motivation - Natural soaps and skincare

Posted on January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 by Tiffany Burns — 3 Comments

I wanted to know, maybe you do too?…2018 farmstand culture blog superlatives

Most popular posts of 2018 from farmstandculture.com

Since 2018 is officially over, I can now go back and see all the stats…and you can too. It’s a little blog voyeurism. Of course, I only launched this blog in September 2018. Given the short four months this blog was operating, here is a quick post summarizing the 2018 farmstand culture blog superlatives.

Most viewed post of the year

Hummm…maybe I should save the “most viewed!” reveal for last, but I chose to tell you first. Which must mean that there’s some even more interesting superlatives later in this post.

I was surprised by the post with the most views. Are you? What surprised me is that it doesn’t start with “how to” or a number (e.g. 5 best…). And it’s not explicitly about farm stands or natural living or gardening…even though that is mentioned. It’s not even a post suitable for an obvious Pin ad like a DIY sugar scrub would be.

Given that this post was so popular I can only conclude that you all correctly figured me out. I am a nauseatingly well-adjusted, happy and content person, and I should be sharing more about my thought process with you.

With 130 views in 2018, my Most Viewed Post is…

Why do I make life harder on myself?

Greatest number of likes

Do likes even matter? If you use WordPress, you can just scroll through 50 posts per minute, liking them without reading more that just the titles. It could seriously be some bizarre argument, and you might accidentally “like” it because the title mentions kittens. And who doesn’t like kittens? So cute and soft.

For the record, none of my posts are about bizarre stuff like that, and all of my titles are reflective of the content of my posts.

And with 68 likes (actually as of 1/9/19 cause I didn’t look on New Years Day) and counting…

Forgotten herb: balsam apple

Racked up the comments

Well, this shouldn’t be as much of a surprise to you as it was to me. The post with the most comments was also your most liked post of 2018.

Thirty-six of the currently 43 comments on this post happened before January 1st…

Forgotten herb: balsam apple

Least love

Ok, it’s not really a superlative any post wants to be awarded, but it’s still interesting. One of the concepts I had when I was inspired to start blogging was to encourage and challenge you to be more mindful when shopping at farm stands by trying to rank your top 5 items. I have a whole series on this blog showing you my farmstand5’s.

My sad little post with the least attention, receiving the fewest views and comments in 2018 with a grand total of four views was…

Best 5 items at Killam & Bassette Farm Stand, Hartford, CT

Top Instagram picture

If you follow me on Instagram, maybe you noticed about two months ago I started writing mini-blog posts as comments with my Instagram pics. I was stuck on the down slide of the follow-unfollow game, watching my follower count slip every week. So with nothing to lose, I started doing what I do well, accompanying my mediocre photography with interesting commentary.

I’m a big fan of the “tell-me-something-I-don’t-know” approach and that helped stabilize my follower count. It also helped me get 245 impressions on this photo of half of a flock of turkeys in my backyard accompanied by the absolutely fascinating story of how Connecticut repopulated the wild turkeys the colonists had eradicated.

Highest impressions on a Pinterest pin

Oh Pinterest gave me the greatest thrill one morning last October when I had my first pin get 19,000+ views and dozens of clicks through to my post on Swedish Dishcloths. That was my first pin to get thrilling, but it was not my most popular pin of 2018. False start.

The honor of being my most popular pin in 2018, with 20,851 impressions, 22 clicks and 11 saves in three days…because I only posted it on December 29 was…

3 of the best essential oils for upset stomachs

My personal favorite post of the year

Hey, at least I’m not kidding myself. I know this quiet little post hasn’t received a ton of attention and won’t be my claim to fame. It’s just one I really enjoyed writing. It’s one I return to on occasion to make me smile. I had the idea for this post before I started the blog. It was one of the posts I knew I was destined to write.

All of the other posts mentioned here are your favorites from 2018. This was mine:

Weeding is winning

Thank you for sharing this journey through the 2018 farmstand culture blog superlatives with me! Have a great day today. Oh and, did I miss any posts you think should deserve an honorable mention? Go ahead, let me know in the comments.

Posted on December 11, 2018December 29, 2018 by Tiffany Burns — 16 Comments

Why do I make life harder on myself?

