My Front Porch...

While creating this website I needed to find a way to do updates about what will be for offer on the front porch from time to time so - that you can stop by and pick things you want up in a convenient way. That is mostly what you will find in this space going forward. Maybe also some cool pictures of the workshops happening. But as a way of introducing myself - instead of having a static about me page I thought this first blog post could serve as such, which is less attention grabbing, and much more up my alley.

My front porch growing up was in Indiana, on a one-hundred-year-old white farmhouse. It had a red porch swing and two transomed doors - one opening into our living room, and one opening into the "parlor" (because 100 year old houses have those lovely things). My family didn't farm, but the house on 10th Street still felt like a farm in small measure. The old barn was still standing and my sister and I would climb up into the hay lofts and read good books on rainy days or swing on the rope in the middle with our cousins. We raised baby ducks in the old milkhouse. We played schoolhouse in the old chicken coop. There were remnants of the other people who had lived and loved the house before, like the gold scrolled wallpaper in the living room used to mark a 50th anniversary, black and white photos and letters written home from the war we found in the attic, ancient glass jars of vegetables left in the cellar. There were also natural gifts left for us to delight in, like the rows of peonies that bloomed in the spring, the beautiful old oak on the front walk that shaded the porch, a lilac bush that my mom would cut huge bouquets from and put on our dining table in the spring, tiny hidden groves of lily of the valley that sprung up in secret under the bushes outside my parents bedroom window, and a living hedge of mulberry trees that created a border with the cornfield behind us (it left us with purple mouths and purple feet every summer). That house, along with the care of an amazing family, made for a truly magical childhood. It also cemented my love for all things old and beautiful...heirlooms.

Those formative years that I spent on my front porch at the old farmhouse definitely influenced how I cultivated my home, my garden, and my traditions going forward. I have now lived a season raising my own boys and trying to help them gather together all of the lovely experiences that make up a terrific childhood. I have gardened, kept the hearth, built traditions, and homeschooled for almost two decades at this point. My boys are now teenagers and there is extra room in life to extend these things out again - into the community.

Handpicked Heirlooms, is a business but also a labor of love. A collection of all the things I treasure mooshed into one space and handed as a gift to the next generation of growers, and crafters, and foragers, tradition makers, community builders and creators of magical childhoods. I hope if you are reading this blog that you find value in what I have on offer and I look forward to meeting together in community to chat, or seed swap, or learn together at some point soon in the future.