Pictures or it didn't happen
Let's have some nice pictures of the baby pigs and the mamma. Let's see that hawk. How about that freshly mowed grass. I want to see those lambs!
I'm not saying….
….I understand anything about her but… I do not understand about the whole cake mix thing. She says she will bake a cake…with this cake mix…if she gets some arbitrary number of subscribers. The whole thing is so stupid I don't have the capacity to even try to think about it. The main question is Who Cares? Is there someone in the world that will subscribe so she can bake a cake? What if she lies and bakes the cake any way?……yeah, okay…WHO CARES? Is this what passes as content nowadays? We're doomed.
I was wondering about pics of her bills, foreclosure notice, and also the new sweetie.
ReplyDeleteAll of those things are a figment of Pig Shocker's demented imagination 😆.
DeleteShe could create false documents, so I wouldn't believe it even if she posted pics of foreclosure notices and bills.
ReplyDeleteAs for the refinancing, if I understand correctly, she refinanced for the exact amount of her original mortgage. That would mean she is starting all over. So much for "10 years of mortgage payments" and being 1/3 the way there.
When and where did she speak of refinancing? I haven't seen anything, I don't think.
DeleteI'm so dumb...it was mentioned on the last thread. Feel free to call me the dumbest of blondes...I won't be offended. Here's the info link if anyone missed it:
Deletehttps://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/207-Colfax-Rd_Cambridge_NY_12816_M40116-67107#photo2
That would make sense if she did refinance, as it does seem she hasn't been begging with quite the same intensity as last year. When I have time I can take a look at the recent past for any signs of a sudden windfall, new toys, etc.
Lol HD!
ReplyDeleteShe refinanced her mortgage??? I didn't hear about that. I'd be very surprised, though, if that were true because I can't imagine any bank or other financial institution doing that with her poor credit and payment record.
ReplyDeleteAbout the horse training she decided not to take on. She's likely talking about the Fjord mare she rode and fell off. I have horses. If someone came to my farm, rode my horse and did someone stupid that caused the horse to spook and buck her off, there is NO WAY I would even consider having her work with it further. So, I don't believe that claim for a minute. Anyway, Fjords are typically expensive horses to buy, and anyone who can buy one is likely in good enough financial shape to hire a professional trainer.
My guess is that the horse is for sale and Jenna went there to try to set up some payment plan scam thing. The horse's owner was wise enough to send her packing.
I completely agree!
DeleteANON12. I hate to ask so many questions, but what legitimate lending source would let her refinance and, in essence, "start all over," when she hasn't been keeping up with her payments in the first place? (And I'm assuming she didn't go to them with evidence of legitimate employment with a steady paycheck.) Rather, wouldn't they look at her financial history and see all of the excuses and missed payments and partial payments and "the dogs ate my homework" and say "Sorry, Goddess. The wagon train pulled by Fjord ponies stops here?" What world allows for this, because I don't know of it. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country; i.e. not a large city where if you don't pay your gas-water-electric--the next day? OFF. Plus a hefty fee to restore it. She must have her parents dumping money into her leather reticule, thus buying distance, guilt riddance and silence. Of course, once the aged P's die (stole that from Dickens) then you've got another set of circumstances. Oh well. I'll be reading to see what all of you say.
ReplyDeleteIn order to refinance you have to show proof of a steady income. They won't give a loan to someone who can't prove they can afford it. Maybe she got a co-signer? If she did, the other person's name would be added to the home title.
DeleteThat's highly unlikely.
Realtor must have the dates wrong.
The interesting thing is no one knows if she is actually behind in her mortgage, if there are wolves at the door, if her various bills & crises are real or imagined.
DeleteClearly, raising money from readers depends on the narrative of her being a 'scrappy feral farmer' who keeps trying to succeed against all odds. If there aren't crises, there isn't $$$.
There is also the possibility that she does have terrible credit, she is late on payments and she is near foreclosure. In such a case, the bank would be looking at trying to repossess a trashed, likely polluted property versus refinancing to get "some" continued money from her, with promise that lower payments = more on time payments.
PDD wrote: "If there aren't crises, there isn't $$$."
DeleteNo truer words have been spoken. The average person isn't going to send money to someone who is successful. Thus, the constant cries for help.
As Jon Katz once said: "Jenna’s farm has been a spectacular and wrenching soap opera since the beginning, she is always in trouble, always sounding the alarm, always chasing her sheep up and down the road, rushing to fix fences, shooting raccoons, picking up body parts, repairing busted heaters, cracking a tooth, fixing a truck..."
Lol. 😏
ANON12. I agree with WH in that you just don't get a loan with her (self stated) bad history on payments. Who on earth would co-sign for her? Without even finding blogs like this one, just reading what she says about herself "This is the end, my friend, the end," would see she's constantly living on the head of a pin. Why would anyone co-sign for that, knowing they'd be legally responsible for her mismanagements (alleged.) I agree, WH, I think the dates are wrong. And, if you have (alleged) foreclosure notices (allegedly more than one) why would anyone refinance this disaster? I agree also with Poodle, if what she wrote were true, the lenders would repossess rather than drag this on any longer. Cut your losses and move on. Many of you wrote she must be getting steady payments from someone. With her reduced readership over time, I cannot believe she would stay going on tracing paper dog cartoons and soap, which I believe she was making with goat milk and aren't all of the goats gone? Also, with her delivery history and lack of acknowledging her buying sources and NOT making refunds, who wouldn't wise up and stop buying this nonsense. Even if she had a steady clientele, I just don't think she could have enough money to cover her needs. It has to be a family member.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read her immediate family has modest means. JFW has also often complained that she has no trust fund to support her. (Welcome to our world, self-entitled bitch.) There's been speculation before that she draws for the furry fandom to make money. Clearly, she's embarrassed about it, because it's a secretive pursuit.
DeleteChicken Mama if you see this can you let me know if Leigh Foster is still JFW’s sponsor? I see that’s he’s connected to a conservancy group called North Country Wild Care but I cant find an email address for him. I’m thinking about having someone in my group contact his group to see if we can get any info on JFW that way, or at least let them know that we have concerns about the hawks that she’s had in the past and how she ended up with yet another one, and what her status is now.
ReplyDeleteIf you search for his name on the website MyLife it shows a few addresses to write to, but the email is partially hidden.
DeleteThanks Anon7
DeleteJesse, will do. I'm wondering if any information re her hawk ownership falls under FOIA?
DeleteThe link they provided to request the hawk documents falls under the sunshine laws.
DeleteYou should be able to get all of the documents they have regarding her falconry apprentice license through that link.
As I stated before, Leigh is no longer her sponsor. She got a new sponsor who was dumb enough to upgrade her to general falconer.
DeleteI’m not sure, Chicken Mama, I’ve never done anything like this before. It was suggested to me by someone in my conservancy group that it would be the polite thing to do to give her sponsor a heads up that JFW was on our radar, that we have concerns and were planning on digging deeper. But if Leigh is not her sponsor, as Fake Farmer stated, I’m not sure where to go from there. We’re leaving for vacation for 10 days on Thurs, I’ll check back in with you after we return home. Good luck! I hope you are enjoying your vacation!
DeleteUpdate for Chicken Mama - Okay, even though my husband says we are wasting our time, my friend is going to reach out to North Country Wild Care in an ‘official’ email. If JFW is now a General Falconer we should at least be able to bring her to their attention. My friend has looked at her IG account and did some searches on her blog where she found some obvious violations. That’s all I know for now.
DeleteThank you Jesse. We should also remember that NYSDEC runs their raptor program under the auspices of the Federal program. My reading of raptor and falconer requirements show FFF to be in violation. If NY State cannot police its own, perhaps they shouldn't have primacy over the Feds with regard to raptors and falconry.
DeleteThanks for the update Jesse. Anything is worth a shot...we might be pleasantly surprised.
DeleteEither that or shes sending unedited pics of herself to male supporters. Sorry to go there everyone, but it is possible. Hope I'm not offending anyone.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a whole new low. Nothing would surprise me. Just when you think she has sunk to her lowest, she goes lower.
DeleteOy. It's a good thing that my dinner is already digested. Just the thought of her muscle-moron pics in a naked version makes me wanna hurl Ho Hos.
DeletePeople might pay her to not look at them.
DeleteWH. High Five!!!
DeleteHigh five FCW!
DeletePics or it didn't happen indeed. Just mosey on over to her buddy Patty's Instagram page to see what a real productive homesteader/farmer does:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instagram.com/pattywesner59/
There's her new honey salve with a pic of the process, as well as for the cheese she makes among other things. Lots of real animal pics too. Seems like there's a lot of stuff happening over there...but at CAF, not so much.
Twitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete❝ 3 days left to make the month! If you like women making a go of it solo, send me 🐩 💰 ❞
Women making a go of it solo? That may have been the case 10 years ago, but not now. Poodles pay while she plays: Swimming, horsey riding, mountain smashing, day drinking, and spending nearly her entire day on Twitter...
May this be the month her enablers refuse to bail her out. "Summer foreclosure" sure has a nice ring to it!
Making a go of it?
DeleteHow about getting a job and learning to be self sufficient? Self sufficiency is not living by yourself while strangers online pay your bills.
Getting a job with a steady paycheck and getting treatment for her various mental illnesses could do wonders for her.
She shouldn't have any animals. We know that she doesn't have any livestock and has to stoop to the low of making statements that suggest that she has them. Such as "Piglets were born last night. Mother and babies are doing well."
Yes piglets were born somewhere on a real farm. On a farm where the farmer isn't too crazy to care for them correctly.
Living such a lie must be exhausting. She knows as soon as people realize she doesn't have any livestock and that she doesn't have a actual farm, the donations will all but stop.
So she has to act like a total nutjob and ask to take photos of other people's livestock and infer that they belong to her. Crazy!
🐷🔌⚡
ANON12 - Love your new moniker! And thank you for your interesting and informative two-part post on the last thread.
ReplyDeleteAs for the diminished readership on her bleg, I agree that her disabling comments lost her a lot of foolllowers. She alienated a lot of folks in doing that, as it showed that she didn't care about their input or advice. In fact, on her Twitter she's lost 20 foollowers in the past week alone, no doubt die to all the idiotic Taylor Swift posts. May the decline continue.
More Twitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete❝ My mom just sent me this and I honestly don't know if it's a joke or not and I refuse to look into it so I will remain quietly horrified. ❞
It was a pic of Pabst's new "hard coffee" aka coffee with alcohol added. What she doesn't realize is that it's Mama Wog's way of saying that she reads her daughter's social media accounts and knows she's an all-day drinker.
Most people in the morning -----------> ☕️ + 🍩
The Pig Shocker's breakfast ------------> ☕️ + 🍸
I saw that slam. I get the distinct impression that Ma Wog finds her daughter disappointing, and takes enjoyment in putting her down.
DeleteThe twat:
ReplyDeleteNone of my clothes fit any more which would have been exciting for me when I had lower self esteem, but as a 37-year-old woman I feel like I lost an investment.
