Maria and I have each signed a contract with Mannix Marketing to re-design our blogs and make both of them more graphically exciting and also more mobile-friendly. My blog will also be made simpler and more function, I’m getting rid of a lot of the features that aren’t being used or accessed much.

Maria will re-design much of hers herself incorporating Etsy and her Instagram page more directly onto her blog.

And I want a new logo and a new banner at the top of the Farm Journal Page, among other things.

I’ve asked Abrah Griggs, the Vermont artist and designer who drew this sketch of the dancing sheep of Bedlam Farm after she came to our Open House and saw Maria’s Belly Dancing Group perform (they will be back this October at the next Open House).

This was a rough sketch, just made for friends, but a wonderfully creative one.

I remember it, and thanks to our friend Susan Popper for reminding me of it and suggesting Abrah do the banner.

I loved the dancing sheep, and I’ve asked Abrah, a brilliant designer and graphic artist to come up with a new  banner that will appear above the new Farm Journal Logo we are also creating.

My blog is more than a decade old, a long time in Internet years, and needs some internal re-structuring and updating. On the new Internet, you do not want to be left behind, I’ve worked too hard and love the blog too much for that.

We have more than four million unique visitors a year now to bedlamfarm.com.

I work on the blog every day, it is my great work, my living memoir, for better or worse.

Many of you know I embrace change and creative challenge, keeps me and the blog fresh and relevant.

Consider it an expensive tune-up.

Abrah is the perfect person to help me with a new banner that captures the spirit and soul of the blog and our farm. I can’t wait to see her designs.  He sketches are wise, poignant, funny and unique. Her notecards too.

Maybe there’ll be a dog or a donkey in them, but I sure love the dancing sheep. Mannix Marketing of Glens Falls has been my partner in building this blog from the beginning, and I am excited to be doing this work with them. They get me and my blog better than anyone, they built every inch of it.

I trust them completely. The basic format will stay the same it will just be easier to receive and  read.

I want to graphically emphasize the essays I am writing on the blog, they are important to me, and I hope to others. I will always focus much on my writing on animals and dogs, but I will also continue to carefully expand my subject matter.

More and more, I think the blog will follow the inspiration of the great writer E.B. White who wrote so beautifully about his life on his Maine farm and his animals. Simple and thoughtful, not angry or bombastic. My role model.

And don’t forget the new puppy coming this summer. Riotous times here.

Last year, they moved me to a big new server because the traffic to bedlamfarm.com was crashing the server if it was on.  We have the heaviest traffic of any blog they handle, and they handle a lot.

Thanks for  joining me in this great adventure, I will keep you posted on every move we make to rethink bedlamfarm.co. It’s time.

I am thrilled to be working with Abrah. She is the real deal.