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| Picture courtesy of Pixaby |
Recently as I was going through our Farm Blog and working on
some editing, I came across some guest posts written in 2011. I couldn’t believe that it has been seven
years since our Friday’s Featured Farmer series and I got to thinking about all
the changes in our life since that time and considering how the lives of some
of my farming friends, in many instances, had changed as well. Farming is a hard job and whether one farms
as a full-time income, supplements their income with farming, homesteads, farms
commercially, or hobby farms it is not a job for the faint hearted. It takes resilience and determination but a
good farmer also knows when to make changes which can include growing or
downsizing in particular areas or altogether.
As I contemplated “changes” and “transitions”, a common theme on the
blog, especially recently, I thought it would be fun to see if any of the
friends who had written guest posts for me seven years ago would be interested
in writing updates. Recently I sent some
messages out to see if there was interest and I was so very happy with the
results. A number of folks were willing
to either update if they had written previously or to post an entry telling
about their farming ventures if they had not posted prior.
Finding the time to write an article can be daunting to a farmer, so getting this series off the ground may be hard to do, but if you farm, garden, have a backyard flock of chickens, homestead, have container gardens in the suburbs, cook "real" food, photograph, paint, draw farm scenes, or anything that our readers might find of interest, feel free to submit an article to share on our blog. Hopefully we can get this off the ground. I would love for our readers to hear voices other than mine and I would love to offer my farming friends a chance to promote their farms, business and/or advocate for agriculture.
Here’s a few basic guidelines for submitting a guest post
for the blog:
1.
Entries should contain subject matter of
interest to our readers but don’t have to focus on traditional farming. The entries should be personal, telling us
about your life and interests but can include such things as urban/container
gardening, backyard chickens, cooking with locally sourced food, etc. Or, maybe you write books or stories about
rural life, paint pictures or are a photographer that focuses on rural living.
If you farm or homestead, don’t be afraid to explore topics that include things
that have not worked for you, especially if you have written in the past and
found that certain aspects of farming/homesteading just didn’t fit with your
lifestyle or were not cost effective, etc.
This is how we learn. Many people
who read my blog are looking for information and an honest account of what
works, what doesn’t, the ups and downs of farming, are an important aspect of
portraying an honest account of farm life.
2.
There’s no particular length of article that I
am requesting. Of course, I can’t
publish a really long article in one setting but if it is really interesting to
the readers, I can break it down into sections and post a section each week if
someone has a particularly long entry. I
reserve the right to not publish any articles I feel are not conducive to the
spirit of our blog, but I don’t anticipate that being a problem.
3.
Pictures are an important aspect of blogging and
I would ask that up to five, good quality photos accompany your article. Please no more than five or I will have to
choose which ones I can post. I have
extremely poor-quality internet service when I am in Southwest Virginia, which
is where I do most of my blogging.
Getting one photo to upload can sometimes take a very long time.
4.
Please send your entries to my email address in
PDF format. This allows me to save and
organize the documents and cut and paste them easily.
5.
Shameless promotion of your farm or agricultural
related products is encouraged. Provide
links for any social media pages promoting your farm or business, best method
to contact, etc. If you have a blog,
share the link. Let us know how we can
support and follow you.
6.
I will feature the entries on Friday on the blog
and will post one each week. I will
start as soon as I get the first entry and will continue as long as there is
interest.
Thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in writing
for the blog and submitting a guest post.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Our blog is at tcuppminiatures.blogspot.com and my email
address is tcuppminiatures@yahoo.com