Brady, 12, sharing her copilot seat with River, found at the Papaloapan River in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, Mexico
The Habersham Hacienda was my most recent past project, and you can see photos of that venture HERE
a seven acre organic farm to table event venue and wild foraging culinary adventure I started in 2005 and sold in 2019.
Mostly heritage chickens and some ducks. Tons of wild herbs. Pollinator gardens. Compost. Earthworms. Organic homestead and doggo paradise.
Mt Airy, Georgia is an hour north of Atlanta where I had a couple of restaurants for a decade. I sold the restaurants to "retire" to the country to a sweet little nowhere town with a train and a post office.
We did weddings and other culinary events. Life moves on, we pass the torch.
I got a wild hair and sold everything, moved a dozen times and finally really REALLY sold everything (except for a couple Persian rugs. Okay and a turquoise chandelier...) and packed my minivan and headed South of the Border. I've been coming to and in love with Mexico for decades. When I first saw Tulum off a dirt road in 1995 I couldn't believe such a magical place existed. Then Oaxaca opened my eyes to a culinary world that we, in America, were not shown in our Taco Tuesday chimichanga cheese sauce covered lives. Would I still love it? Sometimes. Would it be dangerous? Not yet, sometimes, maybe. I'm aware that living in Mexico (and driving through it) is very different than visiting Mexico. I do not take my path without reservation and respect. Sometimes it's apparent that I'm not welcomed here, but mostly it's pretty amazing. Just when you think the trip is going over a cliff something magical happens. And here I am.
My biggest deal breaker with Mexico has always been the treatment of dogs, my greatest friends and loves. Left on roofs, balconies, tied to tires, tossed on the streets, sliced open with machetes or left to starve, it's impossible to fathom how this place I grew to love could be so ambivalent to these loyal creatures. I do not have the answers. I am not here to judge (but sometimes it's really, really tricky). I have resigned myself to helping where I can. Choosing my battles (not bothering with politics and city officials) and going where I can do the most good...which isn't ALWAYS where I think it is, but where I'm guided. There has to be a supportive community because it's too big if there aren't others in your village, you'll sit in your room and eat ice cream and cry for all the sadness. I've been driving around for months and stopped for 9 weeks in a tiny town with a big heart and a bigger stray dog problem. Tlacotalpan, Veracruz on the Papaloapan River. That's where I saved River, but not where I could make much headway. So we've moved on to Oaxaca where I know I love it (climate, food, people) and where other crazy dog ladies are doing amazing work. We all find our way, my niche is saving the great ones, giving the uglies a chance, buying parasite meds and flea treatments for all and always making and traveling with made from scratch dog food. Rounding up strays and getting the word out about discount spay clinics and hopefully starting my own small rescue. It sort of takes you under the water at first and then you find out you can breathe under there.
Wanna help out? Donate below, and thanks!
paypal.me/TheHabershamHacienda
Who would toss this sweet creature out? Living under a bridge we talked to her for a month Brady and me. She started to walk with us. When she went into heat I saw the horror of dozens of males ganging up on the one female in town. The town sweeps up females and puts them in a big room jail on the outside of town. So when a female gets dumped she's swarmed like flies. I picked her up out of a pile up and ran. I was not going to leave her in the jail. I brought her back to my posada where my host was very kind at Casa de la Luz. She slept for 3 days. I thought she was dying. She could stand. She fell over when we walked. We took her to the country vet, without consult he gave her an injection and said it was pain meds and antibiotics. She was up in a day and with a homemade diet and lots of love she's a bouncing, wonderfully smart companion for Brady at 12, who is going blind.
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Some towns have felt safer than others. (not my car, thank God) Veracruz
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River the Rescue Dog, Day 2
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The original Hacienda blog is here and there's some good stuff in there back to the farming days, Big Chicken, gentlewoman farming and how (not) to go broke. The first two books in my Decade of Dish series are available on Apple and Blurb below.
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Goodbye to the Grand Dame,
2005-2019 the longest relationship I've ever had was with a house. Mt. Airy, Georgia
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Cooking class with my work buddy sidekick Juanito aka Mowgli the Man Cub featured in my 2009 Essay 'How to Save 89cents' winner of the non fiction prize in New Southerner magazine.
