Lifestyle Archives - Jeanne Blasberg

The Story

February 21st, 2025/0 Comments

One of the best things about living in Park City during January is the opportunity to attend the Sundance Film Festival. Because story occupies my imagination, because the festival is relocating after the 2026 edition and because our son came out to attend, we went all-in. Features, Docs, Shorts… the full gamut. Maybe it’s a Gen X thing, and I’m missing the cultural moment – just as the Super Bowl half time show went right over my head – but I noticed a common theme with many of the thirty-something protagonists in the feature films. It was like the anti-RomCom has become genre with characters resisting romantic relationships, really struggling with love and commitment. Left me sad. I found this to be true in “Oh, Hi!,” “Magic Farm,” “Bubble & Squeak,” “The Wedding Banquet,” and for quite different reasons, “Ricky.” Another takeaway: what I found hilarious, many people found disturbing…. Hmmm….

Charlie and I in front of the iconic Egyptian Theatre, where Robert Redford began screening the Sundance Film Festival 41 years ago!!

We put aside the star-gawking for the first Saturday of Sundance, and John and I attended a full day of FOODTANK screenings and panel discussions. A beautiful integration of my loves – storytelling and regenerative farming… FOOD TANK is an organization that recognizes the power of story and visual media to educate, inform, and propel change in the food system. With so much of the population living in cities and detached from agriculture, it’s important to show people what is happening on the front lines! Check out the trailers of the following powerful films that were showcased: “Common Ground,’ “Generation Growth,” “Strange Little Fruit,” “Farming While Black,” “Café Y Aves,” and “From the Heartland.”

Most of what we buy and consume is wrapped in story – either the ones told by the media, our communities, or the ones we tell ourselves. I’ve always realized the importance of telling Flynn Creek Farm’s story not only with words in these blogs and other essays, but with film. We aim to give an honest accounting of our failures and successes and to be very transparent about what starting a commercial farm takes. Who knows, maybe somebody will watch and become inspired….I may have mentioned that viewing “Kiss the Ground” one evening during COVID is what pushed John and I over the edge. This is a recent video showing the January/February mood on our farm…… but as of this writing, the barn and silo have come down!!

Over the farm’s first three years in our care, we have documented many impressions as well as changes to the land. We’ve interviewed our team members because the farm’s story is unique to each of us. Each one of us, for various reasons, is searching for meaning in this place and trying to make a difference.

If you want to be part of the story… mark your calendar 🙂 I wrote more about it in last month’s newsletter….

Recent Read:

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks:

One of those books that is both wonderful and gutting at the same time. To read Brooks’ recent release documenting the loss of her husband of thirty-five years at the age of sixty was like a cannonball to the stomach. I am fortunate to be in a long marriage and approaching the age of sixty, and this very concise memoir drove home the message to not take tomorrow for granted, to prepare for death and to get one’s story down in whatever form has meaning for you. It is a beautiful tale of loss while chronicling a true and deep love. I am grateful for Brooks wisdom in capturing what our society shuns – death and a permission to grieve. So much for a culture that expects mourners to “get over it and get on with it,” Brooks allows herself time and space to wallow and in so doing offers the reader the same opportunity. For lovers of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion….

The Moon

February 21st, 2025/0 Comments

Greetings Readers and Friends,

I’m sending warm wishes of light – both internal and external – on this darkest day of the year. Even though the news has been full of drone sightings in the night sky and people taking notice, I would argue we don’t look up enough. That includes me. In prior years, it was because my night sky was diffused by ambient city lights, but possibly more-so because I wasn’t in the right mindset. Similar to a disconnection from my food source, I was oblivious to the power of the moon, chalking up early civilization’s reliance on moon phases to guide activity and to create our first calendars as primitive.

December 15, 2024 the Full Spirit Moon rising in Park City, UT

Now that I’m living in the Wasatch mountains of Utah during the winter and on our farm in Wisconsin during the summer, much has changed. First of all, it’s easier to admire constellations and the moon against a black night sky. But it’s more than admiration. While researching the different facets of holistic farming, I’m getting enlightened as to the importance of the moon’s pull. Once only noticeable to me by the extreme tides we experienced in Rhode Island, I now appreciate the moon’s effect on everything containing water, ie all living things including the soil.

Performing farming activities in sync with natural forces and the phases of the moon is said to improve outcomes. On a personal level, opportunities for creativity, productivity, and well-being also vary with the phases of the moon. Simply put, the new moon is a time to reflect and set intentions, energy builds during the waxing moon with opportunities to forge relationships and accomplish tasks, culminating in peak energy at the full moon (as well as peak emotion), and during the waning phases of the moon, it is time to let go, regroup, and purify.

