Let The Festival Of Lights Begin!
Wildflower Farmhouse lit up for the holiday!
In here, the glow of the wood stove causes a warm almost gooey, cozy feeling. The lights are low and though the night is young, the darkness outside is already deep. Outside, the smell of cold is suffocating to any true New Englander, it is so strong. Inside, my Winter fragrance burns in a kettle atop the wood stove. A second wood stove has been lit so that the Christmas movie room, is ready once dinner is prepared so we can curl up for a relaxed tv dinner. Tonight, we will watch one of our favorite Christmas movies, The Family Stone. My sister actually recommended it some years back. We have treasured it ever since.
Visions Of Sugar Plums….
Visions of Mommy being obnoxious with her cell phone’s camera.
There are many Christmas movies we adore:
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (the original cartoon.)
Family Stone
The Man Who Invented Christmas
A Christmas Carol
Gremlins 1 and 2
Christmas In Connecticut
The Ref
Home Alone
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Four Christmases
The Holiday
Prancer
Love Actually
The Snow Man
Polar Express
Joyeux Noel
Elf
The Christmas Chronicles
Bad Santa
Rare Exports
Edward Scissor Hands
To name just a few of our Christmas favorites!
And here, I remind everyone, we are adults with dogs. As of yet no children…
So if a movie here sounds interesting but you are watching with a child, check it out first to make sure it will be appropriate.
Lighting the candles and oil lamps….
On the eve of the eve of our secular festival of lights/Christmas/ whatever, we had a busy day. Did our final shopping for food. Now we will hole up here on the farm…. Eating, laughing, and listening to actually soothing holiday music. The lights will mostly be low, there will be lots of reading and too much junk food will be consumed. The dogs will watch us having a pleasant quiet holiday wondering what our mental health issue is. Typically we don’t bring in trees and greenery, we aren’t usually both of us home together for days at a time. We aren’t quite so light of heart…. The dogs will watch in confused shock and awe….
Deck the halls!
This year we are taking it easy, has been a really tough year for us… The toughest part was when I had a bad fall from my horse and broke my pelvis in multiple locations and gave myself a hematoma…. Months on a walker, went through opioid withdrawal, discovered something green now legal in MA that kills pain. Converted to that from the opioids the hospital put me on. Spent 2 weeks in the hospital…. This year kicked our collective butts in a highly irregular sense. So now that everything is prepared, we will just hang out here on the farm and re-charge our batteries with lots and lots of Hygge time.
Lighting Up The Night
Hygge, is a Danish word. Scandinavia, is one of my favorite regions of the world, second only to my home here at Wildflower in NE. Hygge, is a quiet, peaceful, cozy, time that the people of Scandinavia give themselves daily. Often it is spent more siesta style, sometimes it involves a book or a small group of friends playing board games by the fire…. This style is the plan for our holiday. A giant Hygge that lasts from this point till New Year’s Day….
Lighting Up The New England Cold.
The ball will drop, we will go to bed just after the clock strikes midnight. The new year will be born of the karma of the previous year… Life will begin to march on again…
Wildflower Farm Christmas
We will have to join the march or we will get left behind as life picks up it’s hectic pace again and the world moves on from this peaceful moment of lights, and a heart full of quiet joy.
Christmas at Wildflower Farm
Thank you so much for joining us in our Hygge inspired
Festival of lights…
We have traveled long and far….
In the process we lost most of the friends we once had.
I suppose I am a bit lonely these days….
So thank you for sparing a moment
to read about our holiday here at Wildflower
All my love and happy holidays everyone
Amanda of Wildflower Farm
Tags: acreage, advent, agriculture, agro, B&B, back yard chickens, bed and breakfast, BnB, Boston, Christmas, christmas tree, farm, Farm Christmas, Farm Holiday, farm wife, farmer, farming, farmstead, festival of lights, goats, great dane, holiday, homestead, homestead christmas, homestead farm, homestead farm christmas, homestead wife, homesteader, homesteading, lodging, new england, Tourism, tourist, travel, wildflower farm, Worcester
Wildflower Farm, is a small New England homestead, B&B and AirBnB, in the Baystate. We came out here 7 years ago, when we returned from the better part of 10 years as peripatetic aristotelian nomads, for my husband's post docs. Upon our return, we had a plan. We had a lovely home. Everything was so clear. Then, I got sick. Things I used to eat all the time during our travels elsewhere in the world and even here before I left almost 10 years earlier made me ill. It took a couple trips to the ER and a trip to specialist... It became clear, something had changed in the way food is processed in this country since last I lived here. Some off label things was inevitably going to be my demise.
My husband and I looked around to see the clear path we were on, had exploded in front of us. We decided we had to create a new path for ourselves. We put children on hold. We found a small piece of land with a house we loved in a rural suburb in a right to farm area. I began researching how to do it ourselves. Grow it ourselves, make it ourselves, survive on our own as much as possible. We bought the property, and began plotting a new course. One that didn't involve off label chemicals. Closer to nature, with a lot more DIY, gardens, and animals for the products they provide. We created a life we loved though it hasn't always been easy and has of course come with compromise with each other, and even with ourselves.
Our family thought we had lost our minds. What were we doing leaving the city? We had no idea how hard this would be. They thought we would be back in 6 months. That was over 7 years ago, now. We have been making it work. They were not wrong, it isn't easy. But has anything worth doing ever been easy? And for us, avoiding as much store bought food as possible was simply necessary so I could live given how sick I was getting.
Then Covid hit.... We were lucky to have this place. It has allowed us a lot less need for public use territories which has kept us a lot safer and spared us much of the risk others face daily. This place, has given us a privilege through this of great meaning to us. To be of use in a difficult time. We have been able to help friends family and even strangers in need when things couldn't be found on store shelves. Or money was tight due to not working, rent being due and a child at home, or some other draining situation. We are so very grateful to have been able to not be helpless like so much of society through this miserable time. Our families, got used to it some time ago, us being out here. They made peace with it the day there was no bread and they had to ask me for some. Or when fresh vegies were rotten due to supply chain issues but they could find plenty in my garden.
Wildflower Farm, was a place I dreamed of. One of those sweet pastoral dreams a city dweller grows up knowing will never come true, that became unavoidable when I became ill. I never expected to get to do this. I never thought I had what it takes to make this work. I have learned pacing myself is important, compromise is critical, hard work never ends, burn out is real so breaks are just a necessary evil.
We are not fully self sufficient, but we work hard in that direction as we create a new path through life for ourselves, always reaching to do even more ourselves and to get closer to the ideal we envision. We are however far more self sufficient than many in this world. 7 years in, we continue to learn and grow in this homesteading lifestyle. We welcome comments and advice and ideas and questions.
We welcome visitors from all over to our home with strict covid policies in place. We spend our time learning to live all over again in a more environmental and sustainable way though even there we are far from perfect always learning and growing doing better as we know better.
This little homestead farm is a magical place named for the New England wildflowers that grow all around. A place where a physicist, watches the night sky on clear nights with the aide of mirror and glass, and a woman, works endlessly in the gardens, the kitchen, and a variety of projects to create and to keep a very unique life style running and functioning. Wildflower Farm, has become so much more than simply a piece of land we can grow a few vegetables on. The longer I spend here, the more alive the land seems, the more I learn about it's function and the more meaning it has. My place in the universe and the next steps on our new path become ever more clear.
We welcome you on this journey with us.
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