New Blog for Self-Sufficient Women Farmers

A few women farmers and I want to start a blog for exchanging information to help us maintain our self sufficiency (and sanity). Would anyone out there enjoy setting us up? We can take care of the content but we need someone to help us set up the blog and get us started.
We are thinking of naming ourselves Sexy Dirty Girls to proclaim our right to occasionally be seen with dirt under our fingernails and sweat on our brows--and still be sexy! We are From Alaska to Mexico, mostly working without partners: a mix of permies, conventional farmers, organic, urban growers.

Can you tell us more about how you want this blog to operate?

Do you want it to be a blog where one person blogs but many can comment, or would you like a site which everyone participating can co-create?

Right now we communicate via Facebook. For example when I had problems with an irrigation issue, I posted photos and text describing the situation and the help and advice from women was more useful to me than that I received from men. The reason why I think we need a separate site for woman, especially single women, is that usually it is men who come to our "rescue".  Sometimes we feel our questions might be viewed as too elementary for a man, so we just dont ask. When i ask male friends and family for information, the answers come from an engineering perspective and sound like a technical manual.
What we need is a way we can communicate quickly: "hey, look at these bugs eating my citrus trees...what are they and how can I get rid of them?"

Jungle Girl wrote:
Right now we communicate via Facebook. For example when I had problems with an irrigation issue, I posted photos and text describing the situation and the help and advice from women was more useful to me than that I received from men. The reason why I think we need a separate site for woman, especially single women, is that usually it is men who come to our "rescue".  Sometimes we feel our questions might be viewed as too elementary for a man, so we just dont ask. When i ask male friends and family for information, the answers come from an engineering perspective and sound like a technical manual.
What we need is a way we can communicate quickly: "hey, look at these bugs eating my citrus trees...what are they and how can I get rid of them?"

And here I am offering to rescue you, LOL! I do appreciate the irony of my attempting to come to the rescue. I can't help myself. I should probably be deprogrammed.

But in the meanwhile, would an e-mail list like googlegroups or yahoo groups meet your needs? This would be a set-up where an e-mail sent to the group would go to all members of the group, and all on-list replies would go to all members of the group.

An e-mail list like this (aka a "listserve") would be really simple to set up and moderate/administer. Make clear that it is a list for women only, screen new subscriptions to the list, and you have a way that single women can share their questions and their knowledge without males intruding.

You can start a yahoo group by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/ , clicking on "start your group" and following the prompts.

If this sounds like an attractive solution to you, and you would like assistance, say the word. Otherwise, I will bow out, as I am glad to help but don't want to be yet another unwelcome rescuer.

I had not thought of that irony, but you are right and...there I go again. Very funny actually. I'd rather work for an hour to lever a heavy boulder out of the ground than try to figure out how to set up a blog. Plus, i am over-the-top busy. I think google would be my choice since I already have a gmail account. What I love our facebook connection is the ease in which I can take and send a photo right there from my farm (which is remote) and resolve issues on the spot via smartphone relatively quickly. What I dont like about fb is that our information does not seem very private and I think my other fb friends are tired of seeing posts about drip irrigation systems, compost systems and chicken coops. There are so many problems I have to resolve quickly (eg wildfire, neighbor conflicts, veterinary issues).
I appreciate your advice here and I was not aware that you were a rescuer or male but maybe we can help you with your programming glitch.

I have groups on both google and yahoo groups.

Yahoo groups are much easier for the public to find (without advertising) and join.
Google groups...add sense of privacy, although I don't believe that any online group can truly be private.

I can help you out for free

will create a wordpress site, it has everything you are looking for as well as multi-admin tools.
pick a name,
think of content and some pics
pic some page names
Wordpress can have things show up as pages and posts, it is seamless

the name is very important as well as the pages you want, though the pages can be renamed later, though that messes with the search engines.
cheers from 2 countries north of you!
might want to come down in the winter though, and help with the permy setup, will sleep on it.

Yes,
you can set it up for yourself but some of the things are confusing and elaborate, must have been made by a MAN! LOL... kidding

me, single man, not looking, only dumb questing is the stupid answer, as in ask anything I will answer you, some men do not know everything, I am one of them.
Relationship answers will be met with a, really do knot know the answer, getting divorced for the 3rd time... so that topic is out for me.

I understand enough of farming and permy stuff to help, the rest you do yourself, it can be set up easy enough then you maintain it, easy once setup properly.
cheers again,
Ed

jungle girl, I am Mae West, Mae's Garden, on FB and I would like to be a part of your FB group.  I personally prefer FB since if gives me feeds for a multitude of interests. 

As for forums I am going to stick with this one.  I like that it is heavily moderated so I don't ever have to deal with the personal issues and attitudes.  I have already had to remove several comments from my FB feed that I found distasteful.

Your group sounds great though - I often have to explain to hubby that I have to find different ways to do things than he does because I can't just muscle my way through everything.

Another thought/question for your group:  Tools for smaller hands.

When I am able to get hubby to stand back and let me do it - I often still have to ask him to bring me tools.  They are too big! 

Now I know they have a whole line of decent quality pink tools out there but - really - pink?  I would like to find a line of good quality tools that are made for smaller hands.

easy free set up at  blogspot.com

I use Blogger too and it is easy to use and it holds thousand of pages of information and photos. I highly recommend it.

...and please Google "Sexy Dirty Girls" and see what comes up before you even think of using any of those words on your site. 

YES! You are so right about the name. I dont even need to google it. The group was going to by by invitation only so I guess we saw it as an inside joke. We will think that through a bit more.

Hi Mae, My name is Lee. Good information about petite tools.  Most of us are not built for heavy lifting and manual labor. I am having a local welder make a bicycle grinder, for example. Hand grinders just use too much of my energy. Leverage, ladies!
Nice to meet you Mae. I would be happy to include you in whatever blog or group we end up with. I am new to this site and have been really feeling the need to find a community of like-minded people. I feel like a kid in a candy store.

Set up a secret group on facebook, then you can screen members and none of your posts will show up on your normal feed.

I would like to see pics of your bicycle grinder when you are finished.  I have seen this done before but no one every includes all of the little details.
I do know a welder and I know he would help me w/ a project like this.

Bicycle with attachment option maybe?  Grinder/Blender/Food Processor?  How about coffee grinder?  Anything where the wheels go round and round.

O.K.  It is too early in the morning and I need to go burn off some of this 'sillyness' energy.

I will call him tomorrow and see where he is at with it. I downloaded information and plans, he has some of his own ideas for improvement. I heard someone had done the same with a blender but not sure I can pedal as fast as my Vitamix. I think I will see how the grinder works out first!  Thanks for your interest. I will have to learn how to download photos here so I can share the design. This will be great for the local ladies who work so hard grinding corn for tortillas. They have gone from the stone metates to the hand grinder...and lots of old bikes laying around.

Why be sexist? Why reject people just because they aren't women? Then women turn around and sue the Elks club for doing the same thing against them. (Actual case) Sad commentary on some people's thinking process.

I'm really sorry you feel rejected. We had nothing to do with the Elk's Club case. I agree with you: the Elk's Club has a right to restrict its membership to men only, just as women have the right to a closed forum if they like. Thank you for bringing this up.

I just found this post and would love to be included in any such blog/website that would be especially female friendly.  When asking questions from local farmers and retailers, I often  run into the guy that wants to pat me on the head and tell me to bake cookies while letting the men sort things out.

After 20 years of working side by side with men in the manufacturing world I have the same complaints about tools being designed for hands that are larger and arms that are longer than standard at my height.  It was somewhat gratifying to have new male employees who were under 5'8" coming to me to see how I handled specific problems differently than the 6'4" guy across the room.

I too would be interested in your site.  Female, long divorced and alone by choice, and don't like the way so many men in my life think I should just try to be prettier and not worry about the mens work.  Thing is, I have an over active imagination, so get lots of ideas, but really hate "that won't work darling" without any explanations.

MarlaKC wrote:
...but really hate "that won't work darling" without any explanations.

Don't be offended by that.    It is one of the biggest differences between men and women (in general, there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule).  My hubby does the same thing and if I wait long enough he will tell me the details that I need.  My boys are the same way, same with my dad, both grandpas, my uncle and my brother.  It is not a sexist thing at all...they just don't do details and conversation the way I do. 

Ladies, good luck on your site, it sounds like you will all have a blast!  A couple of pointers if you are doing a blog...network with http://www.thesitsgirls.com, and get your blog out there on other forums as well.  Make a facebook page, twitter, pinterest, blog frog, stumble upon and various other accounts (use them wisely to build traffic).  This will help to network and get the word out as much as possible.  Have a core group that will comment on each new post regularly and get a conversation going.  Photos, photos and more photos, people like visuals.

Enough of my ramble, have a great day!

Hey, y'all. I own nearly 13 acres down here in North East Texas. (No. NOT Dallas! thank goodness!) It's in a little town of less than 500 folks called Lone Oak and generally I have the best of both country and suburbia in that my front yard is in what could be called the burb's of Lone Oak (It's only a block from an interstate Hwy) but my back yard stretches out into the country. I'm new here on these forums but have been reading them for a while. I'd love to see more stuff by fellow independent women on exactly how to do various things.