Welcome to the Farmette Life Web Site!

This website is about country living, with a focus on photography, gardening, fishing, raising a variety of animals and living as green and as simply as possible.

Our platforms for outdoor living are a 1902 vernacular farmhouse located in western Pennsylvania and a 1799 timber frame farmhouse in northern Virginia. Currently, we split our time between the two homes while the Virginia property is being renovated. Eventually we will move there fulltime.

On the 15 acre farmette located in Western Pennsylvania, there reside two people (hb and the cowgirl), one old rescued dog who is more spirit than canine, two indoor cats, one elderly indoor/outdoor cat, a cranky pheasant, a narrangansette turkey tom and various wild visitors.

The Virginia farmette has 35 acres, a pond, a stable (currently unoocupied), pastures and woods. Both the land and the house are a work in progress. Here there are many wild visitors such as foxes, skunks, snakes, ground hogs under the house and squirrels on every limb of every tree! Soon, we will add chickies and maybe some more Narrangansette turkeys.

Most days are spent in peaceful harmony, or an attempt thereof.

About us:
hb is the primary farmette photographer. His pictures document our daily life, interesting happenings and progress of projects. hb also provides the heavy lifting/manual labor portion of projects, most electrical work and loves to mow the fields with my Kioti tractor. He will do plumbing but that is not his favorite. hb does the rough carpentry while I provide the fine carpentry.

I am the animal caretaker, farmhouse project manager and an amateur photographer. My nickname is cowgirl because of my personal carpe diem motto and because there is nothing too perfect about a cowgirl.

Meet Me

We love living in the country, with no neighbors in sight, stars filling the night sky, nature all around and lots of outdoor activities to keep us busy.

What we do:
We garden, fish, bicycle, cross country ski, raise animals, clear trails throughout the farmettes and of course, take lots of pictures. The weather at both farmettes is never boring. There are four well defined seasons during the year ranging from hot and humid summers to cold, snowy winters. Springtime is long, usually wet and perfect to get the garden started. Autumns are beautiful with leaves of every color lasting for weeks. Except for a few strong seasonal storms, there are no natural disasters to fret about . . . no earthquakes, tornadoes, floods or wild forest fires.

Very pleasant places to live, work and play.

There are always ongoing projects on a farmette. Something is either being designed, built or born/adopted/rescued.

Visit this site often to see new pictures, read my regularly updated journal or find links for farmette lifestyle living.