read and critique often feels like a form a masochism. I don’t really even know how to write, I dropped out of community night college after a brief stint, and the only grammar I remember is from elementary school. I have no business writing anything and I am honestly not sure why you are even reading this? Why are you reading this?

Still, I write.

I write because stories connect us. I love stories, especially the hard ones. I respect people who have crawled through hard times and lay their truth out. We all suffer in this life, yet suffering tends to make us feel alone. When we read about someone else’s struggle, it knits a chain between the fabric of our lives and connects us.

When I was sixteen, I had already lived more life than anyone should have. I had been crushed by the world, I was feral with no hope, I trusted no one. I did my best to keep people away so I could protect myself; I shaved my head, dressed the part and pierced every part of my face that I could. I wore my hurt and my anger on the outside for everyone to see, I was a walking story. I found a freedom I hadn’t known before in being able to show my pain outwardly. I had been holding so many secrets in, hiding the broken pieces until I just couldn’t anymore.

Sometimes I miss being her, the teenage girl who stopped hiding her story and wore her defiance openly. The piercings are gone; the hair is grown out. Now writing is how I get the story out of me. Good or bad, whether people read it or not, I write. I write in defiance. I write in truth. I write because I don’t know what else to do.

With gratitude,

Angie

My time of wintering is winding down, the last weeks of snowy days and quiet isolation will soon be over. Though there is a blizzard outside my window where I sit writing and snowbanks much taller than I am, I know spring is not far off. There is no need for a calendar, the animals tell me precisely that winter is almost over.

Yesterday as I scooped massive cow piles out of the big stall, I heard loud banging outside of the barn, I stopped to listen but couldn’t place the noise. I went out to see what the racket was and there two ganders (male geese) were entwined, necks tangled, their powerful wings beating against each other. I grabbed a thick, muscular neck in each hand and pulled them apart, careful not to get a stray wing in the face. If you have ever been hit by the wing of a goose, especially in the face you know just how powerful these limbs of theirs are. A young spring gander was challenging the leader, trying to prove himself more dominant. The leader of the goose gaggle is a sturdy old gander, weathered and mature in age, approaching somewhere around fifteen years old. He has battle scars to prove what a valuable gander he is. He’s been kicked by a steer after hanging off his tail in a ridiculous display of alpha hierarchy. I have seen our fearless gaggle leader leap onto the back of a coyote and beat it with its wings, chasing it and its canine mate down the field. Dare a hawk or fox look at our farm for an easy meal, they will find themselves in a fight they will surely regret.

The fight between the male geese signifies that goose laying season is fast approaching, a sure sign that spring is on the horizon. Soon the fighting will be constant and there will be no peace in the barnyard. We have two too many ganders on the farm without a mate of their own so they will keep fighting if I don’t intervene. I regret not taking care of the situation in the fall when their fat layer was high and calories were not yet burned keeping themselves warm through the winter. The hardest job I have on this farm is making decisions about who becomes our food and who doesn’t. Sometimes I am slow to make those decisions, but I never regret being sure. The elder gentleman will stay another year on the farm; he and I know each other well. He bites me on occasion when I get too close to the females. He is wildly obnoxious in the way he honks continuously every time someone comes into the barn, but we’ve come to know what to expect from each other. Dare I say we even respect the position each of us hold on this farm.

Most of the young ganders are reckless; they do not know their place or how try to control their bite when a wing flapping honk will do. There is one quiet spring gander that shows respect and does not overreact but seems to survey situations, taking everything in that the older ganders do. I will keep him in hopes that the more mature geese will teach him well and one day he will be in line as the fearless gaggle leader. The quiet, contemplative ones are always my first pick, in animals and husbands.

Speaking of contemplative, as I sit in the last weeks of wintering I have been contemplating and reevaluating my “Why”. This is something I do every year before I go into spring. Often throughout the year I have veered off the straight path and ended up in the brambles only to find myself tore up and exhausted. Not all is lost though, as I do always come away with a few sweet berries and a clearer sense of direction. God is awfully good like that; He always comes and finds me and helps me pick the thorns out. This year for my ‘why’ I keep coming back to the word relational. God has been confirming this for me as I cannot tell you in the last month how many times this word has showed up in something I have read or a podcast I listen too. So, as I start crawling out of the deep, cold snowbank of winter and step tenderly into spring I will know which direction I am to be walking. I’ll see you there.