Do you consider my modern reach for a Moon Calendar app to be in conflict with a goal of connecting to nature?

To pay better attention to the moon, I’ve begun drawing its phase at the top of my daily journal entry. I also check in with apps that both suggest where farming efforts might be best spent each day as well as personal opportunities. Our culture likes to type-cast the moon as dark and spooky, associated with fear, superstition and danger. A bum rap…. Consider the following list of all the Moon influences by seventeenth century astrologer William Lilly:

Body, emotions, moods, changeability, memory, ethereal, habits, rhythms, down bearing, cold, moist and phlegmatic, organs with contained spaces, feelings, basic needs, your mother, mothering, yin, astrological sign of cancer, stomach, breasts, lungs, meninges of brain, all bodies of water, the stomach and linings of internal organs, the moon rules round things, figures, like our bodies. Moon is related to Sulfur, Pluto, Monday is Moon Day, round vegetables, cabbages, pomegranate, coconuts, trailing plants such as melons, cucumber, corn, salty things, milk and dairy products, sweets, pearls, emerald, moonstone, ducks, cranes, herons, silver metal and white color, Frogs, the Otter, Snails, Midwives, Nurses, Queens, Countesses, Ladies, all manner of Women; as also the common People, messengers, The Moon holds memories, even lifetimes ago, imprinting on mothers, the subconscious, our emotions, and psychology.

Despite not looking to the night sky as often as I should have, I love the moon as a metaphor in literature, even tapping it to symbolize feminine cycles in my 2017 novel, EDEN and ever so slightly in its sequel, DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE. I am currently in a literature class studying JANE EYRE by Charlotte Brontë. This classic novel uses multiple moon references and imagery to represent change, the maternal spirit, and (sometimes irrational) feminine power.

But I digress. Back to farming… because I sense many of you are more interested in this new adventure of mine 🙂

….Since 1818 the FARMER’S ALMANAC has been a staple in agricultural homes. Its list of ‘gardening according to the moon’ includes categories such as: plant aboveground crops, plant root crops, transplant, plant seedbeds, plant flowers, kill plant pests.

…. And in the introduction to her wonderful guide (above), THE CELESTIAL GARDEN: GROWING HERBS, VEGETABLES, AND FLOWERS IN SYNC WITH THE MOON AND ZODIAC, renowned Wisconsin herbalist and medicinal plant grower, Jane Hawley Stevens writes, “Timing is everything. Celestial gardening …. is a tangible practice that can help us engage in the larger energy that supports life. When there is too much to accomplish in a day, practicing celestial [farming] guides you to the open doors so you don’t waste time bumping into the closed ones. The idea of making choices based on the phase of the Moon may seem a little irrational, but [farmers] throughout time and across many cultures have found that [working] by the Moon is a practical tool that can improve our [yield] as well as our daily lives. There is much guidance from Nature that we simply overlook. The Sun and Moon are two of the most direct and accessible natural forces that we can consult to help us experience greater ease and joy in everything.”

A similar philosophy founded in Austria a century ago, Biodynamic Farming, can be incredibly prescriptive with regard to working in concert with nature and celestial activity, drilling down to even the time of day best suited for certain activities. Maria Thun, an early adapter of this movement, was full of pronouncements such as “…plants of which we eat the leaves should be sowed, hoed and cultivated on leaf days, that is, on a Water sign (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) and that onions should be sown on leaf days if they were to be eaten fresh in the summer and not stored. Leaf development is stronger with plants sown when the Sun is in Pisces, that is February 19 to March 20. But for later crops of greens, planting when the Sun is in Cancer, June 21 to July 22, when the Moon is also in a water sign.” WOW….

flynncreekfarm

A post shared by @flynncreekfarm

I’m curious about your thoughts on these philosophies? What is your favorite phase of the Moon? A crescent moon? A full moon? Do you try to live in concert with the moon?

Recent Reads:

RENTAL HOUSE which I reviewed in New York Journal of Books

I have become a great fan of Miranda July. Her latest novel, ALL FOURS, is a big hit. after finishing it, I wanted more and read her debut, THE FIRST BAD MAN. So original, hysterical characters, and premises.

I want to reward readers who make it to the end with a holiday gift!! The first three readers who reply to this email with the word “MOON” will receive a signed copy of DaUGHTER OF A PROMISE. I will let you know if you are a winner and get your mailing address (US mailing addresses only).