Guess I will have to come up with a farm catastrophe so I can buy new clothes. Hmmm, what will it be this time? I've already used up root canals, truck repairs, busted pipes, fencing, etc. ....hey shammers, what will Jenna think up so she can buy new clothes?
Here she goes again. Bragging about her bulky body. It's funny how her physical fitness never reflects in her appearance. It must be just in Jenna's fantasy. Maybe she can claim to find clothes at the dump. Like when she got a brand new bike there.
DeleteShe's really jumping off of the deep end.
DeleteThe whole running lie is the most obvious because you can tell by looking at her that she is most definitely not a runner. She is still morbidly obese.
It's impossible to remain morbidly obese if she ran as much as she claims too. Add "running" to the long list of her lies.
NONE of her clothes fit? Really? Strange that in every pic she's taken lately, she looks exactly as she did in all her past photos. Saying that her clothes are ripped and threadbare would make more sense.
DeleteEither way it sounds like she's trying to create a plausible excuse for a bunch of new clothes she'll soon be wearing.
Let's not forget the time she found the saddle (that she's now trying to sell for $100) "at the dump". So much goes into fitting a saddle to a horse to not cause pain and do damage. What are the chances that a saddle found "at the dump" fit her and her wide, flat-backed pony well? Either she paid for a saddle that fit him correctly, or she found it at the dump and threw it on him not caring if it fit...Both plausible scenarios to me.
DeleteTo quote an oft-repeated fitness adage, you can't out train a bad diet. So she's a runner. She's also very likely someone who consumes trash morning noon and night. I'd suspect a diet high in processed carbohydrates, not the farm to table diet she alleges.
DeleteTwitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete"2 DAYS LEFT to make the month! I'm a few hundred short of my goal and pushing hard to make this month happen and safe! DM to order pet art, logos, farm goods, homemade soaps, or order future meat shares!!!"
Translation: It's more of her manipulative marketing, and trying to trick potential PayPal poodles. She does this every month like cunning clockwork. The "and safe!" must mean either her "scary red van man," or "wolves at the door."
More Twit Shit:
Delete"GOOD MORNING FROM COLD ANTLER FARM! Whatever you have staring you down, you can handle it. It's Tuesday, bitch."
Sorry, JFW, but using the words "bitch" and "baby" in inappropriate ways only makes you sound stupid not sexy.
It makes her sound juvenile. Jenna you are 37 not 17. Act like an adult.
Delete❝ And if you don't want to purchase anything, PayPal me anyway! Be my 🏧 ❞
DeletePart 1 of 3:
ReplyDeleteI was under the weather yesterday and decided to go back to the early days of the CAF blog. To be honest, I’m thinking about writing an essay about CAF; not a “gotcha” piece, but more an extended meditation on how it’s possible in the period of twelve years to go from being a young, idealistic woman with farm dreams to the Jenna we know today, the one who spends most of her time begging online and tweeting conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift’s sexuality.
I was afraid when I started reading the blog from the beginning that I’d be embarrassed I’d ever fallen for her, the way you return to a beloved author of your youth and realize how achingly bad their books are. But no—in the beginning, Jenna is charming. She writes in clear, straightforward prose that’s only occasionally marred by grammatical errors and clumsy descriptions. She really was a good writer back then.
What’s interesting is how filled with friends and family these early years are. Friends from college and from her hometown come to visit, and she goes to visit friends and family. Her brother accompanies her to LA for her first author convention. In the summer of 2008, she goes home for a few days and helps her parents plant a garden. When she moves to Vermont, she’s always out and about—community gatherings, town hall meetings, potlucks, and jam sessions. She plays music with people all of the time.
And then there are the pictures—of chickens and garden beds, of freshly baked apple pies. She shares recipes. She’s just learned how to knit in 2008, and she shows pictures of her hats.
Jenna is still very much a learner at this point. She attends classes on raising goats, herding sheep and fly fishing. She goes to county fairs and sheepdog trials. She doesn’t sound like she knows it all. Her book hasn’t been published yet; she hasn’t started writing articles for Mother Earth News and Bust and Country Life. The pre-Made From Scratch Jenna is sweet in a way that’s profoundly surprising at this late date.
Yet even in those early, very good days, you can see the seeds of the problems to come. From the beginning, the blog is peppered with requests for people who have ordered stuff from her to get in touch—she’s behind/she’s not sure what orders are still open, etc. And from the very beginning Jenna is a poor steward of her animals. As far back as Idaho, she was coming home from work to messages from her neighbors that her chickens had escaped—again. When she gets to Vermont, predators repeatedly kill her birds, and it never seems to occur to her to build a more secure coop. One winter’s day she comes home from work to find that the chicken coop has collapsed from all the snow on its roof; amazingly, the birds survived.
Another early sign of the troubles ahead: Jenna keeps bringing new animals into the fold before she’s properly learned to care for the ones she already has. She has no business getting sheep, but she just has to have them. And then she gets a goat, Finn. And the sheep escape and the chickens keep dying and so do the rabbits. What’s strange is how she seems to chalk this up to life on a farm. “I lost two hens,” she writes in one post. “It seems when the weather really starts to change, when the first truly cold or warm nights hit in late fall or early summer—I lose some birds. Maybe it's too much for them? They can't adapt fast enough and their bodies fail? I don't know. But I do know I found a three-year-old and a three-month-old both belly up in the coop. Another hen is starting to droop just the ones before had. I hope she kicks back into shape.”
What’s odd is that she never talks about doing any research about why these chickens might have died. She just seems to shrug her shoulders and walk away.
The body count at Cold Antler Farm is alarming from the very beginning.
To be continued ...
Anon55
Part 2 of 3
ReplyDeleteMade from Scratch comes out in 2008 and gets a lot of attention. People are discovering Jenna either through the book or the articles she’s publishing in magazines and online. It’s not until mid-2009, though, that an average blog post yields 30+ comments; some get over a hundred. She has fans who love her, and she seems to love them back. She creates a discussion forum. In May of 2009 she creates a club to encourage people to take up the fiddle and 110 people get on board. There are tons of comments on her blog along the lines of “I just found your book and this blog—you’re living my dream! You’re such an inspiration!” The overflow of love in the comment section is amazing—and perhaps not the best thing for a 27-year-old who, on close inspection, doesn’t seem to really know what she’s doing.
In August, Jenna decides she wants to buy a truck. Interestingly, she gets some gentle push-back along the lines of, “If you’re trying to save up to buy a farm, don’t spend money on another vehicle.” She buys a truck anyway.
(I feel like I’m writing notes for a novel here—a tragedy, really. Even in these early, very good years, the Peak Jenna years, you see her making choices that will doom her. You hear gentle voices saying, “Think about what you’re doing; are you sure that’s the best decision?” Jenna pays them no heed whatsoever.)
The Fall of 2009 is good … until Thanksgiving. Here’s what happened, in Jenna’s words:
“While I was away for Thanksgiving a neighbor was watching my farm. It was a miserable, cold, couple of days and the place got muddy and looked bad. There was mud and muck and a big wet pile of hay that needed to be removed in front of the chicken coop. She complained to my landlord about the muck and animals. My landlord told me what animals can stay and what need to go. So far the sheep and my dogs are okay but Finn and the rabbits need to find new homes. I don't know what she thinks about the poultry yet, but if I need to give up Cyrus and Saro I will be crushed. They were always supposed to live with me on every farm, they live to be 40. And being without chickens would be horrible. I need to get my own place. I wish I could afford to just buy a farm .... someday. Right now I need to do what I am told.”
Later she explains, “The neighbor felt i was doing too much, and felt the rabbits were neglected. The bucks lives on the porch in a wire cage with a roof, feed, water, and next to the side of the house. he is in the process of being clean-shorn so he had matts [sic] on his coat where I had yet to cut it off. She saw the rabbit in what she considered unsafe living conditions with a matted coat and assumed he was neglected. She is trying to rescue the animals from me, she feels I am a poor owner. It's a very, very large misunderstanding with different views about caging animals, livestock, and life in general with animals. it has suddenly gotten very complicated.”
The support she gets from her readers is heartwarming—and, in retrospect, problematic. None of her supporters have actually seen her property or her animals in person. The neighbor who took care of her animals was concerned enough about them to report Jenna to her landlord. She witnessed their living conditions; she had reason to believe they were not being properly cared for. To Jenna’s supporters, the woman was the villain of the tale. No one seemed to question Jenna’s version of the story. No one wondered if maybe the neighbor had grounds to be concerned.
To be continued …
Anon55
Part 3 of 3
ReplyDeleteThis post from February 2010 is telling [note: by this point Jenna has been evicted from her house, but given a generous four months to get out]:
“One of the more unsettling conversations I had this winter happened on the porch steps of one of my Sandgate neighbors. It was right after all the controversy was unraveling, when animal control officers were showing up and phone calls from the landlord about removing animals were common occurrences. It was during this malay [sic] that I went to a few of the neighbors to talk to them in person, and see if they felt I was in the wrong trying to start a small diversified farm in their village. I asked one woman her opinion and she sighed, looked off into the distance, and said "Well, you know Jenna. The property has never looked worse...
This absolutely shocked me. Since I've moved in I'd turned the overgrown backyard with an empty dirt-garden into a thriving small farm. I had made useless land into a place that fed, clothed, and filled me with joy. But what I had considered beautiful, she considered an eyesore. The sagging fences, the chicken poo on a stepping stone, the bags of feed behind the garage, the hay stacked on the porch .... all of this was aesthetically unpleasing to the non farmer. I had turned a lawn into a pasture, an abandoned metal garden shed into a chicken coop, and a porch into am open air hay barn.”
Most of the replies are predictable. One reader wrote, “All I can say is I'm so glad you got evicted!! Those neighbors don't deserve you, and that wonderful old Jackson farmhouse (and farm neighborhood) does. The gentrification of any rural community tends to ruin it, and it sounds like your current neighborhood is well on its way to ruin.” Another commented, “Well, today when I read about your conversation with the neighbour I got so mad I could spit. Forget reasonable! Forget rational! If I wasn't on the other side of the continent (Vancouver Island) I would like to find your neighbour and give her my two cents' worth.”
The story turns here. Everything that happens next is a result of Jenna being reported by her neighbor. After her eviction, she becomes more determined than ever to buy a farm of her own. By and large, her supporters support her with “you go, girl!” comments and donations (I may have donated at this point). Jenna bends over backwards, twists and turns, sells all kinds of stuff, in order to secure the mortgage on the Jackson, NY, farm. She gets it, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the worst thing that could have happened to her.
Reading through these first few years of CAF, I feel a little heartbroken for the 26-year-old who started a homesteading blog in Idaho. I think if you went back in time to tell her what happened, what her life was going to be like in 2019, she’d be horrified. All those lovely fans—gone. The writing career—gone. The nights playing fiddle with friends—gone.
I can’t help but wish that young Jenna had had a mentor or a partner, someone to say, “Slow down. Don’t buy the sheep. Don’t get the truck. Apprentice yourself to a farmer and get the experience you need to raise animals. Book learning isn’t enough.”