My intention was to go the entire month of February without texting; I only lasted a week. I found out a few days in that I could not log into my Venmo account without receiving that pesky set of numbers that they texted to my phone. After spending a week not knowing whether or not farm stand payments were being sent, I decided it wasn’t worth being stubborn, so I downloaded the texting app back onto my phone.

I opened my text messages with a feeling of dread and anxiety. I don’t want to go back to where I was before. That feeling of needing to answer everyone timely and always being reachable day or night. I did not know the weight of that until this week when I didn’t have it. Right now, as I type, I can feel the pressure in my chest, the anxiety in my arms that right now someone could be texting me something important and I am ignoring them. Is it my people pleasing that causes me to feel this way? My sense of wanting to always be there for my family, friends and customers whenever they need me? Or maybe it’s my fear of disappointing people? Will they be mad at me if I don’t answer right away? Whatever the reason is I am now very aware of the weight I have been carrying in my pocket.

The amount of relief I felt this past week being at times unreachable was enormous, it was freedom. I thoroughly enjoyed being cut off from the world and knowing there was nothing that was going to pull my attention and distract me without my permission. The first few days I would think of something I wanted to text hubby or a friend and it was strange not to, but it felt good also. I was being intentional, I had to ask myself, “is this important enough to email or make a phone call for?” and most of the time the answer was “no”. I realized how unintentional my communication with people typically is and how little thought I actually put into communicating most of the time. Things would happen throughout the day, and I had no one to tell except for God. When Jon returned home from work, we would sit down and talk about all the parts of our day and what had happened. Before we would have just texted each other throughout the day and had nothing of significance to speak about when Jon arrived home. Just this was enough to convince me that the overuse of tech has caused loss of intentionality and connection in relationships.

For a week my brain was not being overstimulated by any electronic device. The only stimulation I had was from my Bible, books and the farm. I sat quietly in front of the woodstove and contemplated the thoughts in my head for hours. I laid in a snowbank watching the goats play and the cows eat hay on a cold but sunny afternoon without picking up my phone to take a picture. I felt fully alive and relaxed for the first time in years. I realized how over stimulated my brain typically is on a daily basis and how that over stimulation feels like business. That feeling of always being busy and having no time to rest and restore myself is destroying my quality of life. I want to live a slow, quiet, peaceful life where I have time for everything, including rest. I will never do that if I walk around with a phone in my hand or a laptop next to me.

My phone has its place; it does make a lot of things easier in life. I am a little resentful that not having a smartphone made a lot of things near impossible. I had a harder time at my doctor’s office due to the fact that I could not pre-register on my phone. Many of the tools I use online such as banking and the farms website were not accessible to me without the use of my smartphone apps or texting.

I don’t know how I go forward after having this experience, but I know that I need to change the way I have been doing things. Maybe the future looks like me taking weekly phone sabbaticals periodically and strictly limiting my daily use. Perhaps I give myself permission to not always be available and people will learn to expect that about me. I am certainly going to disappoint people and make them angry. Sometimes I might just not answer the dozens of weekly calls and texts I get from customers if it just doesn’t feel necessary to me. I need to find peace with that so that I can have peace.

With gratitude,

Angie

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Falling in Love with Farmstands.

My love for farmstands started when I was in my early twenties. Jon and I were out riding our bikes one afternoon and we happened upon a little rickety farmstand with several baskets of zucchini and tomatoes. Hand painted signs hung on the front of the stand listing in season vegetables; there was a sign for corn but there was none that afternoon. We would have to come back and try again for the corn. As an avid gardener and hopeful farmer, I started envisioning myself one day with a small farm and my very own rickety wooden shack out front where I could sell my extra produce. I thought I could even sell the jams, jellies, and pickles that I enjoyed canning. The visions took root and I would fall asleep dreaming about the people I would one day meet at my farmstand and the conversations that we would have over a basket of lettuce I had just picked from the garden. The farmstand that I dreamed about was simple and quaint, a dusty driveway, chickens pecking in the grass and lasting friendships made.

