Slowing it Down: Talking Snow, Story, and Swirling Change

Greetings from Park City where the world outside my window swirls with snow and the world inside my head swirls with story—from all that I saw at The Sundance Film Festival, as well as daily reading and writing. This includes re-reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Middlemarch by George Elliot with FrizzLit. I highly recommend his book clubs!

A snowy President’s Day Weekend, skiing with my sons and friends in UT.

I’m also busy preparing for the publication of Daughter of a Promise on April 2, completing interviews, writing articles, scheduling live events, as well as recording podcasts. If you haven’t yet preordered, please consider doing so! Let me know when you do and I’ll send you the e-reader version of my debut novel, Eden, as a thank you!

I am very proud of the protagonist in this book. Never has one of my characters undergone as much transformation as Bets Ruiz. She begins young and idealistic, a recent college graduate on the threshold of adulthood. She’s at that stage in life where she’s filled with hope and anxiety in equal measure. The novel is told from her retrospective point of view, in the form of a letter to her unborn son, about one fateful year. It is a year filled with desire, love, and tragedy – a year that breaks her open and ushers her into womanhood.

I’ve heard people call personal transformation reinvention – as if we always have a choice! I recently read an excerpt from Alain de Botton’s new book in Oldster Magazine that got me thinking about the change we choose to initiate. The author encourages people to not measure their lives in years but instead by the richness of those years. His theory hinges on a view that time exists in our minds, expanding or contracting based on how engaged we are in the present moment. When absorbed in something new, time is expansive. Being in a rut or stuck in a predictable routine, however, gives the effect of weeks, years, and decades passing by quickly. Initiating change may seem like a luxury not everyone is prepared to take on. However, it’s interesting to consider what holds us back. 

flynn-creek-farm-planting-season-greenhouse-rows

Extending the growing season in the upper Midwest

One thing that holds us back is fear. Deciding to dedicate myself to Flynn Creek Farm required I overcome fear. And it still does! Farming is incredible during the growing season surrounded by green land, with time expanding as broadly as the big blue sky. In the middle of the night, however, when Wisconsin is dark and covered in snow, I confess to waking in a panic.

Nonetheless, embracing change and tackling fear seem to be integral on my journey. I love skiing because of the opportunity to bite off chunks of fear. Publishing a novel, moving to a new town, and taking on a big project have all kept me awake at night with different degrees of doubt, but they have also resulted in immense joy and satisfaction. They have slowed time. Letting go of the past to make room for new things is my way of affirming life, my acknowledgment that there are many possible paths in this world and I needn’t settle for only one.

Constantly_curating_jeanne_blasberg_substackI’d love to hear about your experiences or philosophy of adopting change. Leave a comment below or on my Substack!

 

flynn-creek-farm-sunset-jeanne-blasberg-daughter-of-a-promise

New Year, New Writing Updates!

Happy New Year!

If you’re a long-time reader or you’ve subscribed to my newsletter in the past, you may have noticed I’ve migrated my essays and letters to Substack. Introducing…

Logo for Jeanne Blasberg's Substack newsletter, Constantly Curating, in white text with black shadow on a bright red background with a white border

I hope to share writing monthly, and I hope you’ll come along with me on the journey. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to my newsletter there to keep in touch! I’m excited to share lots of fun things with you this spring like upcoming events and book giveaways (hint hint, keep reading)—and let’s not forget the most exciting news of all:

My new novel, Daughter of a Promisewill be released on April 2nd. I am very proud of this book and I am grateful for the positive feedback to date. Kirkus gave it a starred review, calling it, “A sagacious and graceful modern-day retelling of a biblical love story,” and Foreword called it, “….a powerful feminist novel set during a tumultuous year in New York.”

Daughter of a Promise Book CoverAnd yes, it’s a love story! A retelling of the legend of David and Bathsheba. My protagonist’s journey of love, loss, and self-awareness is one, I hope, many readers will relate to. Fans of Eden and The Nine, will enjoy the reappearance of some familiar characters and revisiting a beloved Rhode Island beach town.