I Would Meet You Anywhere by Susan Kiyo Ito

November 26th, 2024/0 Comments

I Would Meet You Anywhere by Susan Ito

A well-written and powerful memoir – not just about a young woman’s quest to reunite with her birth family, but her vulnerability and willingness to subjugate her emotional needs in order to maintain a relationship with them. Susan Kiyo writes in a clear and sharp style and offers through her writing a warning for all people to not subject themselves to narcissistic, emotional tyranny.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

November 26th, 2024/0 Comments

I loved the way this story unfolds. Set in a farming community in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, families come together in sorrow and financial hardship in a novel that is full of wonderful characters as well as literary references. An awful accident occurred before the action of the novel begins however, the haunting ramifications of that night ripple into everything. The reader becomes increasingly aware that the details of the accident must

be reckoned with just as the farmers’ increasing use of chemical-rich farming practices. The characters are living in a toxic place – both environmentally and emotionally. In addition, the novel is set during the 2008/2009 financial crisis adding additional stress and sub-plots. This novel was powerful and entertaining in equal measure.

Review of RENTAL HOUSE by Weike Wang

November 26th, 2024/0 Comments

This review of Rental House by Weike Wang was originally published in the New York Journal of Books.

Rental House by Weike Wang

Reviewed by:

Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg

“throws out traditional expectations and homogeneity and relies on determination and compassion to make random pieces of a puzzle crazily connect.”

Rental Houseexplores a young couple’s marriage and what keeps them together despite the baggage they carry from their families of origin. It is a lovely, literary novel, set around two extended vacations, five years apart. Messily reckoning with their upward mobility, Keru and Nate escape Manhattan first by renting a vacation home on Cape Cod and later in the Catskills, with an obligatory hosting of family each time. With humor and insight, Wang stretches out domestic entanglements and studies cultural differences by contrasting the two sets of parents. Just as with real-life extended stays with parents and in-laws,Rental Houseis not so much about the action, but the hilarious subtext.

To give the relationship context, Wang seamlessly intersperses the action with backstory. Keru and Nate meet by happenstance at a college Halloween party. She is post-break-up, determined not to wallow in misery, and seeks out fun in her dorm. “There were parties on every floor, this person told her, slumped against a banister, already drunk. She went down a random hall, through a random open door, and into a random room that had loud music, a large crowd, and a guy in a corner strapped to a homemade shark fin, dancing poorly by himself.” Despite the randomness of everything leading up to their coupling, their union and extended family reads as inevitable, even representative of the times. Keru asks Nate at the same party, “I have no family connections or generational wealth. But I’m determined to build a life worth the trials it took my parents and me to get here. You with me, Nate the great white?”

She is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who never assimilated in their home state of Minnesota. “[They] had voluntarily left a place of many Asians for a place with few. In their minds, too many Asians in an area was not ideal, and could only draw dissent or hate from the locals, as inLook, here comes another overqualified Asian to steal a specialized job that no one really wants.”

Nate is from rural Appalachia, “a poor white from nowhere and the first in his family to go to college.” He shuns his parents’ wish for him to be a lawyer—“Won’t it be nice to have a lawyer in the family?”—and enters academia. Keru works in consulting, becoming the marriage’s primary earner. She is an only child who vacillates between rebuffing a bigger family and craving one. They decide not to have children, withstanding judgment by their contemporaries and their family, and instead heap their nurturing affection on a large sheep dog named Mantou.

Wang’s concise language and sharp observations culminate in numerous humorous scenes. While prepping the Cape rental for the parents to descend, “Another topic was whose parents were more difficult. Each side made a strong case for their own, but this was pure anxiety talking and the answer didn’t really matter.” Keru’s family arrives first, having driven nonstop fully masked and gloved, inspecting the safety of the home before being willing to enter. “Nate’s presence went mostly unacknowledged.” The history is that before Keru’s father blessed their engagement he insisted Nate be debt-free. “You are not to marry into this family until they have paid off every cent of that debt themselves. We are not here to bail them out.” From there Keru had three options. She and Nate could break up or elope, or she could use her own savings, the entirety of it, to pay off his loan in full.” She pays it herself, and when she tells her father the debt is gone, he says, “His parents came through, didn’t they? For Keru’s father did not believe in the existence of an entrenched white family without money, and Keru had given up convincing him otherwise.”

When it was Nate’s parent’s turn to visit, the conversation was dominated by his mother’s circumspect racism. “While Nate and Keru were still dating, she also had questions: What kind of immigrants are they, what kind of Chinese people? Are they Christians? Do they believe in God? Did they enter the country the right way? Are her parents citizens? Is Keru a citizen? Do they feel more American or Chinese? Do they speak Chinese around you? Do they know you don’t understand Chinese? Have you asked? How is that offensive? You just explain, very politely, that we speak only English around Keru and expect Keru to speak only English around us.”

