I started blogging in August, 2010. I loved it overnight. The first comment I received from someone I didn’t know at all made my day. I’m a social being and love to connect with people, so finding all these wonderful folks that shared similar interests to me and wanted to read about my farm and life, wow, what a wonderful thing.
I met some of the most amazing people and connected immediately with some I felt I had known my entire life. The supportive network of blog friends was something that uplifted me and made me feel special. I was genuinely happy to have this new world in my life.
Sharing my farm and animals with others was also invigorating. I loved taking photos and telling y’all about my crazy critters and our ups and downs. My great readers were genuinely interested in our brood, asking about Pansy, Porter, the donkeys and farm council. Our chickens got involved with the blog and started sharing “Verde Farm Chicken Picks,” their favorite posts highlighted in their very own postings.
Farm Friend Friday came next and it was amazing, the number of folks that joined up weekly blew my expectations out of the water. Again, we met more folks and were sharing wonderful stories for all the farm lovers out there. But, that’s when things started getting harder for me.
My work ratcheted up and I was finding less and less time to blog, read and share. It seemed like Thursday evenings were coming so quickly and it was time for another FFF post, but I was out of town and not prepared. I joined with a great blogger, Deb at the Dandelion House, to host our Friday parties together and that helped, but I kept struggling to keep my stories coming every Thursday.
The meme is what did me in. I wanted to host FFF and loved doing it but it required me to post on a certain day and time so others could join up. It became a “job” for me and one I didn’t have time for. I started dreading Thursday’s knowing I wouldn’t have a story ready to go and before you know it, I just became overwhelmed and frozen.
At that point, I stopped all together and to my surprise, so many of you reached out to me, checking on us, asking about their favorite farm critters. It warmed my heart and I felt so badly for letting you down.
I’ve had some time to take a deep breath and decided to reach out to you and share my thoughts. I am going to continue my blog as I love it so much and I love yours, too. I am going to read as much as I can, when I can, but I’m going to do so with a slower pace and no recurring memes for now. I would even love to turn over Farm Friend Friday and the buttons to one of you consistent bloggers out there. If you are interested, e-mail me. You do have to have a linky account of some kind to make it work. I would be thrilled to have it carried on and would join when I could.
I hope you will all forgive my absence and understand my mistakes of jumping in so fully and then being overwhelmed and just frozen. I appreciate all of you who e-mailed letting me know you missed us. I hope you will continue to follow and read Verde Farm blog whenever you get the chance. I look forward to posting again and sharing stories around the farm.
My biggest hugs and thanks to all of you,
Amy at Verde Farm (and Richie too)