I leave you with this CAF post from October 2009.
“I want to own a small piece of Vermont by 30. I want to be walking out to check on the lambs with my border collies at 35. And I want to be reading by the woodstove, sick of (but still addicted to) shepherding at 55. My high trial sheepdog curled up at my feet. If some bills get paid late, or I can't retire at 65, then so be it. I'll be out in the pasture till I drop.”
Anon55
"I can’t help but wish that young Jenna had had a mentor or a partner, someone to say, “Slow down. Don’t buy the sheep. Don’t get the truck. Apprentice yourself to a farmer and get the experience you need to raise animals. Book learning isn’t enough.”
DeleteBut she has had people doing so, and I suspect Jon Katz was one of them. She just didn't receive it. Still doesn't.
By young Jenna, I mean 26-year-old Jenna. By the time Jenna met Katz, it was too late. If you read the early blogs, you see that she really was eager to learn from others in the early days--although the fact that she didn't find a mentor at the time suggests that maybe even then she wasn't interested in someone really overseeing her work in a meaningful--and possibly critical--way.
DeleteAnon55
The story from the early era about Finn the goat is the one I remember the best. She absolutely loved that goat, always posted a ton of cute pics of him, and had taught him to be a pack goat on her hikes, which was pretty cool. When she got busted for animal neglect, one of the things she was cited for was that Finn was apparently left on a tie-down all day long, which isn't safe as it makes them vulnerable to predators or strangling themselves. So he was fostered out until she could get a place of her own with better options for turning him out. Once she did, she brought him home...for all of a few days. She wrote that her property was not built to handle a goat, and so she re-homed him AGAIN. And I think in less than a year later, she'd acquired MORE GOATS. Poor Finn was just pushed to the wayside and forgotten, it seemed to me, and he had really bonded with her. The other kind of cool thing that turned me sour was her two sled dogs, Jazz and Annie, who she actually used to go sledding with. I loved seeing those pictures on her blog. Once she'd gotten her border collie, she basically retired them to the house. I don't remember hearing of her ever going sledding again. So the finding of pets and then ignoring/neglecting of them was what made me start following blogs like this, which I still do, because I guess it still bugs me.
DeleteHFH, the more I read about the way she treated animals from the very beginning, the angrier I became. I'm not sure that I was aware of how early the mistreatment started until I started reviewing the first few years of the blog. Her cavalier attitude toward the deaths of perfectly healthy creatures is unforgivable.
DeleteAnon55
She never should've "bought" (but the bank owns it) that piece of property. It was the start of the end. I've never understood why JFW didn't wait until she had more money saved and knowledge accrued. Quitting her career at Orvis exacerbated her drastic decline. Her cavalier cruelty and disregard towards animals is disturbing. It seems to have worsened over the years. I'm surprised that her poor horses have survived so far in their POS shelter. What gets me is that the Kiva loan was supposed to go towards repairing infrastructure and fences. Instead, she appears to have spent it on bullshit items.
DeleteOne of her favourite sayings has always been 'Where there's livestock there's dead stock' Nice to see you again HFH!
DeleteThanks Karen! I remember the "deadstock" comment, too. It's like some farmer said it to talk about the occasional livestock that dies despite your best efforts to provide proper care, and she thought it meant she had carte blanche to have dozens of animals die in VERY preventable ways because, hey, if you're a real farmer that's what happens.
DeleteSo Karen isn't joking--Jenna actually said that?
DeleteAnon55
She also said she wanted to put the laugh back into slaughter too.
DeleteYes, Anon55. It was around the time she was trying to convince people her dead livestock count was normal and just a part of "real" farming. I think a bunch of other homesteaders started questioning why she had so many preventable animal deaths. One of those times she also mentioned she bought twice as many baby chicks as she needed, knowing predators would get a full half the number (which in real life is totally unacceptable for anyone into farming, homesteading or just keeping chickens). But she defended her position like everyone else was a city person who didn't know anything about real farm life....a theme which sadly became more common over time. She knew it all, and everyone trying to help her was just wrong.
DeleteWow, beautiful piece of writing. There were so many of us trying to gently give Jenna advice. I am 20 years older than she and felt that I could help her. We would go to the house and I would feel her out for her receptiveness. She never wanted it. I suggested she get a part time job...nope, couldn't be away from the farm for that long, especially in the winter. Now I read about her going hiking, riding, etc. Suggested she write a book - "Gibson's Adventures" or Spend a Day with Merlin. Nope, she hated drawing cartoon characters...now look what she does. I just shake my head. She is her own worst enemy.
DeleteThanks, Chicken Mama! From the time Jenna decided to buy a truck, there were always a few voices cautioning her to be conservative. I haven't gotten to the part of the blog where she decides to quit her job, but as I recall, a lot of people advised her against it. I've always wondered what would have happened if she'd kept her job. Where would she be today? Was the mistake in buying the farm, or in quitting the job? I'm not sure.
DeleteI think you're right--she is her own worst enemy.
By the way, I saw a comment on the CAF blog way back in the day from someone calling herself Chicken Mama, and I wondered if it was you!
Anon55
Anon55 wrote: "By the time Jenna met Katz, it was too late."
DeleteYou're absolutely right about that. Over on his Bedlam Farm blog Jon wrote that he had tried to avoid meeting her initially because he had "heard about her" around town. He didn't like what he heard and didn't want to become involved with her. They were friends for a short bit, but then he broke things off with her because she was too stubborn to take any advice or constructive criticism.
Anon, yup that was me. I was one of her champions back in the day before I wised up. I do have to say that we learned a couple of things from her, for which I am grateful.
DeleteAnon7, Believe me, Jon Katz is no prize either. We had our go around with him and there is some mental illness there as well. Let me know if you ever want to hear the story, but I warn you, it's a long one.
Jon Katz writes about his struggle with depression and I get the feeling that he struggles with some type of mental illness as well. I think we all have our issues to some degree. People who write about themselves only write what they want other people to know.
DeleteThat being said, I've never had any problem with him. He has written things that inspire me and has done much good charity work. Friends seem to come and go in his life so I do suspect ongoing issues, but then again I am not perfect either.
I think he tries to be a good person. I really do. I do not get that feeling with Jenna.
Wow, anon55! I have so many other things I should be doing right now but could not stop reading your post. I’ve always wondered what the hell the attraction was to JFW, but just couldn’t slog through her blog. Thank you so much for this synopsis. It shines a whole new light on how she was able to make it this far. I’m looking forward to part 3.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like she gets animals on a whim, then gets bored with them pretty quickly and gives them minimal care. That’s the impression I got with the hawks, she’s not in it for the sake of the hawks, she’s in for the fantasy.
Thanks, Jesse! One of the reasons I'd like to write a piece on CAF is because I want to figure out what the real story is. I'm sort of tired of following Jenna, to be honest, especially since I think things are going to continue the same way for years to come. It seems impossible, I know, but it seemed impossible five years ago that she'd still be around now, and yet here she is. How can that be?
DeleteOne of my theories about Jenna is that she's always been more of a dreamer than a farmer. She loves role playing and world-building. I've always felt that she loved the *idea* of farming and homesteading as much as she loved the real thing, maybe even more. And I totally get that. I'm an idea person myself. In fact, when I came across Made From Scratch, I was on the same page as Jenna--I wanted to make everything myself and grow everything and on and on. At the very least I wanted chickens. A lot of people were on that page, and a lot of us played at backyard homesteading (while the real farmers and homesteaders rolled their eyes, I'm sure) until something else caught our interest.
At some point, having achieved a certain amount of small pond fame and success, I think Jenna felt like she didn't have any choice but continue playing the game. She probably thought she'd keep writing books, her fans would keep stanning her, and she'd make a living playing farmer. The problem was, she wasn't very convincing in her role, and people were starting to notice. Moreover, her writing became more dishonest--and much, much worse. She was writing purple prose to convince people that her life was the best life ever--and of course that they should support her financially because of her marvelous purple prose. A lot of fish stopped biting.
Nonetheless, she kept the game going, and the way to make that interesting was to bring in new players--horses, pigs, falcons--to the story. And yeah, I think you're right--once she gets bored, she moves on, which is bad news for the animals she loses interest in.
I'm glad I had a chance to go back to the early days (though I wish I could get rid of this bug!) because it made me see that at one point Jenna really was likeable. I've read up to the point in 2010 where she moves to the house she lives in now, and I'm not sure how much more I can bring myself to read. I recall that it's around this point I stopped reading CAF on a regular basis because her posts got so tedious. She was constantly having to justify her purchases, her new animals, etc. People who had been on her side were starting to question her choices, and she couldn't tolerate it.
Anyway, if I ever figure the whole story out, I'll let you know!
Anon55
I thoroughly enjoyed reading that, Anon55! I would love to see you get published, I really enjoy pieces like this and I think many others would too. Very well written!
DeleteThanks to Anon12 too, who gave me a lot of insight into JFW also.
Anon55, that is the most thorough and well written summary of her that I've ever seen. That took a lot of work, thank you.
DeleteYou're welcome, WH. Thank you for your kind words.
DeleteAnon55
Definitely keep writing Anon55. That was very entertaining and well written. I love the long posts like yours that do a little analyzing and give some background.
Delete--GG
Anon55. I "second" what was said about your commentary, thanks!
DeleteThanks, GG and Earn Up! I like the long posts, too. I'd love if more people wrote about how they found JW and when they realized something was wrong with her story.
Delete👏 BRAVO Anon55!!!🏅
DeleteWhat a brilliant and amazing summary you wrote, as well as your insightful observations and thoughtful commentary. And what you said here is spot on:
"One of my theories about Jenna is that she's always been more of a dreamer than a farmer. She loves role playing and world-building."
That is a perfect way to describe her CAF dream. The role playing and world-building is akin to smoke and mirrors. It's all for show. All her silly costumes, bows 'n arrows, that fiddle, and all the furry props -- especially that pic of her on the horse with the hawk on her arm. It's such a cringe inducing attempt to get people to donate to her little fantasy world.
Again, great 3-part synopsis you wrote there. And I hope you feel better soon!
Thanks, Anon7! I've always thought that it's too bad Jenna didn't focus on her writing when she was younger. She was a good writer back then, and if she'd put her energy in learning how to write a novel, she could have done all that role-playing on the page. By the time she finally got around to writing a novel, she'd lost the habit of writing well, and she wrote a book she'd do well to disown. The funny thing is, I think she was a lot happier before she tried to live like fiction. In the early years of CAF, before she bought her own place, she was living a real life, and she seemed pretty happy doing it. Living like fiction is really no way to live.
DeleteThanks for your well wishes--I'm telling myself that tomorrow I'll feel 100% better. Fingers crossed!
Anon55
Thanks Anon 55 for the enjoyable read. I started following Jenna when she was in Idaho after reading an article in Mother Earth News. She could write back then and I found her an engaging seeker following her dream of being a farmer. I'm 30+ years older than Jenna and she reminded me of myself in my twenties. I bought "Made from Scratch" to support her. I never donated money.