Five years later, approaching Keru’s 40th birthday, their marriage is in a slump and they rent in the Catskills. Keru is the one to make all the plans. “[She] had set out to make money and that was what she’d done, but more and more she sensed that Nate resented her for making money, even though this money helped both them and his mother. Money was her shield, how she measured her worth, and unwilling to stop making it, Keru weighed how much resentment she could stand.”

The pressures she lives with does have an escape valve in her quirky propensity to spontaneously hurl objects ranging from coasters at the Halloween party, to rocks in the direction of bathers on the beach, to an axe laden with a flaming piece of wood into the kitchen of the Cape rental. By the time they are in the Catskills, Keru can turn her rage on and off, recognizing that throwing her phone and smashing it “against a quartz countertop until the screen turns to confetti” would only result in having to “go to the Apple store and make up some story about how her phone was run over by a car.”

Despite different backgrounds that could grow into great obstacles, Keru and Nate have unique yet complementary childhood wounds. Their wounds and quirks keep them together, exemplifying a new “American family”: one that throws out traditional expectations and homogeneity and relies on determination and compassion to make random pieces of a puzzle crazily connect.

If you enjoyed Jeannie’s review of Colored Television, read more of her book reviews on her blog, on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or on the New York Journal of Books. For more TBR inspiration, check out Jeannie’s curated book lists at Bookshop.org and Shepherd.com.

The Setting

November 26th, 2024/0 Comments

The end of October was marked by the Boston Book Festival where I got to schmooze with our non-fiction keynote as well as present DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE at a panel discussion on coming-of-age novels. Around the same time, I learned DOAP won the 2024 American Book Festival Award for Best Literary Fiction!

With Malcolm Gladwell (photo courtesy of Mike Ritter) and my Boston Book Festival panel with Henriette Lazaridis, Caroline Leavitt, moderated by Jessica Keener

After a flurry of bookish and social activity in Boston, John and I returned to Wisconsin and huddled with our team to discuss 2024 accomplishments as well as priorities for Flynn Creek Farm’s 2025 growing season. We have many exciting initiatives in store! I have taken the lead coordinating construction projects and infrastructure installation – and one I’m particularly excited about is the restoration of our barn.

A barn is a critical component of a farm’s setting. Readers of my novels know how much I love to write setting, and I’m sensitive to its importance in real life as well! I treat setting as I would a character. Whether a swanky summer cottage dubbed EDEN, the campus of Dunning Academy in THE NINE, or even the island of Manhattan in DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE, my settings are more than a backdrop for the action. They contribute to the underlying themes of the book by interacting with the human characters in a way that impacts their psyches. You may have a home or a place in your life that functions as such … At Flynn Creek Farm, our old red barn greets people as they first pull off the road and she has been crying out to be spruced up in order to play a more integral role in our operations (and our story).

She’s a classic old dairy barn. Her foundation dates back to the early 1900’s

Barns are iconic structures in agricultural landscapes, especially those with rich dairy heritages like Wisconsin’s. They traditionally represented prosperity, steaming with the livestock that constituted a farmer’s wealth, literally housing a farm’s most valuable assets. Sadly, while driving around our region, I’ve observed many barns in disrepair. Now, they are more of a symbol of endurance as they age and list, even sag. Our neighbor’s was white and very large and beautiful from a distance, but it had become a hazard and this summer he finally tore it down as mandated by his insurance company.

Once a dairy barn, ours was converted with stalls for horses. She had been used most recently for storage although overrun with rodents, barn swallows, bats, and wasps. In 2023, our crew tried to reclaim the space and began cleaning her out, only to discover the interior stalls were coated with lead paint.

John and I rented the strongest power washer we could find and spent one weekend blasting off the lead paint ourselves.

This winter, we plan to take her down to the foundation, creating a structure that both honors her past, while accommodating Flynn Creek Farm’s specific needs. Fingers crossed all goes as planned, but if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s that construction comes with surprises. With a heart full of faith and a wonderful construction team, we hope to be raising a new barn in early 2025!!

We’ll be honoring her magnificent post-and-beam architecture. I want standing in the new barn to feel like being in the belly of a whale or maybe even a cathedral.

I’ve been taking a class on Flannery O’Connor’s short stories and I imagine the barn in “Good Country People” where Hulga and the Bible salesman climb a ladder into a loft and lie against a hay bale, “a wide sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles slating over them” to be just like the upper story of our barn pictured above. That got me thinking about other barns in literature… obviously, most of CHARLOTTE’S WEB is set in a barn, and John Steinbeck uses barns in many of his novels, OF MICE AND MEN coming to mind first and foremost. Are there stories or novels that you’ve enjoyed that feature barns prominently?

why-farming-flynn-creek-farm-beet-harvest

Why Farming? Looking Back to Move Forward

August 27th, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Why Farming? Looking Back to Move Forward” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

Last month’s newsletter addressed “Why Wisconsin?” but I probably should have answered this one first, “Why Farming?”