If you preorder Daughter of a Promise, and forward me a screenshot or photo of the receipt, I’ll send you an ebook download of Eden as a thank you! Preorders boost book-selling algorithms and help more people find the book, so I would truly appreciate your support.

 

This is a wonderfully wise book. Blasberg is an accomplished writer, and in Betsabé Ruiz she has created an insightful and strong young woman. “ — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

flynn-creek-farm-sunset-jeanne-blasberg-daughter-of-a-promiseIn other news … John and I have bundled our passions for food, wellness, and the environment into a new venture called Flynn Creek Farm. It’s a 420-acre farm southwest of Madison, WI where we are growing veggies for the Forage Kitchens fast-casual restaurant chain. The master plan for the farm involves returning organic matter to the topsoil to grow small grains and graze cattle. We have dreams of planting an orchard and becoming a destination for education and eco-tourism. Building the wonderful team at Flynn Creek has brought both of us much joy as well as humility and new learning. I will always write fiction, but don’t be surprised if my content is inspired by this new adventure!

book-recommendations-wellness-great-expectations-yellowface-little-monsters-black-earth-wisdomThat’s all my exciting news for the moment, but stay tuned for updates. In the meanwhile, let me leave you with some books I’ve read this winter and highly recommend:

Check them out! And let me know what you’ve been reading.

The Dis-ease

Many years back my doctor prescribed genetic screening because of a history of cancer in my family.  A finding that had been inconclusive seven years ago was now raising some concern and so I recently returned to Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston to have blood drawn for an additional screening. As I sat in the waiting room with dozens of patients undergoing cancer treatments, I couldn’t help but count my blessings.

Later, out on the sidewalk, surrounded by scores of pedestrians, I couldn’t help contemplating these fragile vessels that carry us through life. Our bodies. We come in all shapes and sizes, yet signs of a healthful state and symptoms of “dis-ease”  are manifest. Whether it’s weight loss or weight gain, thin hair, or an ashy complexion, our outward appearances can reflect whatever pain or ailment we are carrying inside. And it doesn’t need to be as serious as cancer. In HEAL YOUR BODY by Louise Hay, she ties all physical ailments, every state of dis-ease, to some emotional wound.

There’s also the fact that our environments, over much of which we have no control, impact our well-being. The quality of our air, our water, noise pollution, even our access to nutritious food are often out of our control, dictated by our neighborhoods, our parents, and socio-economic factors in general. From the moment we take our first breath, we are vulnerable to the state of our environment. It had always been my ideal that the powers that be were looking out for us. I was raised to believe I lived in the greatest country on earth, and yet….  And yet life expectancy in the United States has been in decline and ranks 47th among countries across the globe.

Digging into one factor, such as the food system, feels like I’ve uncovered a betrayal. True: Post WWII farming techniques and mass food production provided unprecedented calories for a growing population, but at what cost?  Feels like the bill is coming due. I don’t want to point the finger at big corporations alone, because the consumer should also take some blame. So many of us are city dwellers who have become increasingly detached and disinterested in where our food comes from.  As Americans we have been conditioned to value price and convenience over the quality.

We have raised a generation of young people whose answer to where their food comes from is, “the grocery store.”  In addition to not appreciating one’s local, seasonal food harvests, people are making increasingly unhealthy food choices even when they have an array of  options. Big packaged goods companies are being asked to manufacture healthier products, however they are able to point to current trends that indicate sales of food like cookies and chips have never been stronger.  The impulsive eating of junk food is actually on the rise.

Besides emotional wounds and our environments causing dis-ease, it seems the dire state of the world is contributing to disease in myriad ways, Besides the stress,  we are finding escapism in a pint of ice cream or a bag of chips. Maybe in drugs or alcohol. We know they aren’t good choices, but we make them anyway. It’s a classic “What the hell” attitude, behavior symptomatic of sinking hope. Whether it’s the climate, national politics, senseless violence or wars being fought across the globe, there are plenty of reasons to be worried.