Jon and I would drive around seeking out small farmstands, pleased when we would stumble upon a little wooden shack at the end of someone’s driveway or a tiny shed next to an old barn. We would find full crates of produce, pints of freshly picked blueberries, eggs, milk, jams, or baked goods. The more obscure and the more hidden the farmstand the better. It felt as though we discovered someone’s little secret, a hidden gem that only a few knew about. We would pick out what we wanted, sometimes there was a book to write down what we purchased, sometimes there was not. We would put our money in a basket or box, feeling the honor of being trusted to pay for our items by a person we did not even know.

Self-serve, honor system farmstands were not commonplace until recently and unheard of in states we traveled outside of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. These farmstands tell us a story about what it is like to live in a rural community, honor among neighbors and trust in strangers. Honor systems are a magnifying glass that reveals the safety of a community and the integrity of those whom we are surrounded by. These farmstands make us feel like we are being transported back to another time when the world was simple and safe and we knew and cared for our neighbors. Nostalgia for a place and time we may have never known in our life, something we cannot quite put our finger on, but we recognize its feeling of goodness.

We have entered the seventeenth year of selling through an honor system. We opened our honor system farmstand here on the farm six years ago, before that we sold eggs via honor system from the end of our driveway. It has been amazing seeing the visons I had as a young woman come to fruition. All these years our honor system has worked marvelously, it has been everything I wanted and much, much more. I have made amazing friends over the years, watched children growing up and shared my love for gardening and animals with so many people. Our farmstand has grown beyond anything I ever thought, from a driveway to cooler to a small store in our barn. We have even been able to sell products from other farmers and artisans through it creating a wonderful community. Up until this last year I could count on one hand the number of times people stole from us in all those years combined. Dishonest people were never a problem we bothered worrying about. This last year everything changed.

Farmstand Trend

We have seen the popularity of farmstands among consumers explode since covid and with that more roadside farmstands have been popping up in many communities, especially over the last year. It is wonderful that suddenly so many people are interested in supporting small, local businesses and investing in their neighbors. Unfortunately, we have also heard all the stories of theft that are following this trend of honor system stands. I have heard dozens of stories of theft, destruction and even whole roadside farmstands disappearing in the night. We have had a concerning amount of theft ourselves and it honestly breaks my heart.

We had our busiest year to date last year, with that came more customers and not all these customers felt the honor of being trusted with our honor system. It is hard to know the numbers exactly; I do not do inventory daily but this month while it is slow and quiet I have been able to keep a more accurate count. This January alone we are averaging a loss of fifty dollars a week! Mostly in unpaid, non-traceable Venmo’s but also product taken and not paid for. During the busy months I imagine this quadruples and eventually it will sink our farm if we let it.

I have asked myself what has changed that there has been such an uptick in theft this year? The increase in farm stand traffic I am sure has made a difference, but what about all the other small roadside farm stands experiencing the same increase in theft? I do wonder if the trend of roadside farm stands has introduced a new segment of the population to what was once a hidden gem to be sought out only by farm stand enthusiasts and the local community. To ignore this change that has happened so quickly is dangerous. This dishonesty tells a new story about what is happening in our small town and surrounding communities, it is a concerning story. The theft we are experiencing might not seem much to bigger businesses or to the authorities, but it paints a clear picture of a change that is occurring. Trust, honor, and integrity are slowly breaking down and eventually the roadside farm stand will all but disappear if we are not careful.

Where do we go from here?

Trends usually come and go and all I can do is hope and pray that this is just that. If we keep losing money from theft I will have to consider scaling back so our losses are lower. It does not hurt quite as much if the loss is from our own labor opposed to items that we purchased from other people. There may be a blessing in having to return to running a humble, little unknown roadside farmstand that remains a hidden gem only known to those who happen upon it.

