Maria and I had an important morning, we went to Glens Falls to meet with the staff of Mannix Marketing, the very good people who have designed and maintained my blog since it’s first publication in 2007.

Both of our blogs have grown rapidly in many different ways, and blogs, like cars and computers, need maintenance and upgrading to keep up. Maria’s redesign is very different from mine, and she can write about that herself.

My blog now has more than four million visits a year and more than half of them are by people using platforms. The mobile platforms have changed and grown so  rapidly that my blog needs a structural redesign to stay clear and fast for the people using it, no matter on what device.

Beyond that, I’m hoping to get rid of some of the unused pages and boxes and simply and alter the banner and the logo. I’ve asked the artist Abrah Griggs to design a new banner and logo for the top of the Farm Journal.

Her sketches are beautiful, literate, whimsical and intelligent. That’s the look I’m going for up top. We will also be revamping the various donation paths to make them simpler and easier to use.

I am so grateful to Chris Archibee, and Nick and Mark and Sara Mannix,  my blog would not exist without them, and they have always been there when I needed them, and that is often. I learned today that my blog has by far the biggest traffic of their personal websites. That is cool.

So we’ll make some practical changes.

I think we need an Army Of Good Donation button to save my fingers some of that repititive typing and to make it easier to donate. I also want to make it clearer for people to see  what is a donation to me and the blog, or one to the refugees or Mansion residents.

My precious little P.O. Box will stay in operation for those who chose to avoid sending money via the Internet. There are a lot of  you, and I will not forget you.

Beyond that, I want to highlight some of my longer essays, a new and integral part of my writing and my blog. I’m not sure how to do that yet, perhaps we will just put a box around them. I’ll call them the “Bedlam Farm Essay.”

Those of you with smartphones will have easier and faster and more vivid access to the blog. The big change for most people will be Abrah’s banner. This work is expensive and time consuming and very much worth it.

I intend to be relevant in the future, that takes some work and thought.

Maria is making some larger changes to her site, and I would encourage people to read  about it on her blog, it is all pretty exciting. We are both happy about it.

We are separate people with separate work and lives but our blogs have increasingly been linked to one another, as have ourselves. It is a beautiful thing, and that will be reflected in our blogs also.