The problem is that our societal state of dis-ease is gaining momentum.  Where will the positive energy come from to start turning things around? During the process of starting the farm, I’ve been doing lots of reading, researching, and learning and the good news is that that are great things happening and great people making a difference.  But don’t be intimidated, one doesn’t need to take on a major enterprise in order to have an impact. Individuals can make a difference everyday. Expressing optimism and kindness create upward spirals of energy on their own. A few other ideas: take back our attention spans by resisting our electronic devices,  take time to sit and read a book; invest in relationships, buy local, organic, seasonal food and if your local grocery store doesn’t do a good job, make some special requests , seek out a farmer’s market or CSA; Compost food waste; plant a garden or even better a tree. Believe in love. Believe in the ripple effect. Keep it simple.

The Dining

Can anyone really know where their food comes from? One way is to grow it yourself or acquire it from a local CSA or farmer’s market. Some might say limiting one’s diet to that degree equates to deprivation.  Sure, it means giving up bananas and avocados for those of us in northern climes (as well as a lot of other things), but it is also challenges us to learn more about what grows nearby, it breeds intentionality around eating, as well as a sense of self-reliance. Most importantly, it leads to a stronger connection with the land.

Think back a hundred years when most people relied upon, if not participated in their regional food system. This was before we moved in droves to cities, before we got addicted to convenience, before everything was imported and became available 12 months per year at the grocery store.

I recently read ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver about her family’s year-long experiment eating locally, both from their own farm as well as sources within 100 miles of their home. It was the year she and her husband moved from Arizona to Virginia with two children. The entire family signed onto a pact to become “locavore.”  I found it inspiring, written with a sense of humor while chronicling the challenges, hard work, and planning that comes with farm life and eating locally. There were unmet cravings for sure, but also showers of abundance and joy while the family discovered that buying and sharing food within a local economy built health, community, and a connection to place.

Any vegetable gardener will tell you the only thing more satisfying than eating one’s home-grown produce is sharing it. Before cooking, one might say it is the truest expression of love. I’ve experienced that joy on a small scale for years, but the dream that led to our investment in Flynn Creek Farm was wanting to do it on a larger scale. I’ve learned small farms like ours are slowly disappearing. This is because in order to be competitive on price, and to sell food as cheaply as Americans have come to expect, big mechanized operations  specializing in a few crops with lower amounts of labor are more likely to be profitable.  Large scale operations, however, use a lot of energy and water, and typically rely on chemicals, not to mention the impact of transportation to market.  They tend to lack biodiversity, and around southwest Wisconsin you see a lot of corn or soy for animal feed or for the ingredients in processed foods. Besides damaging the topsoil, many of the practices of big operations have had ill effects on people’s health.

For the past eighty years, our country has been on a terrible diet. It is something most of us are aware of, yet how to source and prepare healthy ingredients is time consuming and expensive. It has become a privilege of the wealthy to have access to healthy, fresh ingredients.  At Flynn Creek Farm we are hoping to change that.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, my mother was a housewife convinced by marketers on the time saving benefits of canned and packaged food.  As a result, I grew up on sugary cereals and SpaghettiOs. She would cook a real meal from scratch on occasion (if you consider a Campbells cream of mushroom soup a natural ingredient), but when my father was away on business and it was just the two of us, I ate a lot of frozen dinners. Later, as a teenager and young adult struggling with weight gain, I was determined to take control of my diet. In the process I learned a great deal about nutrition, and an ensuing distrust of what I’d been raised on as well as what was offered in school cafeterias and college dining halls. The feeling that the system was conspiring against me combined with other factors and resulted in a debilitating eating disorder.

Even as I recovered from the worst parts of that illness, I continued to view the middle aisles of the grocery store as chemically laden junk marketed by men on Madison Avenue. The same men who touted the perfect female body made it almost impossible to be healthy.  It was the same patriarchal system that blinded the average consumer from knowing the truth about where food came from.

Fast forward to September 2023 and the elation I’m feeling as we harvest produce at Flynn Creek Farm and deliver it to Forage Kitchens, the small fast/casual restaurant chain that is our partner. Those baby seedlings we watered, put in the ground and took care of are being served in people’s grain and salad bowls.  It’s both the high quality of our veggies and our value of being  100% transparent that gives me great pleasure.  I remember that first team lunch meeting  at which we recognized our lettuce and cilantro in our salad bowls and, well we got a little giddy. An average consumer can walk into Forage restaurants, and for about $12, receive a meal packed with nutrition and grown with a lot of love. Even though this summer has been a pilot year, including all the start-up bumps in the road, sharing our food with the community has everyone really jazzed up and ending the season on a high.

We’ve embarked on this enterprise well aware that as Americans, we’ve been trained to have low standards around most meals. People are stretching a budget and extremely busy and, as a result, view eating as a way to get  full. We’re betting on the fact that delicious and nutritious will win in the end.  That’s this farmer’s side of the bargain at least, the rest depends on the consumer. When the topsoil, the community, and the climate are at stake, then eating locally is a no-brainer. Flynn Creek Farm hopes to convert consumers who care exclusively about great taste as well.

In addition to ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE I take this moment to recommend a couple of series and films that are streaming. CLARKSON’S FARM on Amazon Prime is one I’ve been both laughing along with and cringing with uncomfortable recognition.  For a less jocular insight into the food system, watch episodes of ROTTEN on Netflix or a documentary titled POISONED.  And don’t be intimidated by a 12 month family pledge to eat local, try it yourself for thirty days (preferably not during the dead of winter)!!

The Harvest

Despite the delays and the drought and the infrastructure challenges, the veggies were planted in the field. The beds were weeded, watered, and well-tended. For the past month beautiful produce has been harvested for Forage Kitchens, a local fast-casual chain of healthy restaurants.  Romaine, kale, basil, Thai basil, cilantro, parsley, peppers, salad mixes, green onions, fennel, and so many beautiful cucumbers! This all represents a proud moment on our farm, happily coinciding with nature’s o

verall abundance in August.  For me, there is something about the bird’s eye view of our maturing beds now brimming with foliage of different heights and colors, set against the neighboring hills of corn and hay that represents to me, a most beautiful work of art, a tableau of wholesome goodness.

 

It is harvest time for our commercial veggie crops by the farm crew, but we are also experiencing the overall abundance of late summer. It is August and the blueberries and blackberries are perfect for picking, black cherries are falling to the ground, mushrooms are begging to be foraged and there are edible greens everywhere. The other night we dined at a neighboring farm where the meal included wild spinach, dandelion greens, wild cherry tomatoes and foraged mushrooms. As city folk, John and I are overcome with the opportunity to reclaim our nutritional birthright. It is powerful and feeds our mission to produce nutritionally dense food for others, helping to make it the norm rather than the exception in our nation’s food system.

This summer I read ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver (long overdue for me and highly, highly recommended reading!!) which documents her family’s move from Arizona to a farm in Virginia and their commitment to eating locally for one year.  I love the term locavore as it connotes a diet based on what is regionally available and in season (unless of course, one has stores in the root cellar freezer.) It enhanced my excitement to eat off our land, on food from our neighbors or a nearby farm’s csa.  I have been waking up surrounded by the abundance of the harvest, feeling so much opportunity and optimism that our partnership with the land is working.

 

It may sound corny, but writing is similar to harvesting because in order to write regular blog posts like these, one must look back at a bevy of experiences and emotions, cultivating ideas and observing themes.  More than a journal of what is happenings on the farm, my aim is for these essays to make meaning – Why am I drawn to this place as if it is a magnet, and in my late fifties, to this lifestyle? People constantly ask do you have family in Wisconsin. And the answer is no, exactly why we are here is hard to explain, I see the confusion on their faces, would you understand that it had a lot to do with intuition? Maybe I’m drawn to the badassery of a self-reliant way of living where growing, sharing, and trading make trips to the grocery store less and less frequent. Maybe it is the constant learning, identifying plants and fruit trees as well as the varieties of weeds that love our fields, just experiencing the month to month changes, or maybe it is the array of daily challenges and the requisite problem solving. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a scientist or an “inventor,” and it seems like this is my life’s interpretation of that dream.