Today I had to leave the farm and go to the “city”, I use that word loosely. When the town you live in cannot even boast a single stop light, any town with an intersection feels metropolitan. I had errands to run and though I try to avoid leaving the farm I had an Amazon purchase that needed to be returned. Why can’t Amazon just make it easy and let us put returns in our mailbox or hand it to an Amazon driver? Some of us shop Amazon because we don’t like stores or towns or leaving our farms. To be forced to find a Staples store, go inside and actually talk to people is asking a lot. I mustered up my courage, went to grab my return from the backseat and realized then that I had forgotten the box on the kitchen table. An hour drive for nothing, sigh.

Fortunately, I did just clean out our closet and had two trash bags full of items to be donated. The trip wouldn’t be a complete waste. I drove around the back of the parking lot and found a row of metal donation bins. I got out of the truck, heaved the bags into the metal bins feeling at least a little lighter and accomplished. When I turned around to get back into the truck a man with a backpack lugging a suitcase was standing there watching me. I jumped startled, my over exaggerated fight or flight kicked in thanks to my PTSD and a thousand scenarios raced through my head in a split second.

I hate being fat, I can’t outrun anyone, though I feel like I could put up one damn good fight. I like to think being able to kill and butcher livestock gives me a bit of an advantage to being able to defend myself should I need to. Could I make it back to the truck and lock the doors before he reached me? He looked harmless enough, but my jaded past has taught me to trust no one. Why is he staring at me like that? If only I had kept my purse with my gun on me, but it was in the truck. If only I had brought River, he might be going deaf, but he keeps a watchful eye on me when we are out together and he would have warned me there was someone walking up behind me. Where did this guy even come from? I had looked around before I got out of the truck, the parking lot was empty, I felt safe getting out even though it was deserted. His backpack looked heavy, and he would have to drop the suitcase out of his right hand if he decided to come at me, his left hand was empty. I concluded that I had time to make it to the truck before he made it towards me.

As I was driving past him, I saw myself as I was at sixteen when I ran away from home. A too heavy backpack carrying everything I owned, a scowl of brokenness across my face. Then I thought about what he must have saw when he looked at me. A middle-aged woman dressed from head to toe in LL Bean, getting into a nice-looking truck donating her used, no longer wanted clothes.

I loathed myself.

When we are in the city, I have Jon drive pass the parks where the drug addicts and homeless people hang out, I look out the window longingly. I identify with them. I feel more comfortable with these broken people than I do with anyone. Though I avoid them, scared I will be consumed and swallowed back into their dark world. This could be me. I could still be out there on the street doing anything to get high, to numb the demons of my past, to kill the pain of my childhood. But this is not me, not anymore.

At times I feel like an imposter. I think about leaving everything behind, running back to the streets where I can be no one again. Not because I want to but because I feel like I don’t deserve this life I have.

Maybe I made smart decisions that took me away from drugs, alcohol and chaos. But honestly, I don’t think I can take the credit. I truly believe God had other plans for my life. Plans like writing about what He saved me from as I figure all of this out.

I closed down my social media accounts, and a lot of people are having feelings over this, they do not understand my decision. The majority think I am crazy, that I am committing financial ruin with the farm. They are probably right in their concern; there is a synergistic relationship between our farm sales and the amount I post on social media. There is no doubt my frequent posting does bring more people to the farm. Our sales increased this fall to the highest we’ve ever seen. But what’s the cost? Because everything has a cost, doesn’t it? There is no more fitting quote nor more fitting book then this…

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

―Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

The life cost I was exchanging was my peace, my time and my values. The expectation of needing to answer all the messages and comments I received daily. The constant borage of noise in my head to create good content, sell our products, keep up with the algorithm or face no longer meeting Facebook’s games and not having our posts show up in our follower’s feed. Keeping up with the ‘trolls’ and spam bots on our posts and deleting their comments quickly. I played the game for a while; I accepted the challenge. I learned from others who were successful at it and I put in effort and took their advice. I even considered a tripod to produce better video but realized that felt ridiculous to me. I gave it a good old college try. I saw results, our followers doubled and I started making some money every month from Meta. It felt terrible. I felt busier than I actually was. As someone who leans towards being introverted social media can make me feel like I am at a party being bombarded with social interactions all day every day. It causes my brain to be overstimulated.

It wasn’t me. I crave simplicity, solitude, quietness not social media attention or constant social stimulation. I ultimately realized it was distracting me from following the path where God was leading me.

