If you wish to pay me for your work and contribute to the blog, please do so here. It took me a great while to agree to get paid for my work here, but I have no trouble with it now. Blogs like this cost a lot of money, and I work at it full-time.

The Bedlam Farm Journal was inspired by the old farm journals I found and started collecting when I moved to the first Bedlam Farm. I admired the clarity and brevity of the journals, many of which I discovered when I visited the Farmer’s wives and widows in my county.

The journals changed my life. I started my blog and gave up book writing, and the Bedlam Farm Journal is my book now.

I started the blog in 2007  in the midst of a disastrous but creative depression and have posted well over 30,000 times.  I think about the same number of photos.

There are four million visitors to the blog each year, at last count.

For better or worse, the blog is my great work. It has given me enormous meaning in my life, and together, we have done a lot of good. Just getting started.

Every couple of months, I am reminded to mention donations again; no more fat royalty checks are coming to the farm.

The farmers made notes in small leather journal books about the week, what they were planning, what had happened in the previous week.

Very brusque notes recorded the escape of cows, the devastation of surprise blizzards, the death of children, the failure of crops, the cost of purchases.

I’m much wordier than they were. I was also inspired by E.B. White, the legendary New Yorker columnist, who moved to a farm in Maine and wrote One Man’s Meat.

His tales of rural life and animals made a deep impression on me. That’s how I want to do it. Like him, I range all over the place.

My journal has wandered much farther afield than those old Farm Journals, but the idea of the journal as a record of one’s life has always shaped the idea of my blog.

This is the journal of my life, or my living memoir, as I sometimes call it. On it, I record the truths of my life – no lies.

Monday is always a good time to begin a journal of the week, of a life.

Two things spring to mind.

The farm has changed my life in so many ways. In some ways, it ended a 35-year marriage; in other ways, it sparked a rebirth, a second marriage, and a great deal of change in my life.

Sometime mid-week, I’m going over to the Mansion to take Charlie Fly Fishing on the Battenkill River. I don’t fish, so I’ll watch Charlie fish. He is an award-winning fly fisherman, as he loves to point out.

Fly fishing was his life before assisted care; this will be a big boost to him.

Also, this week, 30 blueberry bushes are expected to arrive at the farm. They will be transmitted to Moise Miller’s farm immediately for planting in his fields; I brought four different bushes this morning.

This is my first intense involvement with blueberry bushes – I chose them and ordered them, Moise trusted me with that honor, and I want it to work.

Tuesday, I see my cardiologist for a routine ticker check-up.  My heart feels good and strong; I’m expecting a routine and necessary exam.

I plan to ride my new bike this week and plan to go to the gym three or four times.

I’m supposed to go and be befitted for an Amish straw hat; it was the idea of Jacob, one of Moise’s children. His Amish aunt makes straw hats.

Today, I go pick Moise up at the Glens Falls Bus Station, and we are going from there to order concrete for his new barn and, perhaps, for his new house.

All grist for the mill and the blog.

Next weekend, Maria and I are running off for another of our one-night retreats in Vermont. It’s supposed to be in the ’90s this coming weekend—lots of reading inside.

I think that’s a good start for a Fam Journal account of a week. The farm looks wonderful, the animals are healthy, the dogs are joyously happy. I won’t be going to Bishop Maggin this week, but I will next week.

The blog is the engine that powers my life, from the journal itself to my photos, which are free to anyone who wants to use them, to my work with refugees in Albany and the elderly at the Mansion, an assisted care facility here.

My intention, as always, is to do good every day, most in the form of small acts of great kindness.

The blog is expensive to maintain, and if you are so inclined, you can support it here. We take Paypal, Venmo, and major credit cards. You can Support My  Blog here, and thanks.