Do you tend to make choices that differ from the “norm”? It makes your search purpose harder. I have to come clean with all of you…

in that, I have this habit of choosing the road less traveled. Well, that’s one way to put it.

There’s this guy at work who always edits my commentaries with “just say what you mean, Tiffany”, which is…that I pretty much consistently choose to do things differently, and in the process, I make things harder on myself.

Do I thrive on that? Guess that’s one interpretation. Any psyche majors reading this? That deserves a smiley face emoji.

smiling emoji — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Say what you mean

My choices often stand out from the crowd. Like…my major wasn’t business > wasn’t finance > it was Real Estate Finance.

And, back when I was in grad school, I went for an interview for a summer internship. Oh, I should explain about the importance of the SUMMER INTERNSHIP to MBA candidates.

Securing a fabulous summer internship is the goal for an MBA student during her or his first year of studies. When you are getting your MBA, you and your peers spend a lot of time talking about your internship goals, timing and dreams. If you land the right internship, you can plot your career course and earning potential.

Back on topic: once while I was at an interview for a summer internship, my potential employer left a printout of the interview schedule down on a table in front of me then left the room. I saw that I was the only one interviewing for a research internship. Sounds like evidence of the road less traveled, at least it was more than a decade ago when I was in grad school.

Things worked out well for me. Oh, no, I didn’t actually get that job. Yeah, I was surprised, too. But, a good friend did, and I ended up with an internship in NYC. Which was great, because I got “living in a big city” out of my system when I was young and have enjoyed my retreat back to the Connecticut countryside ever since. Like really enjoyed it, like I have homestead envy.

What happened to make me question my approach now?

Considering the big picture…I’m probably questioning my approach right now because I’m facing a life transition as I finish doctoral classes, wrap up my dissertation and think about “what’s next”.

But, then again, it’s really a reflective time for all of us, isn’t it? The year is ending. We are all making plans for a new year, new phases of life, and thinking about purpose.

In a class last weekend, we had a long discussion on exploring purpose. The theme of the day’s lesson was: What is a professor’s purpose? But, you don’t have to be studying to be a professor for this to resonate. Insert any other role you fill into that question.

I guess that discussion stayed with me.

Hearing more about what was on my classmates’ minds about their purpose, how your purpose changes, how we all go through phases when we think more or less about it. The quiet time after the holidays – as the new year is starting – is a pretty reflective time for most people. Possibly, it’s a time when we think more about purpose.

What’s on your mind as we approach a new year?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not wishing this year to end. I try never to wish time away. It’s too precious. Doesn’t mean I don’t plan for the future though.

What are your personal goals for the new year? My biggest goal for the new year is to recommit.

For the past three years, my attention has been split between too many things. In the new year, I want to be more deeply involved in my kids’ sports and clubs. I want to be that mama who’s coordinating snacks and singing songs with them in the car on the way to practice. In the new year, I want to follow through on more dinner plans with my husband. We thought we would never slow down, even after having kids, but we did. Forget that. Let’s keep that in the past-tense. We should reconnect over a quiet date night a little more often. And, then there’s my career. In order to go back to school part-time, I had to carve some time out from building my career, and in the new year, I want to devote a little more energy to my work.

Bonus thought: Guess what? For the gardeners among us, the dawn of a new year means we get to start planning a new layout, choosing new seed varieties, and feeling Spring fever again soon. Holy cow, I get Spring fever like crazy after the turn of the year. Seedlings, here we go again.

Ok, and the blog?

Of course, this blog. It’s been an amazing start. Thank you for being a critical part of it! You are reading this, and I am appreciating you for it. I hope something resonates in your search for purpose.

I’m committed to bringing you new articles, new perspectives and the play-by-play of the construction of a new window garden in the new year!

At the time I’m writing this post, I have 35 draft posts in the works. My blogging platform does me the kindness of showing me that number, at the top of my screen, every time I open my dashboard.

Oh wow, I guess I have a choice. Those 35 outstanding, half-written, partially-researched, mini-works of blog art could weigh on my shoulders like 35 bricks…OR, I can think of them as 35 bricks in a walkway, a path we can lay and follow in the new year. One of those choices is a lot more appealing than the other. It’s the same thing, just reframed. Like, black cats on your brick walkway could just be adorable kittens who want to play. No bad luck required.

How about your blog?