There are many possible answers …. some I use to satisfy people who need a logical explanation because the truth to “why farming?” is still slowly revealing itself. Would it make sense if I told you John and I had an idea, and given our health, energy and resources felt prepared for an ambitious next act, so we took the leap into something we knew embarrassingly little about, only to later understand why it was meant to be?

Writing and publishing has inured me to fear and helped me develop very personal definitions around what is success and what is failure. Writing and farming both require listening and openness, both require approaching the world with a creative mindset.

THE ILLUMINATION CODE by Kim Chestney encourages finding spaciousness and stillness in order to connect with your innate wisdom and intuition. During COVID, we achieved something akin to that right brain focus while driving thousands of miles around the country, imagining our future. In her book, Chestney makes the point we are all connected by universal energy and a piece of each of us simply knows… everything. She explains “When you activate your connection to the nonlocal dimension, you open up your faculties of sensing, thinking and feeling as channels for expansive information sharing. In this way, the universe becomes a kind of guide, constantly course correcting toward its implicit truth.” I don’t mean to claim farming is our truth, but we are becoming more and more certain it is a critical next step on our path.

Listen:

Many have stopped reading by now or are shaking their heads, but I believe it requires a rearview mirror perspective to comprehend the plan. Also, it requires an understanding that our journeys are not linear. So, while it is extremely validating to feel healing and peace on the farm at present, there were also clues in my past that I can now point to:

An obsession with my vegetable garden and growing food for my family
the way references to Madison, WI inexplicably made my ears perk up as, it was more than a curious sensation, but something inside that said “take note.” It was the same when my husband told me we had the opportunity to move to Switzerland. In my mind’s eye I already knew it was going to happen.
John and I talking for decades about starting a business in the health and wellness space, or the food space, or creating healthy consumer products, maybe something plant based….
A lack of trust in the food system, lending to a dysfunctional relationship with food.
A deep concern for the environment,
As a little girl, dreaming of being a scientist, of inventing something and conducting experiments.
Vegetarianism becoming more than a dietary choice for me. It now feels political as well as spiritual.
And then there’s the fact that I am most happy problem solving as part of a team… This solitary writing life comes with a price 🙂

Listen:

In another recent read, Alicia Kennedy’s NO MEAT REQUIRED: THE CULTURAL HISTORY & CULINARY FUTURE of PLANT-BASED EATING, I learned the term “Ecofeminism.” It gels with my sense that women will be the ones to lead the way out of this broken food system and environmental crisis. Making another point, Kennedy asserts, “The food that is broadly consumed in our country is created to fulfill the desires of capitalism not our bodies, with no regard for the long term health consequences.” Becoming a farmer is a productive and positive way to take a stand against industrial, corporate farming in favor of regional, seasonal food systems that emphasizes biodiversity and dignified lives for farmers.

Listen:

Interestingly, I’ve come to think of my writing career as the necessary gateway into farming. Writing and publishing has inured me to fear and helped me develop very personal definitions around what is success and what is failure. Writing and farming both require listening and openness, both require approaching the world with a creative mindset. Being close to the land offers daily ways to be creative, take our diet for example—it is incredible how much on our farm can be foraged for meals, not to mention how a bumper crop of zucchini or tomato has us brainstorming ways to preserve and prepare. We are constantly addressing challenges – a day something doesn’t break on a farm is an unusually great day! The generosity in a rural setting is heart-warming. I am in awe of the people I have met in my new community: independent, self-reliant geniuses who look out for one another. In this setting, I am a complete beginner which is very rejuvenating.

I conclude with a plug for a new writing project (it’s relevant!!) :

on-being-jewish-now-anthology-zibby-owens-jeanne-blasberg-essays

Honored to have an essay included in this powerful anthology

To preorder or learn more about ON BEING JEWISH NOW

It’s relevant because the passage below, although meant to be taken metaphorically, is one I have always been drawn to in our liturgy. It recalls our ancestors’ agrarian mindset and expresses a Jewish value I aim to live by:

And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.

