My dear friends, past, present, and future…
What a couple of years this has been. For me, COVID has been a great reset, with extraordinary moments of fear and isolation and yet, an incredible optimism has emerged in spite of the terrible headlines. We spent a wonderful year with our son and his wife because they came home when life in New York got complicated. I shut down our Airbnb and we spent a year and a half really getting to know each other as adults. It was a once in a lifetime gift!
With working from home becoming the new norm, Jim and I spent more time together and it was not only wonderful, but powerfully transformative and eye opening. That’s the polite way of saying that it wasn’t always easy! Yet, what emerged was a different sense of purpose for our lives. As passionate advocates of sustainable living, as well as board certified life/health coaches, we discovered that what we both want to do is help people to live happier, healthier, lovelier lives AND protect our beautiful planet at the same time.
In the middle of Cleveland Heights on a small suburban lot, we rebuilt our kitchen garden and added to our small orchard. We created a flowery meadow to help feed the bees and butterflies. We discovered as we harvested large amounts of homegrown fruits, herbs and vegetables, the joy of being able to eat food that we’d grown with our own two hands, with love. With supply chains drying up, suddenly all of the things that my mother ever taught me became relevant with a different urgency. Use cloth napkins and dishcloths, not paper products. Fine china, pottery, silver and crystal can last a lifetime, and then be handed down! This brings history and beauty into our lives every day, while being recyclable through multiple generations! We lit candles every night, ate earlier than normal, and began to put down our phones more and more.
We learned that one stockpot of soup can feed a family for days with good bread, cheese, and a salad. I had stores of herbs harvested and dried for my tinctures, tonics and tea blends. I made all of the jams, jellies and fruit butters that we use every day. It was so much fun and a way of living that I remembered from my childhood. It was the way we used to live long before big box stores and online shopping, which was gentler on our bodies and more peaceful to our souls - certainly healthier for the planet. We learned that we didn’t need to buy so much stuff when we could make it ourselves, and enjoy it even more because of this. That it could, at the same time, still be elegant and lovely with the added satisfaction of doing these things on our own. It’s been a wonderful and very creative period of time for us both.
As we began to explore together dreams of what we wanted the next phase of our life to look like, Jim suddenly got offered a new role in his company that was a perfect fit for him, something he had always been interested in. That left me to ponder what I truly wanted for this next part of my life. Suddenly I realized that, at age 62, it was time to do something I’d always wanted to do, but where I would have to move past some old fears to make it happen. I made up my mind, put my fears aside, and started writing and sharing, I love writing things that inspire people to explore their own creativity, around their home and around their life. I like supporting people with new ideas, helping them to create a life they will look forward to – and one they can look back on and be utterly satisfied with.
Around this time, I discovered this new platform, Substack, which is a content creators dream! It is the first platform I’ve used where I felt that I could realize a long-held dream -- sharing myself with others in a way that really makes sense. It’s a platform where I can create my own unique variety of content, fully expressing what I am so passionate about, and in a way that is easy to consume AND beautiful at the same time. I am, after all, passionate about beauty!
Through this platform I can easily offer free subscriptions and paid subscriptions, enabling all who are interested to see content without any fees, but providing extra value for those who are inspired to support, and enjoy, my writings!
It’s now my pleasure to welcome you to the new Herban Farmgirl!
I hope that you will be pleased. It is my dream to talk to you wherever you find yourself in your life and offer you a place where it is easy to explore this content, to be inspired to create your own brand of self-expression, whatever that looks like for you.
I’m so excited to welcome you into my Backyard, my Kitchen & my Home.
Let’s play! Let’s have fun! let’s turn our magic all the way up!
Love,
Beth
Congratulations! I look forward to all of your writing inspiring us, and I love that you make the world a better place every day! Lots of love! 💖🍯❤️