Do you have a blog? Please leave a link to it or a recent article in the comment section. We’d love to see your labor of love and support you in the new year!

I know it’s not always easy. There are days when things seem to be moving in slow motion, and it’s frustrating.

At least you can always feel welcome to retreat to this community to share your ideas and be supported. I’m happy to help you find ways to reframe the frustration and look forward to the virtual conversations we’ll have as we all begin a new year.

Posted on November 29, 2018December 1, 2018 by Tiffany Burns — 3 Comments

What’s one choice you made to live more natural lifestyle

What’s one choice you made to live a more natural lifestyle? Just one little change. Every night when you go to bed you face two choices: Option 1) beat yourself up for not making healthier choices or Option 2) give yourself credit for the healthy choices you have made.

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Please choose Option 2. Share some of the healthy choices you’ve already made. I know you can think of at least one. Maybe someone else reading this will be inspired, or will realize that he or she has made a similar choice and finally give him or herself credit for it.

Like what kind of healthy choices?

Ok, I can help you brainstorm.

Think about your meals. Made any changes in the things you eat or how you cook them? Do you grow anything yourself or buy locally?

How about the things you drink? More water. Water with lemon. Less sugar. Less alcohol. Any of those things would count.

What about your skincare or haircare routine? There’s a lot of chemicals in that cheap, store-bought stuff. I don’t expect you to go broke buying the luxury natural skincare, but maybe you found something with less chemicals in it that worked for you. Here are some handcrafted soaps I found for under $10 a bar.

Are you using any natural cleaners around the house these days? For most of my life, I didn’t realize how easy it would be to just make cleaners myself or to use more natural cleaning products, like biodegradable dishcloths.

Exercise? Me neither. Actually, since gardening season is over in New England, you’re probably doing better on this one than I am. But, I said we won’t beat ourselves up today! I’m going to at least stretch and do some yoga poses when I finish typing this and get off the couch.

Here’s a good one. More actively thinking about your breathing. Getting that air flowing through the body. Speaking of air…

Good old outdoors

Remember when someone used to tell you to go outside and play? If you are still doing that, you are living a more natural lifestyle. Gardening. Taking a walk. Putting your feet in the ocean.

You know for me, if I had to pick one thing I do to live a more natural lifestyle, it’d be gardening. Oh, but you might say, I just told you the gardening season is over where I live. Yes, the outdoor gardening season is, but I keep the party going inside all winter.

My natural lifestyle choice is having fresh herbs growing in my kitchen. I use them when I cook at least a few times each week.

Speaking of indoor natural living choices, having some fresh flowers or remembering to water a potted plant would totally count as making good natural living choices. It just gets you in touch with nature a little bit more. Every bit counts.

Maybe it’s just your mindset

Healthier living doesn’t have to always be physical.

Maybe just reading this post and reframing the way you think about your choices is a more natural approach. It means you’re shaking off some social sterotype or negative mindset that comes from living in a highly commercialized culture.

Hey, maybe you found yourself here, reading this post, because you just needed to hear me remind you not to beat yourself up. You probably did something this week that made you 1% healthier. If you did that every week, you’d be 52% healthier at the end of the year.

Actually, that’s not true. It’s better than that. The finance student in me needs to be true to who I am and tell you that with compounding, you’d be more like 67% healthier at the end of the year with a 1% gain every week. But, forget the finance blabbler. Since 67% is better than 52%, it’s fabulous news!

There’s one more thing

One of the most natural choices human beings can make is to connect with other people. We are meant to share ideas, to teach and to learn. We are at our best when we are supporting each other and our communities.

Thank you for supporting this natural living online community. And, thank you for leaving a super quick comment with even one word or one little idea about a healthy choice you’ve made. You’re great. And, you should know how much I appreciate you!

Posted on November 26, 2018December 13, 2018 by Tiffany Burns — Leave a comment

What makes us buy so many things we can make easily?

Healing calendula herb infused olive oil in a mason jar

One of my professors told me that when he was a little kid in Pakistan, his mother would grab the olive oil out of the pantry, rub it on his dry skin and send him off to play.

That makes complete sense. Olive oil works well on dry skin, even the cheapest olive oil. Actually, cheap oil would be better because the scent is weaker and won’t leave you smelling like a pressed olive. What does a teaspoon of cheap olive oil cost? So little I can’t do the math in my head. You probably already have it in your pantry, too.

