Crafty Farm Girl was born out of my desire to live in the country raising kids and having lots of animals. Unfortunately my husband’s career keeps me stuck in a fairly well-to-do New York commuting suburb where I just don’t quite fit in with the yoga & Starbucks crowd. I’m homesteading on my 1-1/4 acre of land with lots of chickens, 4 goats, 4 kids (the human variety), 1 husband, and a lot of neighbors.
I have “Free Range Friday’s” weekly where I sell my eggs, jams, honey, and whatever else I’ve been cooking up through an email list of local friends and neighbors. It gives me great joy to be able to share my eggs and other freshly made things with people, and I love to teach people about small-scale farming. I’m a fighter against factory farming and an advocate of the farm-to-fork movement. I love meat; chicken, beef, pork, lamb; I eat
it all. But I firmly believe that animals raised for food
must be treated with kindness and respect. Animals raised for food have to die, but they don’t have to suffer. And while they are living, their lives should be happy and healthy.
I’ve been raising chickens for about 10 years now (for the enjoyment and the eggs – we don’t eat the chickens) and finally broke the husband down two years ago and
got two Nigerian Dwarf goats. We added a Tennessee Fainting Goat to the herd in April of 2011. Unfortunately we lost one of my nigerian dwarf goats to toxemia from her pregnancy this May, but she left us with two beautiful babies to care for. Bottle-fed by me since they were 12 hours old, the babies are getting big and still think I am their real mother.
Unsuccessful with my first attempt at beekeeping a few years ago, last year we got a Kenyan Top Bar hive that has been wildly successful in it’s first year. I also have a horse, but he gets to live in Wyoming full-time, while we only get to spend vacations there. My four children range in age from 21 and a Senior in college to 13 and then twins that are 11.
A former home and craft pattern designer for Simplicity and assistant to Martha Stewart back in the day before she really hit the big time, I ended my career-life as a graphic designer to become a full-time stay-at-home mom. I’ve been published by Minwax in a furniture restoring how-to book and have fairly good carpentry skills. That’s my 1963 Kenskill Travel Trailer I restored. I’ve traveled across the country with my sister in it, and then again with my two youngest daughters. I’m a 
knitter, needlepointer and punchneedle embroiderer. I sew, upholster, paint, stain and do woodburning. I love to do carpentry and keep waiting for my father, who was a carpenter his entire career, to pass all his tools down to me someday. I have a certificate in floral design from the New York Botanical Gardens, love to cook and went to pastry school ages ago when I lived in San Francisco and am an avid reader and photographer.
I’ve got dreams of having a small “gentlewoman’s farm” where I can have a variety of farm animals and livestock that would concentrate on preserving heritage breeds. I want my horse to come home to Connecticut and live with me full-time (and bring along a couple of others to keep him company). I would like to teach people more about the specific animals that we have and small-scale farming in general. I have a keen interest in finding a way to make people more aware of the horrors of factory farming and show them that even as one person with a few chickens or a beehive in your backyard you can make a difference.
My biggest dream is to someday own a farm or ranch large enough where I can run a cowgirl camp; I’ve even got the name all registered already – The Saddlebags. Someplace where women, young and old, can go with no riding experience or with extensive riding experience and have fun learning western riding events like barrel racing, pole bending, team penning and cutting, or even try mounted shooting. I’d like to be able to share the joy I get from riding and learning new skills on my horse with other women some day.
I was always socially awkward and someone once said “She’s happier in the company of animals than people”. That’s probably still true. I’ve been sober and in recovery long enough to not care who knows. But recovery is a daily reprieve that changes a person and the way you look at life and can still be struggling at times.
So, I’m a farm-crazed woman in recovery with A.D.D., a ‘scanner’ personality and a tendency towards doing too much. If any of this sounds interesting to you, then perhaps you will enjoy my site.
This web site is meant as a place for me to share my thoughts, farm antics, recipes, craft projects and occasionally offer some of my wares up for sale. Hope you enjoy.