The barn at Flynn Creek Farm

Arriving

This essay was originally published on Medium.com

We allowed four days to drive from Park City to Verona, WI. It was actually three days of driving with a twenty-four hour stop in Denver to spend time with our daughter. The drive was necessary as we would need a car on the farm and it’s the easiest form of travel with a dog. It also provided the ability to transport some household niceties as well as boxes of books and paperwork. Then there’s the fact that John and I hadn’t done a road trip in a while and we were looking forward to it, as long the bulk of our time on the road occurs over a weekend when he has no work calls or stress, it is a good time.

But the four-day passage also seemed apropos for the enormity of this transition. From a place and time of planning out the farm to the farm itself, on the precipice of spring, nature coming to life, and a small crew of employees ready to report to work. My friend Jeffrey inspired me with a sentence in his novel in progress, “Arriving is an important part of any journey because that arrival will ripple out through the rest of your visit. So, think about how you want to arrive before you depart.”

The truth is, before departing I was keyed up, as I can get for the days leading up to any big event. There was the act of shutting down one home, making sure our car was in good shape, emptying the fridge, removing winter tires, collecting odds and ends. Trying to look into a crystal ball to predict what I would need. A future trip to New York City and Boston would complicate the packing, otherwise work pants and t-shirts were all I needed on the farm.

The construction of our greenhouse was behind schedule, and I was preparing for on-site supervision of a building project that was at the mercy of the municipal authorities as well as the weather, not sure which was more unpredictable or frustrating. And I must admit to the sense of doubt I was carrying. Doubt because our original budget was laughable, a cruel reminder of our naiveté. Doubt because, of course who were we to buy a farm, to move to a small town where people look at me side-eyed, counting the days until this was all a big failure.

Continue reading at Medium.com

 

 

Searching for The Middle Path

This essay was originally published on Medium.com

It’s my second winter living in Utah and we’ve received record breaking snow fall. Last year at this time, it felt like there would never be another real winter and as I write this with the calendar about to turn to April, it is snowing with a forecast for it to snow for the next 10 days and the temps are cold which means this white stuff isn’t melting anytime soon.

Of course, the skiers are ecstatic, we’ve had incredible conditions. But what has everyone really smiling is the respite it brings to our drought ridden state, for the filling reservoirs, even a few feet added back to the depth of the Great Salt Lake.

Reporters and state officials are quick to mention, however, one winter isn’t going to solve all our problems. We would need two or three similar winters to restore to pre-drought levels. But still, it is something. As the snowbanks around my house eclipse ten feet, I can’t help but wonder how it isn’t enough while also feeling like man, this is too much. It will cause springtime flooding and a diminished urgency around climate issues. Or should I eschew the negativity bias and try to see the record snowpack as evidence of earth’s abundance? The answer to our prayers?

Continue reading at Medium.com

A Well Balanced Diet of Story

This essay was originally published on Medium.com.

Human beings have a primal need for story not only because we desire entertainment but because story is what we use to make sense of the human experience. We are constantly assigning stories to people and situations; we even walk around believing a story about ourselves. Living in Park City, UT where I’ve come off ten days at the Sundance Film Festival, I have been thinking a lot about not only the stories in our heads but the stories we consume and the media through which we do it.

You might think as a novelist I would be biased toward the written word. At Sundance I watched so many good documentaries including It’s Only Life After All, Going Varsity in Mariachi, Food and Country, Feeding Tomorrow, and Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. Film documentaries really do deliver powerful insights into important issues, lesser known people and situations in an economical and powerful way. Great documentaries provide revelation, teaching about worlds we may not have known existed.

Great fiction, on the other hand, provides revelations about a world that is universal. I’m still a firm believer that when it comes to fiction, the book is always better than the movie. Or at least better than a feature length film. The ability to stream multi-episode series of a book adaption, however, provides adequate time to dwell in the nuance subtleties a good book provides. Take Fleischmann is in Trouble, for example — I loved it as much as I loved the book. Really looking forward to watching Daisy Jones and the Six when it comes out as a series as well!

Continue reading at Medium.com

Look For Me In Overalls

This essay was originally published on The Disruptive Quarterly.