Listen:

COME SEE ME:

On Tour with DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE:

Sept 7/8 Printer’s Row Literary Festival, Chicago, IL

September 29, The Brooklyn Book Festival Brooklyn, NY

October 26, The Boston Book Festival. Boston, MA

and TALKING FARMING:

October 12, National Farmer’s Day, Flynn Creek Farm is one of the sponsors of the COMMON GROUND screening and will have a table at Monona Terrace in Madison, WI

books-think-like-an-ecosystem-mary-oliver-devotions-celestial-garden-jeanne-blasberg-why-farming

Great companions on our recent boat trip

jeanne-blasberg-holding-book-daughter-of-a-promise-in-westerly-rhode-island--inspiration-for-long-harbor-in-front-of-the-ocean

Why Wisconsin? Inheritance, Migration, and Finding Home

July 24th, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Why Wisconsin? Inheritance, Migration, and Finding Home” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

wisconsin-minnesota-ice-hockey-UW-badgers

UW vs Minnesota Men’s Ice Hockey, January 2024

It’s a question I get a lot these days. “Do you or John have family in Wisconsin?”

People seem truly puzzled about our migration when I explain never having set foot into the state until three years ago… that we had been searching for a way to get into farming when we reconnected with an old family friend who encouraged us to visit Madison. One thing led to another, and we trusted the opportunities that kept showing up on our path. We love where we’ve landed, the rolling hills and water, the food culture, and the civic pride.

I’m one of those people who can’t easily answer the question, “Where are you from?” And, “Why Wisconsin?” follows suit, but the question has had me reflecting on my weird relationships with place…

My first novel, EDEN, is about a family’s devotion to their summer tradition, specifically a matriarch’s dedication to a home and the small seaside town where her family goes back for generations. I wrote it from a desk in such a community, feeling the outsider, while observing and envying the generational ties I witnessed all around.

A recent visit to the Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI to discuss DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE. This place was the inspiration for Long Harbor, a setting featured in all three of my novels.

A few months before EDEN’s publication, John and I traveled to Iceland where we spent a day with a guide named Thor. At the end of an adventurous afternoon, he showed us a plaque with a picture of farmers. “These are my ancestors, and this was their farm,” he said.

“How long has your family been in Iceland?” I asked. It’s the type of question that rolls off my tongue naturally, or maybe any American’s tongue, but he looked at me confused. I realized my foolishness when he answered, “My family has always been in Iceland, since the beginning.”

jeanne-blasberg-iceland-trip-travel-couple-with-waterfall

Exploring Iceland in 2017

Much as DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE’s protagonist, Betsabé, wonders what her outlook would have been if she’d been raised differently, I never got over Thor’s reply. How might my human experience have been shaped if I’d felt such a connection to one specific place? If I walked the same land as my ancestors since the beginning of time! Before my grandparents, I don’t have much knowledge of the places my ancestors lived.

The closest thing for me was when John and I moved to Boston in 1994. I looked forward to living in a city where his family was established, where our last name meant something. Upon meeting me, people would ask, “Oh, are you related to Arthur? Are you married to his son?”

And I would answer “Yes,” and when they asked which son I was married to, the simplest reply was “Not the doctor.”

At that time in my life, stability was medicine. It was healing to raise our children with a sense of tradition which included schools, a congregation, and “our” beloved Chinese restaurant, three generations gathered around a large round table in the corner, spinning a Lazy Susan’s bounty, sharing a weekly feast. I made the city home for twenty-five years, interrupted only by a three-year stint in Switzerland.

I once considered my parents’ moving around as unfortunate, New York, Newport Beach, Dallas, Naples, as preventing my feeling connected to any one place. I’m sure others can resonate. Our country is one of immigrants or descendants of immigrants, with brave stories that make mine sound frivolous. There is something distinctly American about moving. (According to the US Census Bureau, about 1 in 10 people move every year. In 2022, about 8.2 million people moved between states.)

flynn-creek-carm-wisconsin-organic-regenerative-agriculture-farming-tomatoes

The beauty of tomatoes ready to burst at Flynn Creek Farm, July 2024

At the age of 58, I consider my willingness and ability to move a blessing. I think of the perspective that comes with being a stranger in a new land as character building. I know COVID inspired many people to move and also made moving possible. For example, we landed in Utah in the winter of 2021 although to a mixed reception. Salt Lake City and Park City represent a region with limited natural resources and a massive influx of people. Montrose Township, Wisconsin with its population of 1,100, however, was a different story. Although many in our new community can’t quite figure out why we’re here, most are pleased we are preserving 420 acres as agricultural, even if our regenerative, organic veggie farming might have them scratching their heads.

Why Wisconsin? I don’t have a logical answer, but as crazy as it seems, in all of my uprootedness, this place feels like a place to blossom. If you’ve made a move or have a point of view on moving, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!!

If you enjoyed Jeannie’s recommendations of COVID novels, read more of her book reviews on her blog, on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or on the New York Journal of Books. For more TBR inspiration, check out Jeannie’s curated book lists at Bookshop.org and Shepherd.com.

jeanne-blasberg-flynn-creek-farm-produce-field

I’m okay with not knowing… or at least that’s what I tell myself.