ReplyDeleteI became disinterested when she had to have horses she could not afford, bought way too many animals that she could not take care of and then got into falconry as part of her live like fantasy
b.s. Somewhere along the way she became a obnoxious know it all, intolerant of any advice from others.
I hope you can write a longer piece on her story. Wouldn't it be great if you could interview her, though I'm not sure she is capable of self reflection or honesty.
P.B.
I read her books after buying them at a thrift store. I was not impressed.
DeleteAfter reading on the previous blog that someone used her books for a camp fire, I did the same.
I brought them along on a camping trip and watched them burn.
🔥🔥🔥
P.B.--She really was a good writer back in the early days, wasn't she? As a writer myself, it's been weirdly fascinating to see how much her writing has deteriorated over the last decade. Not to get too woo-woo about it, but she had a gift, and when she abused her gift by essentially writing advertisements for a life she didn't live in order to get others to give her money, the gift was taken from her.
DeleteShe'd always had a bad tendency to get sentimental and gooey when she wrote about sitting around a campfire with friends or the joys of farm life, but mostly she kept it in check. As soon as Jenna moved to her own farm, her writing got treacly in a way that was hard to stomach. I was wading into 2010 this afternoon and came across this:
"This salad contains a chick I held in my hands, flour that sifted between my fingers, milk I stirred over the stove into stretchy mozzarella, and greens bought at the supermarket with organic stamped on the side. It's a collection of work, and choices, and young life, and a bloody death."
Besides the tortured syntax (the supermarket had organic stamped on its side?) and the picture of a little fuzzy chick in her salad and milk spilled all over the stove top, it's just plain over the top. She's talking about a dinner of chicken and a green salad. Knowing that there's ten more years of these sort of lofty, important observations makes me wonder if I can continue with my project of re-reading the blog.
As for interviewing her--I'd love to, but I doubt she'd do it, and I'd doubt she'd shed much light on the situation. Nonetheless, it would be fascinating to hear what she has to say about where her life has brought her.
Anon55
Oh man, that is awful. "A salad of bloody death." Makes me never want to eat one again.
DeleteI can see what she was trying to do there, but like you said, karma stole her ability to write in a sane and coherent manner.
P.B. I agree with what you wrote, and also the intelligent comments above. Your sentence "Somewhere along the way she became a obnoxious know it all, intolerant of any advice from others" is true. Although it sounds like she had the propensity for being an arrogant asshole all along. Her social media obsession, and addiction to Taylor Swift, along with the "I'M SUPER QUEER!!!" now drama is disconcerting, too.
ReplyDeleteI think the TS and super queer talk will die down eventually, once she realizes it's not bringing in any donations. When I started reading her bleg a little over a year ago, it was full of Heathen talk. The Tyr's Hand group was still active and she was also a moderator for the Asatru subreddit. There were many posts about leaving little bowls of milk, chicken teeth, blood and such underneath some tree outside.
DeleteBut no mention of any of that now. Can't remember the last time she even said the word Heathen.
Once she loses interest in something like being a hipster heathen, then it's rarely mentioned. It's been a pattern of hers for years.
DeleteOnce she stops mentioning an animal, it means something bad has happened to that animal. She hasn't mentioned the new hawk in quite a while.
DeleteWH. I agree. Otherwise, she'd be bragging about it, and showing off its pics. Even if it were molting she'd find an excuse.
DeleteFirst the inference that piglets were born on her property.
ReplyDeleteShe inferred by saying "Piglets were born last night. Mother and babies are doing well."
Yes piglets were born that night on an actual farm somewhere else. Where the farmer isn't too crazy to care for them correctly.
Now she is inferring that she's running with a new girlfriend.
"I ran 6 miles. Don't be impressed, she ran 10."
Whereever the imaginary new girl is, she ran 10 miles. They weren't running together.
So Pig Shocker has either imagined the new girl or she exists but didn't drive to her all the way "from the ocean."
She didn't show up. Most likely because she doesn't exist.
Now Pig Shocker's entire life is a made up fantasy. She doesn't live on a farm. She lives on a few acres in a dilapidated house. No livestock or crops on the property. The new woman in her life is also part of her demented fantasy. She hasn't spent actual face to face time with her. She just infers that she has.
How much crazier can she get?
That "ran 6 miles" tweet...she was referring to her supposed date? I'm not buying it. There's no talk about this date like there was for the last one. Sounds like more made-up nonsense to keep her foollowers "tethered to her potential" so they'll donate to her.
DeleteI think that it's a bunch of bull, too. Supposedly this person "drove three hours from the ocean" to visit JFW. If anything, it'd be a long distance flirtation. I don't see the "lesbian U-Haul" move-in-fast cliche happening with the FFF. (And that's "if" the woman even exists.)
DeleteYeah, she's just inferring that the new Pig Shocker Companion is at her place. When really she's just mentioning what the PSC is doing whereever she's at.
DeleteIf the PSC exists, hopefully Pig Shocker is being catfished. That would serve her right. 😆
PSC lol
DeleteThe other day she said that NONE of her clothes fit her anymore. So what did she wear on the alleged date?
DeleteHey, shammers who are farmers and deal with hay: I just saw on reddit a discussion about haystacks catching fire and how it's a common problem. Someone asked how it's possible, but the answer wasn't clear as there was a lot of talk about bacterial fermentation, lactobacillus bacteria, silage, anerobic processes and other farm lingo I don't understand. And of course, a lot of puns and joke answers that didn't help either.
ReplyDeleteSomeone did mention that hay when bailed wet can cause spontaneous combustion, which reminded me of something someone here said recently about how the Pig Shocker was dumb to leave a bunch of hay in the back of her truck when it was raining. Also, what about the hay that is stacked in barn lofts...can that catch fire? And also, when those poor goats were living on top of 3-4 feet of moist urine-soaked hay, is that a situation that could lead to a hay fire? I know this is kinda off-topic, but I figured this would be a good place to ask for an explanation.
Hay will catch fire if baled and stored when wet- you can google the chemical process. That is why is it crucial that you buy hay from a trusted source who monitors the wetness (they have meters for this) in the bales- AND who also knows how to make hay. They used to, and I bet some still do, salt hay just to prevent this.
DeleteWhen I lived back in CA hay fires were common. "They baled it hot" was usually described as the cause, and drying it completely prevents it from happening.
DeleteWe live in the Northeast, and still salt our hay as we stack it in the barn. Hay left stacked in the back of a truck during rain is idiotic. It will start rotting, get moldy, and should be used as mulch.
DeleteThanks guys. I learn so much here. Who knew hay could be so complicated?
DeleteI'm no expert on this, but we did make our own hay for years. Generally it is hay that is baled when it is not dry enough. We have gone around and cut the strings on bales that were like that, and it is amazing how hot they can get inside. Once the air can get at the damp hay it will dry out and be okay. When we were picking up or stacking bales, any extra heavy ones were always put aside and checked for heat. Damp hay doesnt slide though the baler as easily so more gets packed into one bale.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your answer! This is the kind of interesting stuff she should be blogging about. But instead, she merely mentions that she bought or stacked hay and then posts a pic. Which is not as interesting.
DeleteReading about interviewing Jenna reminded me of her "JFW" post on July 15, 2015:
ReplyDelete"Someday there will be an interview I will do where I will talk about weeks like this one, and how scary they could be if I let them.
I will tell them I learned that needing to be resourceful and fighting to keep the life I loved was the biggest gift I ever gave myself.
I will tell them that scary things can become amazing challenges. I will tell them I always figured it out.
I'm Jenna Effin' Woginrich. I tell myself some days with my coffee."
Maybe it won't be the interview she expected.
And look at how much her life has improved since 2015! Not. It seems to be slowly declining due to her poor choices, animal abusing, and celebrity/social media obsession.
DeleteAny time someone would give her sensible advice, she would call them naysayers.
DeleteUgh. And just a few posts above that she actually wrote "Jenna Effin' Woginrich" and "I'm so street" next to a pic of her doing who knows what.
DeleteAlso in another post she wrote:
❝ Right now money is the bitter ingredient in life. Something I need to attain just to exchange with the banks and bills that let me live my life. ❞
She writes that as if it's a concept she doesn't understand, a burden she doesn't deserve. And she's still doing it 4 years later. As if needing to "earn up" money is nothing more than a pesky interruption of her fun-in-the-sun pursuits.
ANON12. First of all, FCW, I am still laughing as I type this. I know "lesbian U-Haul" is an old joke (kinda, sorta) but the fact you dumped it in the way you did just tickled me. And thank God people are finally saying the words "purple prose." That whole sitting by the campfire holding mugs (in fingerless gloves no doubt) while sipping honey meade and sharing ghost stories as the pumpkins are lit. I mean, for a writer? She BLEEDS all over the page. It's FANTASY. The chicken salad was a good one, too, Anon. I don't think I could go back and wade through all of that crap, chicken, sheep or otherwise, so God bless you who have done so.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pretty obvious decline. I spent time on Patty's page over the weekend. She has extended family, well-tended property, healthy looking animals, and she seems to be involved in her community. Not to mention caring for an adult son with special needs. She had a few crazy looking pictures of her neighbor. I know she isn't ignorant of what's going on regarding that property and the animals. She must have a huge heart, is all I can say.
I'm glad that you found my comment funny not offensive, thanks! I think that Pember Patty is more of an enabler than having "a huge heart."
DeleteI don't find it offensive either. If anyone is wondering, the joke goes:
Delete❝ What does a lesbian bring on the second date? ❞
❝ A U-Haul. ❞
And it's pretty much true, lol. Happened to me...except it was my own trailer.
ANON12 - I also was checking out Patty's Instagram page the other day, and man, that woman is productive! Honey, salves, cheese. It's too bad that she hasn't been able to inspire her CAF buddy to get off her butt more often and do some real work.
BTW, I had asked a question that I don't think was answered: Patty is selling 1 lb chunks of raw honeycomb. She's also selling honey in a jar...so why would someone buy that and what do they do with it?
Pic here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B0RIktBFMeP/
The whole thing is edible. Sometimes the comb is chewed like gum.
DeleteTwitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete"Last day of the month to make the mortgage! While between harvests and book deals it's always right up against it, month to month. Please share if you can and consider supporting CAF if that is something you'd like to see continue!!! DM for info!"
Poor desperate little Jenna Woginrich. There are no "harvests and book deals," "bitch." It hasn't happened in years, and probably won't again due to her laziness and rotten reputation. What a liar. The only "product" that she specializes in is a bunch of bull. And she wouldn't be "right up against it, month to month" begging if fat ass would just get a job.
On the bleg today she wrote:
Delete❝ July is winding down and things are precarious. This is the first time I haven’t been able to post mark a mortgage check, with not enough sales coming in and too many bills going out. ❞
The first time?!? Is she serious?
August is gonna be super interesting. Sales are slow for her because people are on vacation. Not to mention that her offerings suck. When people do get back home they'll be doing all that back-to-school stuff, and not looking for pet portraits.
"Last day of the month to make the mortgage! While between harvests and book deals it's always right up against it, month to month. Please share if you can and consider supporting CAF if that is something you'd like to see continue!!! DM for info!"
ReplyDeleteSomebody replied: "What are you harvesting? I wasn't aware you had any crops."
If Jenna replies, she'll explain that she harvests animals (which is such a weird usage of "harvest," and a vaguely unpleasant one at that). But I'm pretty sure she wants people to think she's growing crops and that's why she uses "harvest."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Jenna was smart to get off Facebook and make Twitter and IG her only social media platforms. Twitter is a perfect place to tell a story that doesn't add up. A lot of people will read Jenna's tweet and wonder vaguely what Jenna grows, but they won't think, "Wait a minute! She never shows any photographs of her garden or the part of her property she's growing crops on! I don't think she grows anything at all!" On Twitter, you're always missing pieces of the story unless you're following someone closely. You don't necessarily expect the pieces to add up.
So Twitter is a great way to tell a story that's not really true.
The part about being in between book deals? Her last book, Cold Antler Farm, was published in 2014. After that, Birchthorn, which was self-published, so it doesn't count. So the last time she was actually offered a contract was 2013, maybe earlier (it takes a least a year between the time you contract with a publisher and the time a book is published, usually a lot longer). Saying that she's between book deals makes it sound like now she's done working on her last book, she's in the process of looking for a home for her next book. But I think she's been shopping book ideas for awhile and no one's biting.
My point is, her tweet makes it sound as though she's the same farmer-writer she's always been, and it's just that slow time of year, as though she's not "up against it" every month. And this is what fascinates me--how Twitter allows her to create that narrative and continue to get away with it. If someone yells out, "The Emperor has no clothes!" she just deletes the tweet and blocks the poster.
Anon55
Anon55. My Twitter Twaddle comment above yours was on the same subject. I like your elaboration. It's disingenuous of Jenna to write that repeat tweet. Again, it's all about her manipulative marketing. She's written before about "harvesting words," but that's more putrid purple prose. It's meaningless crap. Her "narrative" is false. She's "The Emperor" of "Veryork" wearing kooky kilts who wants to play while PayPal poodles pay.
DeleteIt's becoming obvious that even her most fervent fans are having donor fatigue lately. I've noticed that her rabid cheerleaders are slacking off. Perhaps some of them have finally figured out that she's fraudulent.
DeleteAnon55 - It will be interesting if she has the balls to answer the growing crops question. And just above that comment, someone else wrote:
Delete❝ Any updates on the soap which I ordered from you? Thanks!!! ❞
😆 Lol, yet another disgruntled customer. Between the iffy artwork, delays, and having to ask repeatedly where your stuff is, she is creating a very bad buyer experience which will kill any chance of repeat business from those customers. Doesn't she know that?
FCW, I love "The Emperor of Veryork"! It has a nice ring to it.
DeleteAnon7, she hasn't answered the question yet. I bet she won't.
Anon55
I've always been annoyed by her calling the area "Veryork." It sounds stupid and affected. She answered the soap question, ("In the mail Monday!!!"), but ignored the growing crops one.
DeleteJenna currently has 4,832 followers. If you look at her followers , each of them is following 200 to 3,000+ others. With the exception of her rabid followers, the 10 or 11 who always like and retweet her, to the rest she's barely a dot on their radar. I think that's why they don't make the connections in her false narrative.
ReplyDeleteP.B.
I don't know how long you've been following her shit show on Twitter, but we've suspected here that she's bought a lot of followers.
DeleteI have no doubt that she definitely bought fake followers. The vast majority of her tweets only receive about 5 comments on average...out of a supposed 4,000+???
DeleteAlso, just over a week ago her foollower count was almost 4,860 -- so that's almost 30 folks who decided they were fed up with her and Taylor.
Twitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete❝ I did a Falconry Talk yesterday for a group of at-risk pre-teens. I was introduced by the organizer as "Local author, farmer, falconer and die-hard Taylor Swift fan. I fucking made it. ❞
Why did she even bother to talk? Her just standing there in her Game of Trones-style hawk costume would be enough to scare straight any at-risk teen.
Anon7, As someone who as been reading through Early Jenna years, I once again have to wonder: What would 26-year-Jenna make of 37 year-old Jenna? Would she think, "Wow, I'm glad I turned out to be such a tough-talking badass?" Or would she wonder how in the hell she grew up to be the kind of woman who headed out on hikes wearing eyeliner and lipstick and was endlessly obsessed with Taylor Swift's sex life? Who called her readers "bitches" instead of "darlings"?
DeleteThis will sound totally weird, but I just had the thought--I'm really glad Young Jenna isn't around to see what happened.
Anon55
As to the introduction, it sounds like she wrote it.
DeleteThe classless and crude "I fucking made it" line reminds me of her stupid Reddit post which was closed due to commenters calling her out. Check out the title. Here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/7d6pnu/image_5_years_ago_i_quit_a_job_i_hated_to_farm/. And here's the follow-up link: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/7dficl/getmotivated_thread_gets_locked_after_op_posts/.
DeleteI frickin' love that reddit thread...never laughed harder, lol. All of her boastful lies were savagely shot down in 🔥🔥🔥's.
DeleteAnon 7:20 - I think you're right...it does sound made-up. How would the organizer know about her die-hard Taylor Swift obsession anyway? And why would she consider that to be something inspirational for tweens?
It seems Pember Patty just held an event where pre-teens spent the day at her farm. What are the odds Pig Shocker elbowed her way into the event?
DeleteThank God no photos of PS in her "drunken street-wise heathen" garb to frighten the children and pollute Patty's Instagram.
Someone asked her on twitter 4 hours ago what does she “harvest”, saying that they weren’t aware she had any crops. It’s under one on promotional retweets.
ReplyDeleteNo answer, of course.
Of course, there's still no response, or even an acknowledgement. (What a rude twat.) It's so much easier just to ignore those pesky questions about her blatant lying.
DeleteShe harvests whatever Aldi has on sale...
DeletePDD. Exactly. And there's still been no response. I just checked that comment. That's typical of JFW. She'll always ignore answering questions which would reveal what a fraud her hovel is in reality.
DeleteDidn't she recently say that her job involves harvesting words and photos? You can't pay the bills with that crap crop.
DeleteANON12
ReplyDeleteSnippets (JW might call this "harvesting")
I read the latest on CAF and here. And to be honest, I only look at CAF every few months or if someone highlights the latest outrage. I also went back and read Jon Katz and Meredith (High St Farm) today just browsing through. Katz is busy with a variety of charitable work: taking suitable pets to senior facilities, buying things or spending time with the loneliest, buying things for asylum children and a helping high school (multiple basketballs for example, they didn't have one decent one), plus pictures of his property and lots of pretty flowers, etc. With Meredith, at random, I landed right back into "Comments 2014". Little Nell was wailing her alarm about foreclosure and by God she was a fighter and SHE wasn't going down. (Did she read "The Five Little Peppers" growing up? Where is Snidely Whiplash in all of this ?!?) This is FIVE YEARS AGO, and she still doesn't have a viable working plan to survive! Up the lazy river in the ole mill stream. Let's go tubing, I guess. You Tubing.
I should have answered that honeycomb question earlier. I grew up with slabs of it in the honey jar, so it seems normal to me. As children, we would chew it, like gum, but:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/recipes/2011/08/how-to-use-honeycomb
Patty as an enabler. I suppose so. Some people can't stand aside and let nature take it's course. I had one relative, discussing another younger relative, and she told me, "I just can't watch her hit rock bottom and do nothing." I was careful in how I couched my terms, but I told her that "yes" she could and should let said person hit bottom. I warned her she was setting up a situation where her nephew (my husband) and myself would be inheriting the mess left behind by deceased older relatives throwing money her way. I also upset her when I told her we would not be picking up the slack the day that happened. In effect, try to force a maturation on both their parts: enabler and enabled. Some day if anyone's interested, I'll have to write out what happened to that troubled person, because life can be ironic.
As side businesses (and to get rid of "stuff") I sell things online through multiple sources. The usual: eBay ETSY, Discogs, Amazon, etc. I'm about to unload my stuff off Amazon because with their mega growth they are not supporting the little guy selling personal collections. If you have one book for sale, they want you listing 100. I am not a warehouse. It's not worth it anymore, and there are sites for a variety of things. My point being: August is traditionally the deadest month of the year for sales, and I've been doing this for decades. People are going on vacation, saving up money for children's school supplies.
No one even mentions canning. I was raised to help my mother can during the hottest times of the year, and when we didn't have a viable garden (mostly we did), we would go to orchards and pick bushels of peaches, flats of strawberries, cucumbers to pickle, string beans, jams and jellies. On and on and on. Try making dill pickles on a hot August day with no air conditioning. Why isn't she preserving food? That is Homesteading 101. Oh wait. She doesn't grow food.
Yesterday, I saw that Jon Katz, for example, was buying up cords of wood starting in early July and has a very tidy pile, which he noted he wouldn't need for some time, but better to be prepared, he says. He also reported what backbreaking work it was in the heat. HA. Sorry. Still laughing, give me a second. If you cannot pay your bills within any given month, time to rethink the diagram. Put down your quaffing jug and get off Twitter, you twat. Guess what? WINTER IS COMING!!!
I appreciated your thoughtful and funny comment, thanks! I'd like to hear "what happened to that troubled person." It sounds like a cautionary tale, and one that JFW would be wise to heed. If she can get off Twitter for a few minutes, and stop tweeting inanities about Taylor Swift's sexual orientation.
DeleteANON12 - Great observations! As for canning, you're right, you can't can what you don't grow. I check out Brandi Carlile's Instagram from time to time and saw that even though she's a super busy mom and successful musician, she still finds the time to grow and can her own tomatoes. She also spends time on her tractor doing home improvement and fence work on her land, unlike the Pig Shocker.
DeleteANON12. Brandi Carlile is a great example. She splits the profits evenly between herself and the twins (one of them is married to her sister.) She bought a big earth moving machine (again for them all to share, they all live nearby) and they dug out a man-woman-made lake, built bridges, etc. And she's writing and producing music, out on the road, they are all raising children. I could go on and on. That's just a jot of what they do. Even if JW didn't GROW the food, she could occasionally go buy a bushel of peaches or apples (apple butter, applesauce, spiced apples, etc.) Oh. I forgot. That's work. And she's an artiste. Harvesting words. Sorry to drag you into this pig slop, Brandi.
DeleteTwitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete"So close to making it. So so close!!!!"
Translation: "Poodles, please PayPal me the mortgage money now!!! Otherwise, I won't have enough funds for my monthly entertainment. I won't work a part-time job to support myself like a normal adult. I just want you to do it for me."
Again, this is a prime example of her manipulative marketing. She wants to give the false impression that if she just has a few hundred dollars, then she'll be safe from the "scary red van man" and "wolves at the door."
Nauseatingly spot on translation, EUM. And only one person bothered to comment: "You can do it!"
DeleteLol...bet that person didn't donate a penny. "You can do it" -- yeah, perhaps if she had a real job. Pig Shocker, your tweet only received 1 re-tweet and 3 likes. Time to give up the ghost...donation fatigue has hit your foollowers HARD.
You know, I once said it would be funny to donate just one penny to her, but I wouldn't want her to have access of any kind to my PayPal account. However, I do have a handful of mostly-spent Visa gift cards that have tiny balances ($0.57, $1.20, $0.35, etc.) Hmmmmm, I've always wondered just what to do with them...
The twat: Going out for the second run of the day to relax and digest because I now have a problem.
ReplyDeleteOf course you do. Have a problem. Always. Otherwise how would you get any money? Cant wait to hear what it is.
Ooh, that's an interesting take, Anon. By "I now have a problem" I thought she meant she was becoming addicted to running or something.
DeleteBut I think you read it correctly: She's getting ready to drop her latest disaster. Hopefully it's the news that she's 2-3 months behind on the mortgage. And even more hopeful, is that no one will help and she'll be forced to give those animals proper homes.
Let's hope it's something that frees the animals left on her shit pit property.
DeleteI would guess it's that she missed the mortgage payment. I am sure we will hear about it very soon.
ReplyDeleteYes its everyone else's fault.
ReplyDeleteThe problem: On Instagram JFW writes that she is “enjoying romantic mornings talking over coffee”. I suspect she is agonizing about she’s how to explain to her adoring public that she is renting that U Haul and moving to the ocean. How can she possibly make folks understand that she is walking away from the feral life, a thriving farm, homesteading, her livestock, her brewery, the town that she loves (and which loves her back), her farmhouse (with a mortgage only four months in arrears) for someone who will pay her bills? Someone who has known her for a week and will love her forever, even after being scared witless when she eventually Googles the shamster. Jenna, my friends, has finally found a way out. If the people think they’ve already waited a long time for soap, logos and cartoons, they don’t know the half of it. It’s Birchthorn II.
ReplyDeleteChatting on her laptop over coffee is more like it 😆.
DeleteWait, what?!? I don't see this on her IG. Link?
DeleteTwitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete❝ 14 miles today. For fun. What have I become? ❞
🙄
An even bigger liar.
Not to mention walking away from the crippling anxiety and the crops, just before harvest.
ReplyDeleteANON12. She could always get licensed as a commercial fisherman and train a seagull. Oh wait. That's a dying industry. Maybe she could become a Great White Shark hunter! Just like Quint in Jaws. Name her boat the "Pequod." "A noble craft."
ReplyDeleteBrilliant!
DeleteLol, Jaws. She's gonna need a bigger boat.
DeleteJust missed a mortgage payment (perhaps), has a problem that required running to calm down. Behind on customer orders. New day, what shall I do. Oh, go to my friends house and play with the horses. Yeah. that's income producing.
ReplyDeleteLadyfire
That's the 🐷 🔌 ⚡️for ya! You pay while she plays!!
DeleteHer doing any real work to pay that mortgage? Fuhgeddaboudit!!!
Part 1 of 3
ReplyDeleteI made it through 2010 of the CAF blog! And you know, in some ways it wasn’t that bad. Sure, there was the Salad of Death (“It's a collection of work, and choices, and young life, and a bloody death. This salad inhales and exhales; it is so alive. Every bite is a story.”) But what I discovered is that these kind of posts—purple prose, profound thoughts, garbled sentences—occurred more frequently in the first few months of Jenna’s new life in Cambridge, NY. Once she started to settle in, her prose settled down again.
At first I thought when Jenna went over the top in her “Life on This Farm is Amazing and Profound” posts she was trying to convince her readers that they were right to support her farm dreams. But what I realized after reading all the way through 2010 is that Jenna was trying to convince herself that she hadn’t made a huge mistake. I think from the very minute Jenna moved onto her farm, she was scared.
Jenna, as I’ve said before, is a dreamer. She dreamed and dreamed and dreamed of owning her own farm. She could see her sheep on the hill, her goats frolicking in their pen. But when she bought that farm, well, there she was. On a farm, all by herself, in a town where she didn’t know anyone. And there was no turning back. She’d been so public with her dreaming. Complete strangers had donated to the cause and they expected her to not only live her dream, but to live theirs as well.
Around September, she gets into the rhythm of her new life. She connects with neighbors, gets Gibson. It’s nice to see her out and about again. She admits that sometimes things are really hard, and the fact is, she does seem to be working a lot—both at her day job and at home. But she seems happier than she’s been in a while, and Happy Jenna is actually a pretty pleasant Jenna. Once again, friends and family visit. She seems to have made friends with a local farm family, Tim and Cathy Daughton and children (Chicken Mama, do you know them?), who seem to help her out a bit and host her for Thanksgiving.
Still, there are problems. As is always the case with Jenna, disaster seems to strike on a regular basis.
June 24: “It took a weekend in pure misery of bacterial poisoning to teach me the intense lesson of careful work around animal processing and raw meat.”
June 26: “I have no idea if Maude is pregnant or not.” (She’s not.)
July 8: Decides to sell the rabbits.
July 8: “Between the heat wave, falling behind on etsy orders and writing projects, the loss of half my turkeys and new laying hen pullets, the garden's decline, the dead rabbits, and the fact I wasn't seeing straight due to having spent the last two hours after work in a dramatic heat wave: things felt bad.”
July 9: “When the oil guy came to put 100 gallons in the tank and restart the furnace, flames shot out of it. He looked at the inferno, then looked at me, and said calmly. "You should get this cleaned. Soon." So here I am, 500 bucks in the hole because one day I ran out of hot water. Welcome to home owning folks.”
August 29—Brings Finn home to the farm (don’t get too attached).
September 27—Gets a cow named Tasty
October 7—Tasty is escorted from the farm.
October 7—"I had to drop a ridiculous amount of money on the truck today (well, ridiculous to me) to repair a ball joint, axle, and get a pair of snow tires on the back in case we get caught in poor weather. While it stunk dropping hundreds of dollars on the Ford, I am very happy to report it's no longer dangerous to drive it (there was a chance of a wheel falling off...).”
November 28: “Remember that really comfortable, idealistic, post I wrote yesterday about the perfect winter farmhouse? Remember that?
The furnace broke down again. It's 9 degrees outside.”
(to be continued)
Anon55
Part 2 of 3
ReplyDeleteAnd as we look to the New Year …
January 11, 2011
“My day ended however, in a transmission shop. The Subaru is dead. The transmission is at a point where replacing it would cost about $3,500 and I don't even think the old girl is worth that much anymore, certainly not after what I put her through.”
The house, it turned out, was a bad buy. In July 2010, Jenna learned that the entire heating/ventilation system wasn’t up to code (the person who did the home inspection paid for a new one). Of course, the house isn’t the first bad buy Jenna made, and it certainly won’t be the last. The first truck was a bad buy (and the next truck will be a bad buy). Finn was a bad re-buy—he’ll be re-homed in early 2011. (He’s not Jenna’s first animal that has to go—in Vermont she briefly had a border collie that she couldn’t get under control. I have no idea what the deal with Tasty was; my sense is that Jenna wisely decided she wasn’t meant to get into the dairy business).
The problems that confront Jenna day after day, month after month, cost money to solve. Although Jenna doesn't talk to much about her finances at this point, keep in mind that she depleted most of her savings to make the down payment on the farm. Her finances at this point must be tenuous at best.
(I sometimes think Jenna’s fatal flaw is that she’s a romantic. She buys things because she likes the idea of them. Whether they’re actually functional, practical or necessary is entirely beside the point. This approach burns her again and again.)
The comments she receives on her blog posts are still mostly supportive, though she lets it be known that she’s getting a lot of back channel comments and emails from folks who don’t think she’s doing a good job.
June 11, 2010—"I know a lot of folks read about things like the fox, or bloat in the rabbits, and shake their heads at me. But please understand that I only share the stories of dogs eating chickens, or sick animals, or bear-eaten hives, or any of the messy stuff to show that this life (and lifestyle) isn't perfect. I get hurt and sick. Animals die. Crops wither from blight. Sometimes it's lonely. As wonderful as a small farm is it's a morality play 78% of the time. Sick rabbits, predators, ramming sheep, electric fencing hives, all of it is part of the play and it's never simple.... “
August 9—"I am beginning to realize I shouldn't be sharing news off the cuff like this. While I don't mind sharing all my mistakes and updates right as they happen. The fallout of emails and angry feedback is getting heavy. I can take whatever criticism you have to offer, but I prefer advice. I can learn from advice and fix my mistakes, but angry emails just leave two people's day worse.”
August 9—in reply to a comment—"I get emails about having no pride, about having the donations button on the blog, about making the farm life seem too romantic or easy, about writing a book (a memoir) when i wasn't an expert, about my dogs eating chickens, about how i messed up with my bees. Some people think i abuse my animals cause the rabbits live in hutches or the goat kid was in a dog pen. I get a lot of negative emails.”
October 26—"Here is how I feel about yelling at people on the internet: unless know them personally: don't. It's like giving the stranger in the check out line at the grocery store a lecture on healthy eating. Just because you're both out in public, and his purchases are in plain site [sic] for all to see, doesn't mean you should comment on them. You can't possibly know the context. There are a lot of reasons why someone might be buying ice cream.”
(to be continued)
Anon55
One thing I always wondered about at the time this happened was how she could afford an expensive, purebred border collie so soon after moving to the farm? I believe he was actually flown in for her from another state, which couldn't be cheap. I know when she solicited donations so she could buy the farm (the first time she'd asked for financial help with anything) she received a bit more than she needed. I always wondered if Gibson was paid for by some of those funds, but of course no one knows but Jenna. I also think she's more contented and happy every time she has something new in her life. She doesn't do well with the mundane, long-haul things like working at a job or saving and not spending, which is what leads to the financial crises month after month, and not having much of an emergency fund for the things an older house inevitably needs.
DeleteWas Gibson the root canal dog, or was that Friday?
DeleteFriday was the root canal dog
DeleteHFH, After I read your comment, I realized that Gibson just sort of showed up one day without much explanation--tho sometimes Jenna would explain things in the comments, and I didn't read the comments on the Gibson posts. Maybe the story of how she got him is there. That was a fairly common ploy on Jenna's part--when new animals showed up unexpectedly, she often posted a picture with no text or explanation. It was like, "Don't ask me to explain, just accept that this is a done deal."
Delete"I also think she's more contented and happy every time she has something new in her life." Yep--spot on.
Anon55
If I remember correctly, because back then I used to read her blog, Gibson was flown in from a breeder in Idaho or Oregon or somewhere out west. She went to pick him up from the airport, I think it was in Albany.
DeleteYou have a great memory, Anon 5:36 -- here's what she posted in April 2010:
Delete❝ And on the dog front, I got an update photo of Gibson today. My Idaho-born Border Collie is on his way, now four weeks old and covered in a fuzzy coat. He'll be flown in from the west in mid May. ❞
And this about the father:
❝ It just so happens that on March 16th Riggs fathered a litter of four puppies. One of those pups, a little boy, is mine. Gibson, my partner in starting my sheep farm, will be coming home to Cold Antler in May. I'll pick him up at 8-weeks-old at the Albany Airport. ❞
Was Gibson the same ($1,000) price as root canal Friday?
Part 3 of 3
ReplyDeleteMy main thoughts after reading the 2010 posts: Jenna was in over her head from the beginning. Sometimes she seemed to know it. She realized pretty quickly that she didn’t need to add a cow to her menagerie, and while it took a while for her to rehome Finn, she knew she couldn’t keep him.
By the end of the year, she’s made a decision—her farm will be a sheep farm. Sheep have always been her dream, and she’s going to spend the winter learning about how to keep an entire herd of them. In fact, in December, her farm becomes home to a small flock of Blackface Sheep (six of them, I believe). She’s getting closer to her dream—so close to her dream that she decides to start a wool CSA … (Spoiler alert: this will not turn out well.)
I want to make this clear: Reading through Jenna’s posts in 2010, I liked the woman who was writing, even though I thought she was much too cavalier about how many animals had died in her care. You can see why while some people were starting to tire of all the drama, a lot of her supporters remained. People wanted to see Jenna succeed, and there was a reason for that. She was still a sympathetic figure, in spite of all of her mistakes.
Reading through the early years of CAF is like reading a novel I’ve read before but only vaguely remember. I know that bad things lie ahead, but I keep hoping that somehow the story will turn out differently this time.
I leave you with this, a post published on July 9, 2010. Believe it or not I’m not posting it to point out that Jenna wasn’t always gay (for all I know she was, but it took her a long time to realize it). I just think it’s nice that at that point in her life she allowed herself to be this vulnerable. I honestly wish she’d found the partner she was looking for.
(The first line is a little chunky (as my teenage son would say), but I think it’s a very sweet post.)
“I want to know a man who only says my name when he exhales.
I want to play music with you. I want to brew homemade beer and wine in August and then get drunk with you on it during a Halloween bonfire kept stoked by stories and a string band. If you are drawn to fireflies, mountain streams, stringed instruments and are more excited to watch a Thunderstorm roll in than the series finale of LOST, please consider me. And if you're not 100% country, that's even better. I want to find someone who will go with me to concerts and art galleries, listen to authors read to us, listen to 70's punk on my record player, and ride rollercoasters all over the east coast just for the hell of it. Someone who demands the occasional guilty pleasure like Pizza Hut during a Buffy marathon on a Tuesday afternoon we both called in sick. Someone who drinks coffee. A lot of coffee. Demetri Martin, Jon Stewart, and Joshua Jackson may move to the front of the line, but I'm pretty sure they're all with girls who don't ever have to worry about pulling lambs out of ewe orifices … ”
Anon55
Hi Anon55,
DeleteFirst let me say how much I enjoy reading your take on the earlier history of Cold Antler Farm.
As shown by your summaries, ample evidence existed that show her poor judgment, disinterest in listening to others, personal arrogance and cruelty to animals. Her narcissism was on full display.
I'd feel sorry for such a person if her casual cruelty didn't result in suffering and death for so many animals. Based on her posts, she should have been investigated for animal cruelty multiple times and, if found guilty, jailed.
Anon55 - Don't forget: If like the idea of contributing to ten year's worth of writing on http://barnheart.com - the story of Cold Antler - you can do so with https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JennaCAF
DeleteCuz she is "Still trying to make the July bills for the farm now a few days into August."
And she is "So close to making it. So so close!!!!"
But in all seriousness, thanks again for taking the time to analyze all that purple prose. I like the way you think and how you see things.
DeleteI went back to October to see why the cow was escorted off the farm, and while I didn't see an answer, I was struck by all the name-dropping she did back then. So many people and friends she spoke of -- but compared to today's bleg posts, other than Patty, there's no mention of any of those people anymore. I wonder if they grew tired of her constant disasters and overall neediness?
Some of us here "say her name when we exhale," but fortunately, it's from frustration. I also appreciate these detailed comments.
DeleteAnon7, yes we did. I laugh about the money for 10 years of writing. She does nothing on her blog now but howl about the wolf at the door and all the issues she's having. People go to a blog to read good writing, not about problems all the time.
DeleteChicken Mama, spot on. When she started her blog, there were "relatively few" homesteading blogs on the market and the recession made people interested in saving money, changing their lives or trying a more sustainable lifestyle. Her mantra that "anyone can do it"appealed to people who were beginners or who were disinterested in putting great time or effort into good animal care or growing crops. "Hey, it's not a problem", she told her readers, "things die all the time. Look at me!" Because she was in her early 20s, her story was appealing and so she was probably a good read.
DeleteBloggers are expected to grow and improve over time. In her case, readers got tired (and cranky) of repeat mistakes, her inability to learn from bad experiences, and continued inadequacy at planning and preparation. And an ever-growing of preventable animal deaths didn't help her reputation. She started the farm as a beginner, and it was sort of fascinating to share her struggle (we've all been there, right?), but she didn't improve over time - and, in fact, became a worse farmer!
Not sure if it was Anon55 who most recently pointed out her need to "up the game" with more animals (horses and hawks) to generate more interest/ mo money, and the Live Like Fiction lifestyle began in earnest.
Now she's trapped in it. Many of us think she grew tired of her farming lifestyle a long time ago. The animals are hardly mentioned, except as accessories and even that is rarely done. Photos are old and stale. She needs to follow her heart, which at this point is not CAF - it's probably living in a condo, near a city and with access to a hipster lifestyle. The animals will need to go, as they should, to better lives.
The fun will be seeing how she removes herself from her current f-d up situation without losing face. My prediction is a fake romance, with her leaving the farm to join her new black rose in a dress. Much more romantic than admitting she refinanced her house, has essentially gained nothing in ten years of ownership and has beat her "PayPal me" horse to death.
PDD - I agree she's lost her enthusiasm for the farm, and it shows in all her social media postings. As for exiting her situation and saving face, she'll probably create a "better opportunity" situation. A unique opportunity that she'll say is "too good to pass up" rather than admitting she failed.
DeleteThe Pig Shocker re-tweeted this gem:
ReplyDelete❝ sex is intimate and sacred your body is a temple and you shouldn't share it with anyone who hates taylor swift ❞
She replied:
❝ I wouldn't dare. ❞
And then, all across the land, millions let out a collective sigh of relief.
I almost did a Twitter Twaddle on that stupid tweet, but you beat me to it. I can't believe that any normal adults think like she does about celebrities. Oh, wait...
DeleteI can't remember which Shammer said it, but whoever said that she stopped mentally maturing at age 13 was spot on. Most everything she does, and especially her refusal to act like a responsible adult, points to stunted developmental issues.
DeleteAnon7. I was one of the commenters who has said that before about her mental immaturity. Her "refusal to act like a responsible adult," but to expect others to pay while she plays is unconscionable.
DeleteMe too Anon7. She will forever be a preteen girl mentally.
DeleteShe was raised by a narcissist and obviously suffered from some sort of trauma in her preteen "beast" years.
Good call, FCW. Also, she talks about herself at age 13 often, and never mentions any other teen age. Something definitely happened to her at that time that brought on all this stunted adult behavior, immaturity and irresponsibility. And it's the animals who suffer the most from the situation.
DeleteANON12. I want to thank Anon for that three part re-read and analysis. Some might disagree, but I thought they showed empathy in going back over this long period noting the eventual degeneration. Even before that pay me button went up, the comments had been closed, and when you get to that situation, it's time to shut things down for friends only or just in total and focus on how to make your life work for you--career-employment, friendships, family, relationships, how to get a farm up to snuff and have it functional.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem here is that those other things were rejected over time and there was a weird unacknowledged (on her part) compulsion to take on more than capabilities would allow; i.e. a lack of self-awareness of your own limitations. I said before, I never donated money. When that fund me button went up, she lost me, but I did offer advice in my comments at times. Not "do it this way" but more "you might want to consider or ask around about _____." Never any acknowledgement on "that" end, nor any evidence to show any attempt (or success or failure.) Many, many others did the same. If someone won't help themselves, it's certainly not your job to force the issue.
An odd, not totally unrelated thought. Back when Claire Danes did the Temple Grandin story and it was awards time, there was Claire on the red carpet, sewn into her gown, and Temple came racing toward her with unchecked enthusiasm. We witnessed Claire visibly rear back in horror. She grimaced. She missed the social cues in that once a film is done, very often so is the friendship. Somehow, remembering that moment, I think about some day Pig Shocker putting on her tiny backpack and hitting the road for NYC and re-creating that same moment. Tay Tay is NOT interested in you. Your animals are. They want clean, safe shelter. They want food. They often respond to human touch and voice. You're not in the mood? Get rid of all of the animals and move into an apartment where you can walk to what you need and won't need a car. You are not living on a farm. The minute you can clear that fantasy, maybe others will bite the dust and you can learn to live in the real world.
That's a good comment, and I agree with you. Her stupid slogan "Live like fiction!" at the expense of other adults is a bunch of bull. And her juvenile fixations on celebrities like Taylor Swift and Anna Kendrick are also creepy. The comparison with Claire Danes and Temple Grandin was spot-on, too.
DeleteThis is one of the creepiest things she has posted.
Deletehttps://twitter.com/coldantlerfarm/status/946153621477093376
Can you imagine if a 35-yo man wrote a male-equivalent of:
"Somewhere out there is a girl who thinks she's straight who has never watched a single season of Buffy and she shall be my wife. It has been foretold." ???
And if this man was allowed to interact with young adults or at-risk boys???
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Heading out to wash my hands now.
Aren't they like ten years apart in age? What if this was a male writing about a female? it is just icky and not normal.
DeletePlease don't compare her girlcrush on TS with Temple Grandin and Claire Danes. Temple is autistic, as is my daughter. With an autistic person, the societal signals are not there. Temple saw Claire as someone she connected with which is why she rushed to her. JW's infatuation is just plain creepy.
DeleteThe fixation with young Buffy characters is creepy af. The Buffy character was meant to be a 15 year old High School student - certainly under 18 years of age. The actress who played her, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was 19 years old when the series premiered. Talking about this in 2017 is leering over an actress about 16 years younger, who is playing a young teenage character.
DeleteI repeat - if a man posted something like this, he would be shamed off Twitter.
PDD - spot on.
DeleteNow, I WOULD pay to follow her training a seagull, lol. At the very heart of the rejected advice and follow through is just plain old laziness. She will not work. If she put as much time into her fences as she does running that place would be Fort Knox. She doesn't want to be told to do work. It makes me cringe when she talks about "chores." Kids have chores, adults do work or tasks, and frankly, they don't comment on every time they do the dishes or feed the animals. I just looked at about 2 cords of cut stacked wood people are giving away on Craigslist, but she can't be bothered.
ReplyDeleteThat quote regarding the salad she ate was flat-out revolting. And I hope she didn't eat a chick, but let it grow up first. So gross. And I would not allow her around young people. Certainly not around any of my young people. I think Pig Shocker Companion (love that!) will be more likely to get the U-Haul. After all, this person had the ability to drop everything and drive three hours to see Jenna. Soon she'll figure out that there's no room for her at the "farm." Jenna needs her privacy.
BTW, I'm going to be dehydrating and canning and probably freezing over the next few days. It will be my first time pressure canning. Wish me luck!
The Chickqualizer
TC. I feel the same way about her choice of "chores" to describe just work. Her long lists of "Things to do" makes me cringe when she proudly posts them on Twitter, too. It's like she wants those stupid, special stars that teachers award kids in school just for breathing and existing. And good luck with the canning. Let us know how it goes.
DeleteChickqualizer hope your pressure canning is going well. I was nervous about it at first, but now I love using it! My favorite thing to do is save chicken carcasses and scraps of celery, carrots and onions in the freezer til I have enough to make my own chicken broth, then I can it.
DeleteAnoninGA
I never gave her money but I came pretty close to losing a chunk of my livelihood due to her advice.
ReplyDeleteI was five years away from being fully vested in my pension fund, but I was so burnt out and dealing with some age related health issues that I didn't think I could go on another day. Her 'just do it' post was so inspiring - quit your job, leave your spouse, follow your dreams and you'll figure it out along the way.
I clung to those words like a life preserver and almost quit my job, but that small, still voice inside me urged caution. So I waited and followed her blog to see how she was going to pull it off.
It became apparent early on that begging was her business plan. So I plugged away at my job, doing the best I could until I retired.
I am so grateful I listened to that voice of reason. I shudder to think of what my life would be like if I quit early and had to live on a significantly reduced pension. I could never go back and regain what I had lost.
Her advice was dangerous and I wonder if anyone was reckless enough to take it.
Wow Anon! Glad your wiser inner voice won out. I think a lot of people got invested in JFW at first because of that same sort of longing to follow the dream combined with a renewed desire for self-sufficiency during the recession, etc. I was following a ton of homesteading type blogs and hers came into my orbit maybe 6 months pre-Merlin.
DeleteAnoninGA
Glad you trusted your instincts, Anon 9:39. Even Jon Katz wrote about how irresponsible and foolish it was for her to urge people to take a blind leap:
Delete❝ Living on a farm is a fantasy for many people, and Jenna strongly urges everyone in the world to drop everything and do it, whether they can afford it or survive it or not. ❞
He also noted her go-to formula to get people to donate to her:
❝ In our time, trouble and drama do not turn people off, trouble and drama draw people like flies. ❞
It just kills me when JFW posts that she goes to the river every afternoon, goes out horsey riding in the middle of the week and THEN posts that she and her followers should try to absolutely nothing because it's Saturday. How does she even distinguish a do-nothing Saturday from the rest of her week?!
ReplyDeleteI'm a single woman with no partner and no trust fund either. But I work 50 hours+ at my full time job every work week (plus working another 5-6 of hours at it over the weekend,). Today, before lunch, I have picked about 25 lbs of figs, shared with a neighbor and will can preserves and whole figs this afternoon and tomorow. I've taken care of my vehicle, garden, and gotten groceries. I've helped a single mom with her dogs and put together a bunch of glass bottles for another friend to use for her wedding.
This summer, along with my normal urban gardening, I have rebuilt and painted my deck, set up a new wood rack and restacked my firewood, repainted the main rooms of my house, fixed my rain barrel system, done a major declutter and home organization and installed new sod. I've dealt with a major vet emergency with one of my labs. In my spare time. And I am not really all that handy or accomplished. Most of you would put me to shame.
But you know what? This summer I also have the time and money time to hang out with friends and family, go on a vacation, get my animals cared for, and be involved in my community without having to ask anyone else for a single dime.
I know - it's all a broken record, just having my quarterly spout off.
AnoninGA
Spout away, you productive person! Sounds like you have the "responsible adult" thing down...unlike a certain lazy-ass faux farmer we know.
Delete"I snapped photos with my cameras and let myself enjoy the conversation and the clip clop of heavy hooves on field and road. Not a bad way to start the weekend. Not bad at all." Meanwhile, all you folks waiting for soap or pictures? Fuck you...I'll get to them when I'm damn well good and ready.
ReplyDeleteexactly what I thought when I read it to Chicken Mama. And yet by Monday she will be so scared and worried and up pacing the floor since she does/doesn't have enough money for the July bills. Either way it will cause her all this lost sleep. That or she posts she made it and how she is pulling out all the stops for August and have her begging done early so she can go on more dates of "coast girl". I am sure for her wedding Taylor shall be invited and sing personally to them. I can see it now all done in pink..........
DeleteI'm not buying this "coast girl" date story. I think she's making it up to try to seem interesting and keep her foollowers "tethered to her potential" so they'll keep donating money. Plus, when it comes to the Pig Shocker, it's not a question of how many beers -- it's how well you bounce back from alcohol poisoning.
DeleteThe new girl is more of her fake it till ya make it crap. Like pretending to be busy with portrait/logo orders so people will think that she's in demand.
DeleteSingle or taken, she's an ugly nightmare.
Twitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete"Pet Portraits are on sale! If I sell 2 today I make my goal!!!!"
Once again, it's more of her manipulative marketing. All of her lousy logos and pet portraits are always "on sale!" so there's no savings. It also looks like two suckers rescued the faux farm femme. Little do they know that this will reoccur every month, because the lazy lifestyle loser won't work to support herself like a normal adult.
Looks like she got two takers. Right below her post.
DeleteI just love her math here: "I need 2 sales today to cover bills that were due 4 days ago, so order some artwork that I'll send out in 2 months...but only if you remind me.
DeletePart 1 of 2
ReplyDeleteI’ve been spending time two teenage girls this summer, both smart, funny and progressive. Yesterday I asked them what they made of this whole “Taylor Swift is gay” thing. They laughed and rolled their eyes. One of them said, “Taylor Swift is a corporate pop star; everything she does is to make more money.” The other girl (who, by the way, is gay) said, “She saw Pride month as a way to get some new listeners; that’s all. There’s nothing gay about Taylor Swift.”
Out of the mouth of babes. Out of the mouth of JW? A tweet accompanying a Taylor Swift video:
“I will protect this dork with my life."
When you ask most people who they would lay their lives down for, the answers come back, “My kids, my partner, my friends.”
A pop star who wouldn’t let you within fifty yards of her?
Not even remotely on the list.
That is one deeply sad tweet.
As several people have mentioned recently, Jenna seems locked in an eternal adolescence, and lately I’ve been wondering why. Last night it occurred to me that maybe it comes down to that line, “If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got deadstock.”
Someone must have said that to Jenna back in the day, when she was distressed that so many of her animals were dying or being killed by predators. If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got deadstock. Well, what a relief! If animal deaths are just part of farm life, then it’s not my fault that my animals are dying. I’m not responsible.
And with that, Jenna absolved herself. Animals died and they would keep dying. None of it was her fault.
(to be continued)
Anon55
Thank you for sharing your conversation with those teens. Nice to know they are smart enough to see thru TS's ruse for record sales.
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ReplyDeleteOf course, there’s truth to that adage—farm animals do get sick and die. Sometimes the fox gets in the chicken coop. But you don’t decide the way around that problem is to buy twice as many chicks as you need because you’re planning on losing half of them to predators. You learn how to build a more secure coop and better fences. You quilt collecting new animals until you’ve figured out how to properly care for the ones you have.
What does this have to do with Jenna never quite maneuvering her way out of adolescence? Well, adults come in many shapes and sizes. Some of us marry, some of us don’t, some have children, others decide not to. But whatever life choices we make, we know that we’re responsible for them. Whoever comes into our care, whether they’re children or baby chicks, we know that we’re responsible for their well-being. When they get hurt or fall ill, we don’t throw up our hands and say, “Well, that’s just the way of the world! I’ve heard it said a thousand times: ‘Sometimes kids drink the cleaning supplies.’ What are you gonna do?”
No. If the kid drinks the furniture polish, we feel terrible because we stupidly put the cleaning supplies under the sink instead up high. We screwed up and we own it—and then we move the cleaning supplies. We look around and see what else might endanger our children or our dogs or whoever or whatever creatures are in our care. We’re the adults; we’re the ones who are responsible.
I don’t think Jenna ever took that major step into adulthood. I think she got too comfortable with the idea that if you've got livestock, you've got deadstock. That meant when her animals died, it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t responsible.
It didn’t help that every time Jenna made any sort of mistake, she had twenty to a hundred people telling her, “It’s okay! You go girl! We all make mistakes.”
Imagine that. As a young adult, Jenna was surrounded by people telling her she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Telling her not to listen to her critics. No wonder she thinks she’s not doing anything wrong. If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got deadstock. If one hawk flies away, you just get yourself another one. You go girl!
I think one of the reasons I stay interested in this story is that I—perhaps foolishly—think that it’s still possible for Jenna to redeem herself. To grow up. But to do it, she’d have to say, “I was wrong. I messed up. I didn’t take proper care of the animals I brought into my life and some of them died needless deaths. Others lived less than full lives. It was all my fault, and I humbly repent.”
I know--it’s probably not going to happen. But I think that’s what’s going to have to happen for Jenna to grow up and live a real life.
Anon55
Amen, Anon55. We were raised that the animals came first. Then you take care of yourself. Why? Because they are entirely dependent on you. They can't eat, drink or move around without without you. Sometimes things go wrong, or you learn something new. But she never learns. They die needlessly and frequently and rarely with the relief that could be provided by a vet. Sometimes she calls a more knowledgeable person to look at the animal, but of course, it's illegal for that person to provide treatment. In my experience, euthanasia is an unfortunate necessity with animals. Her animals rarely receive that relief.
DeleteThe Chickqualizer
Rather depressing to see those new pics of pigs she posted. They look so sweet. I really hope she doesn't intentionally harm them like she did the other ones.
DeleteMore than that, due to her pretty significant success from her articles in Mother Earth News Magazine as well as being one of their featured speakers in one year of their MEN Fairs, she got the idea very early on that she was a respected, listened-to expert on homesteading. I mean, seriously, the same year she spoke JOEL SALATIN was a fellow speaker as well! That's some pretty heady company to be ranked as equal to. Then a bunch of strangers/readers basically pulled together her down payment on her farm, and I can see how it would be very easy for her to start believing she was something she was not. And how her star has fallen since then. A cautionary tale against reaching your peak success at age 26.
DeleteTwitter Twaddle:
ReplyDelete❝ Being an American these days means trying to make it paycheck to paycheck... ❞
🙄 That only applies to those with real jobs and real paychecks, Pig Shocker. You live from beg-fest to beg-fest. So not the same thing.
My thoughts exactly Anon7.
ReplyDeleteP.B.
Het Twitter account now is loaded with the retweets of just send money, followed by the buy stuff for later and pay now. Boiled down to SEND MONEY. I only saw two piglets in the photos, I would think most litters are much larger than that but I'm sure the conditions are not good. The latest blog post was only a few paragraphs about her lazy day riding in a cart. Not exactly interesting content. I think it may be time to take another break from the "show".
ReplyDeleteLadyfire