The irony is that a year ago, I hadn’t set foot in the state of Wisconsin. So why, you might ask, am I sporting Carharts on a 420-acre farm outside Madison? The answer has something to do with that angsty, helpless feeling most of us experienced during COVID. I watched the “Kiss the Ground” documentary with my family one night, sparking a lengthy discussion about how to spend the rest of our lives. My husband and I have never been ones to envision solutions to the world’s problems through a high-tech lens, so there was something appealing about addressing “the root of the problem” or more specifically where the roots live, in the topsoil.

There is an urgency around addressing food health and equity as well as climate change, for sure, but in all honesty, there’s a deep seeded attraction this city girl has always felt toward understanding her food source. I was the young woman who distrusted the grocery store’s offerings as much as she distrusted the patriarchy. It was a feeling that would contribute to an overall anxiety around eating. As an adult, I’ve experimented with various healthy diets as well as cultivated an abundant vegetable garden for my family and friends. I share the bounty out of love, while also loving the sense of control it provides.

My husband leads the sustainability practice at a large consulting firm, but after watching that documentary, I challenged him to join me in getting our hands dirty. We sold our townhome in Boston and embarked on several cross-country drives, envisioning how we might go about this. Validation came in the form of like-minded people showing up on our path. We reconnected with a family friend who wanted to transition from chef to farmer and had some leads in Madison. Pretty soon, we were on a flight to Wisconsin to meet the founder of Forage Kitchens, a small but growing fast-casual concept that was interested in sourcing produce from a proprietary farm. Wow, a farmer and a customer, two pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.

Touring the driftless region October 2021 was magical. As I write this, it’s the same crisp time of year, and it’s a little surreal to be the CEO of Flynn Creek Farm. We’ve built a team busy master-planning our produce operation and regeneratively thinking about all the land, while also trying to introduce ourselves to the community. From hiring core team members, to meeting like-minded conservationists and foodies, to creating a bond with our permaculture farmer-realtor, who helped us find the perfect property, my intuition kept saying, “this is right” every step of the way. I am sure we’ll make plenty of mistakes, but the immediacy of the climate crisis and a diseased population make action so important. Can Flynn Creek Farm be a model for the future? Putting soil health first, giving farm managers a well-paid and balanced life, while growing affordable, delicious, nutrient dense food.

That’s the dream.

Stay tuned.

On the Diving Board

“Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too”

I’ve been hearing his song a lot lately, it comes on the radio or appears on a playlist as if to pick a scab, poke my my inner doubts. I have always loved “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks and the lyrics are feeling more relevant than ever.  Can I handle the seasons of my life?  A great question. For a woman approaching sixty, a mother, it’s easy to tie my life’s purpose to my children, wipe tears as they leave the nest, or as an athlete to face inevitable aches or physical limitations. The challenge is to allow life-defining chapters to end, to not be afraid of changing….

My son was graduating from his MBA program this spring and heading out on new adventures. During a recent drive, I said, “This is an exciting time, but don’t forget, transitions can be unsettling.” Who was I fooling? He was no longer a little kid whose teacher needed to give me practical advice on how to guide children from one school to the next.  Maybe he needed the reminder that change can bring up fear, but in all honesty, I was speaking those words to myself.

This time of my life sometimes referred to as “bridge years,” when kids are launched and out of the house, yet we aren’t sitting in rockers knitting sweaters or playing grandma.  It’s a shoulder season nobody really prepares you for. There was a time when people retired and lived on golf and bridge at age sixty.  What if you feel too young to be old? Is it presumptuous to want more? More time? More meaning?

So much in my life feels like a transition right now, and based on my discussions with peers, I am not alone. Those of us who are fortunate to have our health and bandwidth, there is still a lot we can do, but the fear comes when trying to figure it out. We had a lot of time to think, to work up righteous indignation during the pandemic. Now the question is, will we act on those ideas? Will we seize the learnings from that major life disruption and become new people?

Like Nahshon, who is the first jew to jump into the red sea before it parts and the Egyptians are in hot pursuit, it takes a literal leap of faith to leave behind what could be very comfortable and take on a new challenge. 

I’m here to say to others who also feel nagging self-doubt, I am on the diving board.

Please join me.