Matthew 7: 13- 14 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

I had been journaling and praying about whether or not to stay on social media for a couple of years. I knew I wanted to step away from it but was terrified to leave what I saw as the best tool that brought customers to our farm. Customers that help keep this farm running. Through this time God was teaching me to trust in Him, rely on Him and to see that He secures my lot in life. He is my provider, my best tool, the one in control. So, today I am going to try to get out of His way and let my Father take care of me the way He wants. I trust Him.

I will keep writing as I truly love sharing our farm and homestead life with others and people do seem to enjoy reading about it. I desire to teach skills, build community and share what I have with others, that is where my focus will be. I trust that the people who truly value Sweet River Farm will read our newsletter on our website and read our posts here on Substack. People who love what we are doing and want to see us continue will support us by shopping at our farm stand consistently and support us financially through becoming paid subscribers to my blog here on Substack. To me that feels more in line with who and what Sweet River Farm is.

With gratitude,

Angie

I always dreaded Christmas, it was a strangling weight of expectations, disappointments and looking for happiness in something shallow that never quite satisfied. Instead of fa la la la la and Joy, Christmas left me feeling empty, depressed and bitter.

I was missing something or someone; I was missing Christ.

Three years ago, Christmas Eve Jon and I begrudgingly walked through the doors of a little church here in Deerfield that God was calling me to. It was awkward and scary, and we swore we weren’t going to be “Church People”. Heck we weren’t even sure if we bought the whole faith thing. But we concluded what if all these years we were wrong?

What if God really was real?

We asked ourselves what would be worse, to get to the end of our life and find out there was God but we blew it.

Or to live a life striving to follow God and be no worse off in the end.

So, we followed.

Blindly at first.

Amazing things started happening in our life that increased our faith. God showed up for us over and over again until we could no longer deny Him.

He is real.

I have no doubt.

I never thought I could be a person that felt absolute JOY.

But I do.

Everyday.

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I crave stillness, simplicity, and domesticity.

I need to stand in the middle of a field on a warm summer day listening to the humming of cicadas and songbirds. The soft motion of switch grass and wildflowers gently waving to me on the hot summer breeze. My need for this is visceral.

I want to forget the world. I want to leave the busyness, congestion and chaos of modern-day life. I don’t want a schedule or a day full of to do.

I want to get back to living in the moment. Feeling rested and alive. I want to get back to knowing more about what is happening on the land surrounding me than what is going on with people I don’t even know halfway across the country.

I want to be in closer contact with God than with the world. I want His voice in my head and no one else’s.

I want to be a better wife. I don’t want to be so exhausted every day that I throw together whatever is convenient and have dinner in front of the television. I want to put lavish meals on the table from all the food we have raised and say grace by candlelight every night. I want the house to always be tidy, everything in its place, a place for everything.

I want to be present. I don’t want to be distracted, over stimulated and controlled by an algorithm. I want to live in the moment, be in complete control of my time and be completely focused on the people and animals I am with and not give them my leftovers.

I want less. I don’t want to work to buy things that I don’t really need to be happy because it’s what the world tells me I should do. I want to work less, buy less and want less. I want to live a life I don’t need a vacation from but a life that fills me up and causes me to overflow with gratitude.

I opt out.

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I generally enjoy the challenge of being uncomfortable in life and the growth it brings. The Lord has been leading me to spend a lot of time contemplating suffering and comfort. At times I am ashamed of the comfort of my current life. I truly believe that suffering is a great gift and that comfort leads to dissatisfaction. Of course comfort and suffering are all relative. I feel as though growing up I suffered greatly, but compared to what? There are so many people who suffered much worse than me. But for the suffering I did endure I am truly grateful and would not change it for a second. It gave me hope and resilience. I see it as a true gift that I was given, I see it as a strength and honor to be trusted enough to endure. I see my suffering as being taught how to survive and to prepare me for whatever work God has in store for my life. Though suffering is hard joy comes on the other side.

Today I came across a favorite piece of scripture and felt a great joy in reading it.