June 24th, 2024/0 Comments

This essay originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

A beautiful view of one of Flynn Creek Farm’s produce fields

I need to revise last month’s newsletter in which I kvetched about my struggles with agricultural vocabulary…. because you were probably smart enough to discern the subtext – that I’ve been striving to absorb, whether it be through classes, video, apps or books, what I lack in experience. Afraid of being an imposter…. of not being taken seriously… at the root of it… fear.

jeanne-blasberg-white-buddha-statue-surrender

This Buddha on my dresser is a reminder that worrying and planning are futile… do I pay attention? No.

Thank you to friends who have reminded me of the grace in being WILLING NOT TO KNOW, to rely on and trust my colleagues to guide the process as experts in their fields, confident I am bringing my own unique skills to the party. Thank you to the farmer who assured me at dinner last night that it’s okay to not understand why the fireflies do what they do, just enjoy the mystery.

The NOT KNOWING also pertains to where I am going to be. Friends ask, “How much time will you be spending ______” (insert on the farm, in Rhode Island, or in Park City) And despite the fact I was once like Becca Meister in EDEN, a devotee to sacred summer traditions, I have to respond that I will be wherever I need to be. So if you see me IRL, let’s not put off that cup of coffee.

I feel remiss in not having cited this work earlier as I devoured it while camping with my daughter during her final weeks of #vanlife. It went right to my bloodstream and I took its wisdom for granted, but this is a paradigm shifting piece of writing if there ever was one….

All kidding aside, THIS IS NOT EASY FOR ME!! Acknowledging and working through my planning and controlling issues has been a lifelong challenge. Any child of an addict knows what I am talking about. I grew up without being able to trust a situation and invested myself in the art of worrying like I could sway an outcome. I have a deep seated (or shouldn’t it be deep-seeded??) yearning for certainty in a world that continues to laugh in my face. (Even so, as I write about the need to NOT KNOW everything, I am about to binge watch Season 3 of Clarkson’s Farm – yes I’ve read tons of books, but in all honesty I’ve learned a ton watching this show!!)

What better way to practice surrender than to immerse myself in an endeavor reliant on the weather? What a better place for me to recover from past trauma than on a farm? As Robin Kimmerer wrote in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, “As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” No truer words.

My own writing reiterates the qualities I want to embody. The protagonist of DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE, Betsabé Ruiz, is broken open to her innate wisdom in the novel’s final chapters. She quotes Gabriel Garcia Márquez saying, “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, ….life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.” And so with each self-induced rebirth, I am hopefully hatching a more enlightened, worry-free version of Jeannie.

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, ….life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.” —Gabriel Garcia Márquez

berries-in-a-collander-on-flynn-creek-farm-a-reminer-of-not-knowing

Foraged mulberries mixed in with raspberries from bushes planted last summer.

I’m on the farm after a week of book events and family celebrations. I will kayak Madison’s beautiful waterways, celebrating the Strawberry Full Moon and the summer solstice. I will pick many pounds of mulberries, making syrups and pesto from the basil and garlic in the field. I will spend more nights in the yurt, listening to the coyotes while possibly worrying a little bit for the goats. We are blessed.

And you are too…. My latest novel might be a 23-year-old’s coming-of-age-story, but aren’t we all always coming of age? And even better when we we are re-birthing ourselves by leaps and bounds.

As always, I am appreciative of your kind replies and if you are so inclined, spreading the news of my novel and posting an online review!! If you are anywhere near Watch Hill on July 1, please come to the Ocean House! I will be there in the flesh!!

Learning a New Language: The Lexicon of the Farm

June 1st, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Learning a New Language: The Lexicon of the Farm” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

It’s no surprise to learn I love language, but what if I told you I’ve been struggling with new vocabulary? … the lexicon of the farm.

I’m back on the farm after an action-packed ten days in Boston! I attended GrubStreet’s Muse & The Marketplace and and taught a craft session on Making Ancient Texts Your Own, in other words, writing retellings. GrubStreet and Porter Square Books hosted a launch party for Daughter of a Promise at the Calderwood Writers’ Stage. (If you missed it, you can watch a replay on my YouTube channel!) I attended book clubs and galas where my book was featured and had the joy of discussing my novel’s themes at Temple Israel, Boston. The best part, as always, was reconnecting with friends: the dinners, walks, and squash games!!

jeanne-blasberg-book-events-daughter-of-a-promise-boston-may-2024

Party in the Park, Kathy Sherbrooke and me on the Grub Street stage, a favorite bookclub!!

I returned to Wisconsin in time to experience tornado warnings and bunkering in our basement. Phew, our newly arrived sheep are okay, but the storms will be a topic for a future essay, because today I planned to write about language. It’s no surprise to learn I love language, but what if I told you I’ve been struggling with new vocabulary? It’s not during my Spanish lessons, or with the NYT crossword puzzle, but the lexicon of the farm.

