Background Check
I'm Jordan (or JoJo)
I love my husband. And I have a propensity toward adventure and August and champagne and red and I can't stand the squishy, tad-pole-egg-esque interiors of raw tomatoes...and... we’ll talk about these things later.
I always thought it would be strange to write a blog... I have written about a myriad of subjects... mostly destinations; from what its like to be in a train station in rural India at 3am, to what its like to be sitting on a superyacht with people who own a few of them. Neither is more interesting or better than the other. Despite reaching far and wide for adventure and "range," (as a friend coins this quest for reframing each varied experience with an opportunistic perspective of gleaning knowledge) I have always brushed off suggestions of writing in the first person or having a blog... I just thought it was sort of weird to spend lots of time (a) writing for free when it has been one of my careers, and (b) writing a chronicle of my own experiences! I don't care for hanging around narcissists... and I guess I thought that writing about myself was sort of non-congruent with my ethos... or evocative of a self-serving mission when I am actually not a self-centered person. Following this brief inner dialogue, I realized that I could care less if someone read my blog and thought... whatever! Its me, I know that I am not self-absorbed, why should I care if someone misunderstands the mission or doesn't want to read it. The joy I experience when people tell me that I inspired them in some way, is priceless. Inspired people certainly make the world a much better place and if I can hand out some inspiration then I’d best do my part!
How did I end up in this gorgeous green place with a jungle-iferous garden, standing next to my tool belt-ed soul mate?
The abridged version:
This is home and I moved back after 10 years which were comprised of: schooling, cooking, gallivanting/eating my way around the world, cooking, being a managing editor/ staff photographer of a magazine, cooking, photo-journalisting, stressing, cooking, writing, swearing off writing, reading about the dim prospects of being a farmer, googling how to grow everything, moving home to Vermont from London to figure out a future for the family farm...
The part about how this got to be my home at the age of two, is a tale of oceans and islands and VW buses and hippies. The part that starts when I arrived back here in 2009, is a thrilling romance punctuated with hay dust and mud boots...
and I intend to write about all of it.
Welcome to Bliss Ridge
(our 87.5 acre family farm in central Vermont)
I grow everything that I possibly have time for, we make a lot of hay and cook up a storm of (mostly original) recipes.
We have one duck named Wild Bill, one ridiculously long eared hound dog mutt called Gus and a hand-full of cows. We once had chickens and pigs but we ate them all at our wedding.
You can get married here at Bliss Ridge; we did and we recommend it. Click over to the "weddings at Bliss Ridge" button on the nav bar and check it out.
Thanks so much for stopping by and please leave a comment and let me know what you think!
Cheers,
JvT