Romans 5:2-5 "And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to uOne of the things I enjoy most about homesteading and farming is the discomfort. I love that we don't choose the easy way to live. I mostly enjoy that we have given up some modern conveniences like having a dish washer, cloth dryer, microwave,vacations, a modern home etc. I would be willing to give up even more, but I'm not the only one who lives in this house. Haha I generally enjoy the challenge of being uncomfortable in life and the growth it brings. The Lord has been leading me to spend a lot of time contemplating suffering and comfort. At times I am ashamed of the comfort of my current life. I truly believe that suffering is a great gift and that comfort leads to dissatisfaction. Of course comfort and suffering are all relative. I feel as though growing up I suffered greatly, but compared to what? There are so many people who suffered much worse than me. But for the suffering I did endure I am truly grateful and would not change it for a second. It gave me hope and resilience. I see it as a true gift that I was given, I see it as a strength and honor to be trusted enough to endure. I see my suffering as being taught how to survive and to prepare me for whatever work God has in store for my life. Though suffering is hard joy comes on the other side.

Today I came across a favorite piece of scripture and felt a great joy in reading it.

Romans 5:2-5 "And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."s."

Something you might not know about me, I have C-PTSD which stands for Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Complex PTSD is caused by chronic and prolonged exposure to trauma, often people with C-PTSD have experienced several different types of prolonged traumas such as physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Living with C-PTSD can show up in all kinds of ways in everyday life—like in your relationships, how you handle your feelings, and even how you feel physically. If you have C-PTSD, you might deal with things like flashbacks, anxiety, finding it hard to trust people, or struggling to manage strong emotions. Often, we struggle with lack of self-worth, feelings of shame and diminished self-confidence.

When I was in my early 20’s I joined a support group for survivors of sexual exploitation, it was the first time I had ever heard the phrase PTSD. I finally was able to understand why when I walked into a room or building the first thing I did was scan for the exits and place myself in the best location to escape if needed. It was why I carefully watch people, read their body language and gauge and assess their potential to do me or others harm. PTSD is why I learned every creak, moan, groan and loose floorboard in every house I lived in. This skill allowed me to walk around unnoticed, but I knew if someone was coming toward me and how close they were. I was finally given labels and understanding for things like flashbacks and disassociation. Becoming educated on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was the first step I was able to take towards healing. Once I started to understand what I was experiencing was normal and typical for trauma survivors, I was able to start to identify my patterns and behaviors.

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I believe we need to start talking about C-PTSD and PTSD more, there’s a lot of people suffering alone. Unfortunately, people with both forms of PTSD tend to isolate themselves when they are in the trenches. This is a dangerous place to be, I know, I have been there many times. Please, don’t go it alone, there are many of us who understand. It’s why I share these personal bits about myself, so you know you are not alone. I see you; I get it. I thought I was alone too, I thought it was just me until a brave person shared a piece of her story with me. I hope I can do the same for you.

Your trauma is not who you are. It does not define you. You are not broken. God heals.

I must remind myself of this daily and I’ll be honest; some days I don’t believe it. Some days I want to turn inward and isolate because trusting people is too hard and people hurt. But then I remember who God tells me I am, He tells me I am brave and strong. I have already survived a whole lot of hell on this earth; there isn’t anything anyone can do to me to change the fact that I am saved.

He heals. He saves.

I didn’t know anything about God, I had been to church a few times for funerals and once I went to Sunday school with my cousins. The Sunday school teacher told me God had a son named Jesus that loved me and would save me. I sat staring at the book the teacher had put in front of me, there was a picture of a long-haired man, Jesus. He looked like the scary men who smelled like alcohol and crept into my bed at night. I spent the rest of Sunday school disassociating, terrified of this strange man who loved me even though I didn’t know him. I never want back; I didn’t want to meet this long-haired Jesus guy.

Sometimes when I was a child and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders I would sit on the steps of a church. I would sit there just wishing those doors would open and someone would step out and save me. I knew there was supposed to be someone in there that saved people, and I desperately needed saving. But the doors never opened.

I stopped sitting on the church steps. I grew to loath the people who went to church, I made fun of them and called them losers. I thought they were fools, boring people with vanilla lives who believed in fairy tales because they were too weak to handle their problems. I avoided “those” kinds of people at school and at work, we had nothing in common, and they made me uncomfortable.