HOW DID I GET HERE? (TLDR, but if you're curious...)
In 2007 I sold a couple of restaurants in Decatur, GA and got a wild hair (hare?) idea to move out to the country and start my own farm. It'll be fun, they said. It'll be rejuvenating, I thought.
Actually no one said that. Most of my friends and coworkers said, "What?! Why??" but away I went. I was pulled to the country lifestyle and peaceful days. Swapping the Atlanta traffic for pastoral mountain views of Northeast Georgia. Harvesting my own organic vegetables and trimming the tops off my ever replenishing sprouting cilantro. My mind conjured up all kinds of narrative about my flock of hens and their bounty of eggs with tangerine colored yolks. Fresh air. The soft pastures underfoot. I'd start a farmer's market in that front field near the entrance. Enjoy the small town chat at the feed store and slowly renovate a big old house and slowly add guest suites, a big central kitchen where I'd harvest my wild herbs and make tinctures and old timey remedies. The stress of being chef owner of 2 busy restaurants had taken its toll on my lifestyle (hello 30s, goodbye 30s) and my health. I needed radical change.
I got it. It just wasn't how I had played it out in my head.
It was not always an easy transition, this bucolic life. But over a decade of many trials (and many errors), I finally got the Habersham Hacienda up and running to the sustainable, magical vision I had always dreamed of. The guest suites, the loft apartment, the cooking classes, the rain gardens, the Apothecary, the wild meadows, the pollinator organic gardens, the wild harvested herbs, the chickens, the rotational grazing pastures, the compost, the soil and eco systems finally balanced. The songbirds, bats, beetles. Snakes, hawks and bees. I had the right crew to help me build, create and carry out my visions. A neighborhood family of endless brothers and cousins from Guatemala headed by Antonio, my work buddy for over 7 years. Juanito, Victor, Pedro, Calixto, Esteban. And one Mexican, my genius friend and muse, Fernando. Everything was coming together.
And then, I ran out of money.
In 2007 I sold a couple of restaurants in Decatur, GA and got a wild hair (hare?) idea to move out to the country and start my own farm. It'll be fun, they said. It'll be rejuvenating, I thought.
Actually no one said that. Most of my friends and coworkers said, "What?! Why??" but away I went. I was pulled to the country lifestyle and peaceful days. Swapping the Atlanta traffic for pastoral mountain views of Northeast Georgia. Harvesting my own organic vegetables and trimming the tops off my ever replenishing sprouting cilantro. My mind conjured up all kinds of narrative about my flock of hens and their bounty of eggs with tangerine colored yolks. Fresh air. The soft pastures underfoot. I'd start a farmer's market in that front field near the entrance. Enjoy the small town chat at the feed store and slowly renovate a big old house and slowly add guest suites, a big central kitchen where I'd harvest my wild herbs and make tinctures and old timey remedies. The stress of being chef owner of 2 busy restaurants had taken its toll on my lifestyle (hello 30s, goodbye 30s) and my health. I needed radical change.
I got it. It just wasn't how I had played it out in my head.
It was not always an easy transition, this bucolic life. But over a decade of many trials (and many errors), I finally got the Habersham Hacienda up and running to the sustainable, magical vision I had always dreamed of. The guest suites, the loft apartment, the cooking classes, the rain gardens, the Apothecary, the wild meadows, the pollinator organic gardens, the wild harvested herbs, the chickens, the rotational grazing pastures, the compost, the soil and eco systems finally balanced. The songbirds, bats, beetles. Snakes, hawks and bees. I had the right crew to help me build, create and carry out my visions. A neighborhood family of endless brothers and cousins from Guatemala headed by Antonio, my work buddy for over 7 years. Juanito, Victor, Pedro, Calixto, Esteban. And one Mexican, my genius friend and muse, Fernando. Everything was coming together.
And then, I ran out of money.
my wild front yard. I cut paths into the native growth over the years to add depth to the postage stamp of the previous flat lawns.
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the carpet of December. Each year the Japanese Maples dropped the firecracker leaves. Magnificent trees on this property, a specimen tree nursery in the 1950s
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