And the garden waits...

It’s been awhile, friends. I thought I’d take the time to share with you the events of the past year. 

In 2024, Blue Grass Bend took a dormant year. The garden stood still. The Market Cart remained in the shed. Our website blog was silent. I missed you. But what I did instead was more important.

On January 4th, 2024, my mother, Kathy, was hospitalized. Ever since that day, I prioritized spending every moment I could with her. Kathy came to live with us at Blue Grass Bend in April. She passed away on August 30th, 2024. 

She loved it at Blue Grass Bend. We spent our days together. Our time was spent having morning coffee watching CB in the pasture, afternoon naps and evening dinners preparing her favorite recipes. After dinner, we'd sit together in the great room as we watched many beautiful, vibrant sunsets. How the last year was spent was wise. I wouldn’t have changed any moment!

Now, as I begin to plan and prepare for the new 2025 Blue Grass Bend season, I realize how much of our adventure started through her. She gave me such a rich and deep heritage of culture, love of learning, exquisite recipes, lessons in the kitchen, attention to detail and, most of all,...joy and contentment in the everyday.

Kathy was born into a busy, thriving, multi-generational Greek household in the 1940s. Born a short time before Pearl Harbor in 1941, she was raised in a generation that still cultivated a backyard garden. Families that still felt the survival mindset of The Great Depression. They utilized everything and used their resources and knowledge of how to live and thrive, while finding contentment and value in hard work and long days.

This year, I want to highlight the everyday beauty in the garden. How awe-inspiring it is to witness the soil give birth to food, just as it did when Kathy was little and for thousands of years before that.

I want to highlight the goodness of life on the homestead in the form of animals. Their contributions to the cycle of life are endless. Whether it is in chickens (which Kathy hated) or in horses (which Kathy loved), there is valuable resourcefulness to be learned in repurposing everything in new and life-creating ways. Nothing is taken for granted on the homestead, not even animal droppings!

Thank you for being patient. I trust that like the garden, you waited. I anticipate that 2025 will be a year of blessings and abundance, because…

…good things are just around The Bend!