Funny how life works out. I just finished cleaning the church, I love being in the quiet church and often after I am finished, I go out and sit on the steps with the door open. I am now one of “those” people I spent years making fun of and I am so thankful to be one.

Now looking back, I am glad those doors never opened. I spent most of my life looking for someone to rescue me. I put that burden on Jon for many years, not realizing how unfair that was. What I had to learn was that my rescue was never going to come from someone behind those church doors, nor were the Navy Seals going to come rescue me no matter how many times I daydreamed about it. My husband couldn’t save me even though he certainly tried. I couldn’t save myself nor could drugs or alcohol save me. But the day I turned to Jesus and asked him to save me, He did. He truly did.

With gratitude,

Angie

A Marathon in the Kitchen

I stand in my dining room, face-to-face with one hundred and one mason jars brimming with pickled jalapenos, a spicy army taking over the table. The jars glisten, cool and ready for labels, but I can only sigh, my energy still sapped from the epic battle last Friday. Friday was a wild day—my mother and I transformed sixty pounds of jalapenos into "farmer's candy" in a single day, a feat worthy of a medal in the Olympics of home canning.

The kitchen felt more like a sauna, the thermometer screaming ninety-two degrees as we sliced and diced hot peppers, our eyes watering and our hands burning. Sweet, sticky syrup bubbled in pots, promising deliciousness if only we could get through the day. The peppers had to be preserved immediately, or they'd turn limp in the relentless summer heat, so we donned our aprons and got to work.

An Unexpected Call from the Post Office

Just when we thought we might catch our breath—finally, a break while four canners chugged along at different stages—I checked my phone. Six voicemails from mysterious 1-800 numbers, all flagged as spam so my phone never rang. I pressed play and was greeted by message after message from our local post office, each more panicked than the last, demanding we come pick up our order of chicks. The final message upped the drama, warning that if we didn’t show up pronto, our chicks would be donated to a nearby farm.

My heart did a somersault—chicks? What chicks? I had definitely ordered one hundred and twenty-five chicks, but they were set to arrive next week, not now. Surely, the post office had gotten its wires crossed. I’d know if I had chicks on the way... wouldn’t I? Suddenly, exhaustion gave way to pure chaos. The week was already wild, and now I had a poultry emergency on my hands.

Jon had just come home from work and was hiding in the barn, I mean feeding the animals, possibly hoping he could dodge the kitchen mayhem. I found him mid-feed bombarding him with panic and sobs about what had just transpired on my phone. Jon gave me a look somewhere between confusion and resignation and headed for the truck. He sped off to the post office, probably wondering why he came home, but determined to rescue our surprise flock before they were adopted by someone else.

Jon arrived to the post office just in time to claim the two boxes of noisy, yellow chicks—an impromptu rescue mission worthy of a superhero cape. We weren’t ready at all—no chick food, the brooder was not set up, and I was sticky enough to glue myself to the floor after wrestling jalapenos all day. While Jon zoomed off to the feed store in another town, I dashed around the barn looking for my chick feeders, hands tingling from the peppers as I scrambled to hang heat lamps, fluff up pine shavings like a frantic squirrel, and fill the waterers with cool water and a dash of chick electrolytes.

I reached into the box, the soft downy bodies soft against my palms, and gently pulled each chick out, dipping their tiny beaks in the water to encourage them to drink. Their feathers were impossibly soft, and their peeps—sharp, insistent—filled the air, mingling with the spicy sweetness still lingering from the day’s work. I thought at that moment how ironic it is, that one of my favorite parts about this life is also the hardest part- unpredictability. Some days the juggling act of farming, homesteading, running a farm store, hosting workshops, public speaking, managing a website, writing newsletters, posting on social media, writing a blog and trying to write a book, running the Christmas market, doing things like accounting and trying to keep animals, sourdough and kombucha alive while having a chronic illness and staying happily married is just pure insanity. It’s insanity that I embrace and love and wouldn’t trade.

With gratitude,

Angie

p.s I found out after that the hatchery had switched my order date back in May but I never read the email.