Olive oil as a body lotion:
1) works great
2) convenient
3) inexpensive

And yet, like me, you probably also have a bunch of store-bought moisturizers scattered around your house, car and office. If you’re anything like me, you might pull out your winter coat this year and find hand cream you put in the pocket a year ago. I have so many hand creams, I lose them.

I do buy lots of natural skincare products…and pay through the nose for them. When my kids were born, I spent $20 on a bottle of all-natural baby lotion. It was a pretty big bottle but still. After every bath, I would take a couple of squirts of some insanely expensive tangerine and calendula baby lotion and give the kids a little baby massage before bedtime.

In case it sounded like I was exaggerating about the price…

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Lovely stuff, but really pricey.

Here’s a jar of calendula-infused olive oil I made myself for about a penny. All it took was time because I grew the calendula flowers in my organic garden, but at least I know what’s in the oil.

US consumer spending

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity. In 2017, real GDP in the US increased by 2.2%; of that, 1.7% came from growth in consumer spending (source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis). In other words, people in the US buy a ton of stuff. Buying all that stuff, even if we don’t need it or just because the ad looked good, is like espresso to our economy.

Two main reasons we buy stuff we should make:
1) We didn’t realize we could
2) The ad looked good.

1) We didn’t realize we could

Until someone stumbles across a blog like mine or gets a friend like me to open up to them, it probably won’t occur to him or her to look around the kitchen or garden or farm stand before going to the convenience store. Plus, you know where the convenience store is. Until a few months ago, you probably didn’t know where this blog was.

Most people would be really confused to get a Secret Santa gift basket labeled, “Experience Spa-like Pampering”, and it’s a bottle of olive oil, a bag of cheap sugar and some vanilla. Are you going to bake me? How is this a spa experience?

Then, you read the Directions, “mix thoroughly and shower together”. Now, that’s really confusing. That’s like stunned-into-silence confusing. (Unless you spend a lot of time on Pintrest, in which case, you immediately envisioned a clear glass jar tied with twine and a little cardboard tag that read “DIY Sugar Scrub”.)

In just a few short generations, modern cultures forgot the uses for common herbs and oils. I did, too. It’s been 20 years of part-time study to learn the stuff I write about in this blog, and I will continue learning as long as I’m able.

What’s worse? We use some really gross stuff because we don’t know much about it. None of this was not covered in eighth grade science. You really don’t want to rub synthetic hormone disruptors on your bare hands. Oh but you have, me too. There are usually several of them in inexpensive lotions to extend the shelf-life (many are banned or restricted in the EU) so you can, I don’t know…find a hand cream in your coat pocket a year later, and it still looks the same.

2) The ad looked good

And here’s why we forgot about all this useful stuff. Marketing.

Most of the time, I think marketing is amazing and powerful. Who am I kidding? Without marketing, there would be zero eyeballs on this blog.

It can get out of hand though. Like anything, as a project explodes and makes big time money (i.e. economic profit), more people are attracted to it. The more competition there is, the more humans will feel pressure to compete, including stretching the truth and cutting costs.

There are only two ways to be successful as a business:
1) differentiate your product
2) compete on cost

I’m going to lump, “someone told me it was amazing” into this category. The ad got them to buy it; therefore, indirectly the ad got you to buy it, too.

Once you’ve used it, if there’s no immediate and obvious negative reaction. You assume it’s fine to keep using. It’s not your fault, you have no way of knowing what’s in that stuff. I’ve done the same thing so many times

How does this relate to farmstand culture?

My hope with this blog is to fill you in on all of these simple, quick tricks I’ve learned to make natural living easier. It is exactly what I do for free for all of my friends.

DIY dry shampoo for brown or auburn hair
DIY dry shampoo for blonde hair
Natural skin and hair care

As you keep up with this blog, you will find more uses and benefits for oils, spices and herbs you probably already have in your pantry or…the ones you can find at the end of your neighbor’s driveway available at a quaint, rustic farm stand.

Anyway, it’s Cyber Monday. Go have a guilt-free blast spending within your means.

Here’s a quick link back to a marketing machine, in case you wanted to see those principles of effective marketing in action. The only thing I’ve done differently here, is highlighted their handcrafted marketplace, which features small batch crafters: