A Place in the Auvergne Recommends Goodness Gracious Acres (Florida, USA; 1.5 acres; goats, Nubians, turkeys, chickens)

As a blogger of my own on Farm Blogs from Around the World (even if my own rural blog is a bit different - check it out) I'd like to recommend Goodness Gracious Acres, A.K.A jojosfarmlife.blogspot.com in West Palm Beach, Florida.

"Well sort of.. Closer to Lake Okeechobee than Donald Trump", Jojo laughs.

What I like about Goodness Gracious Acres is that it is one of best mergers between someone's non-farming professional life and their mini-farming experiences that I've come accross. Jojo is a graphic designer outside and inside her 1.5 acre "ranchette" as she terms it, although, she writes with a smile, that it seems much bigger to her.

Goodness Gracious Acres is a wonderfully ecclectic mix of material from the intersection of her professional, personal and rural life. Writing myself as someone who is an author, but who used to work in marketing, design and communications (and still reluctantly dabbles, now and again, to pay the bills) Goodness Gracious Acres also had a particular appeal to me personally.

Many of the bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World are not full-time farmers, that's a reality, and I would recommend anyone who wants to attempt this type of 'mixed-blog' to check it out.

Naturally, with Jojo being a graphic designer, the design values are high, and it's a little self-promoting of that side of her life - but tell me a farm blog that isn't, in some way, a little self-promoting, from produce & products to farmers markets to B&B and to bloggers 'day jobs', so I won't hold that against her!

She's the first to admit that it's not "a real big farm" but she still likes to live as rurally as possible. Jojo makes cheese and soap from her dairy goats, sells the milk and breeds and raises Nubians, turkeys and chickens.

Goodness Gracious Acres has been active for about 3 years and this is how Jojo describes it and herself:

"Animals. Animals. Animals. City girl gone slightly country. Totally, left of center. Living the simple life, on my own. With a little ranting thrown in to keep the balance. I live on a small "ranchette" with over 30 animals makes for some interesting stories. And in between mucking the stalls and milking goats I support my habit of rural living, by being a creative director, designer, art director, hack, type slave, layout artist, communicator. I blurr the lines between work and play all the time. Why wasn't it always this way?"

That's me too, and I couldn't agree more.

Some days she writes about design and artistic endeavors, some days it’s about bucks in rut.

"I’m not bipolar," Jojo wrote to me, "but my blog is".

Check it out.

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

A future Thanksgiving turkey strutting his stuff

It's always great to receive occassional photos from bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World, especially seasonal ones so we can see what's going on around the world at different times.


So thanks to the Matron of Husbandry at Throwback at Trapper Creek for this one. (The Matron has lived on her 180 acre farm in the Pacific Northwest for all her life.)


It's a photo of "a future Thanksgiving turkey strutting his stuff!" writes the Matron.

"These are Broad Breasted White, a hybrid, but the most common turkey at Thanksgiving meals in the US. They are agressive grazers and a delight to raise, don't believe all the old stories about turkeys being dumb. These little guys really like to show off, and act like the big boys!"


Throwback at Trapper Creek
“I have always found what farmers and peasants thought about things much more intelligent than what scientists thought.” RUDOLPH STEINER

http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
http://www.ianwalthew.com/


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France

A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Nature's Harmony Farm Recommends

Nature's Harmony Farm http://www.naturesharmonyfarm.com/ was recommended to me by by 'Life on a Southern Farm' (http://www.georgiafarmwoman.blogspot.com/).





Located in Elberton, Georgia, Nature's Harmony Farm is a family owned, pasture-based, local-market sustainable farm. "We believe in orchestrating an environment harmonious with nature, where animals are treated with love and respect and are free to naturally express their characteristics," writes Tim Young to me in an email.





They produce:

• Grass-fed Murray Grey Beef

• Free Foraging Berkshire and Ossabaw Pork

• Pastured Poulet Rouge Chickens


• Pastured Free Range Eggs


• Heritage Turkeys


• Pastured Lamb

Nature’s Harmony Farm – It’s only natural to want food this good!

Their farm blog recommendation - http://diaryofafarmer.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to Tim at Nature's Harmony Farm - please drop us a photo now and again if you can.

http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

http://www.ianwalthew.com/

Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs

Rural Blogs

Countryside Blogs

Smallholding Blogs

Allotment Blogs