I can’t be too hard on myself, as it’s coming with firehose velocity: new names, terms, and expressions. The most sacred, in my opinion, belong to the birds I’ve identified using Cornell’s Merlin app. I record their songs every morning to catalog who’s passing through our prairie. Today I added a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher to the list. (Have a listen.) The idea is that consistent, albeit amateur data collection will show our land management techniques are leading to increased biodiversity, with birds as a bellwether.

Great forage for our new sheep, spring status of veggie beds, our new Dorpers

amy-tan-the-backyard-bird-chronicles-book

You will be blown away by Tan’s illustrations

Literary tangent – I am absolutely adoring Amy Tan’s new release The Backyard Bird Chronicles in which she writes, “…my impulse to observe birds comes from the same one that led me to become a fiction writer. By disposition, I am an observer. I want to know why things happen… I am drawn to see details, patterns, and aberrations that suggest a more interesting truth….”

Tan’s words resonated with me. (I was jumping in my seat, thinking me too! me too!) During the pandemic, many of us reconnected with nature, as a result birding may be at an all-time high. For my list-oriented brain, observing and identifying animals feels like a comfortable portal into a life on the land. Along with birds, I’m identifying plants (and weeds) using the Seek app from iNaturalist. I’ve gotten to the stage where I quiz myself as I walk about. The only problem is that plants look different every couple of days!!

It’s not just fluency I’m after but a need to communicate.

It’s not just fluency I’m after, but a need to communicate. Interacting with our farm managers, our crew, our neighbors, consultants in forestry and landscaping, earth movers and engineers can feel like listening to insiders’ shorthand with me interrupting every few sentences for a translation. These folks are competent regarding not only flora and fauna but with regard to the names of the tools, farming methods, farm vehicles, tractors and all the implements that are attached to them.

My neighbor to the north has owned her farm for decades, home-birthed her five children there, raised animals, drives tractors, and takes midnight joy rides in her gator during the full moon. She rattles off the names of every berry, shrub, and edible mushroom, solutions for weed suppression, when to mow to eradicate them. I’m like the person who was supposed to take six months of intensive Berlitz before heading off on a foreign assignment, yet as in any decent nightmare, I’ve arrived in the strange land where my mouth moves and no sound comes out. My neighbor kindly changes the topic from foraging for morels to her favorite restaurants in town.

Three images: brown oblong morel mushrooms in a bowl, a bright green field and feel red-purple flowers, a dozen eggs in different colors in a cardboard egg carton

Favorite springtime farm features include foraged morels, the color of the prairie, and fresh turkey eggs from our wonderful neighbor (also she found the morels!!)

Let’s face it, knowing the lingo is the first step toward shedding the feeling of imposter, somebody who’s landed on a beautiful piece of Wisconsin farmland without a clue. And just when I think I’m making headway, I’m on a walk with a logger and refer to the cedar grove as the cyprus grove and lose all credibility. I can talk the talk in a domesticated, cultivated garden, but a regenerative farm is all about knowing what is indigenous and what is invasive and culling out the latter.

…learning this language is not purely academic: it goes hand in hand with getting dirty.

Topics I have blundered my way through in the past two years: The engineering of wells and stormwater retention ponds, paths of erosion, grading, and gravel. Solar power and battery storage, compost and chicken manure, fencing, cover crop and crop cover, high tunnels, caterpillar tunnels, transplants, seedlings, cold houses and hot houses, seed variety, skid steers, water wheel transplanters and rinse conveyors. Every construction project in my past involved professionals whose job it was to take care of the pesky details. But a responsible agricultural steward (me) needs to be on top of all the above. I now find myself in a community of extremely self-reliant people where one’s street cred goes way down when the amount of horsepower for each of your tractors isn’t on the tip of your tongue.

a-sand-county-almanac-by-aldo-leopold-book-cover

A lyrical classic

brent-preston-the-new-farm-our-ten-years-on-the-front-lines-of-the-good-food-revolution-book-cover

A funny book. You’d be crazy to get into farming after reading it!

the-unsettling-of-america-culture-and-agriculture-by-wendell-barry-book-cover

An agitating treatise

While I may have once pictured myself reading Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry, canning tomatoes, preserving berries, meditating to birdsong, and doing yoga on our screened porch, learning this new language is not purely academic: it goes hand in hand with getting dirty. As I manager the tension between experiencing the bucolic and doing the work… I remember Amy Tan’s mantra to “be the bird.”

Do you operate in a world with a unique language? Make me feel better and tell me your story!!