WHAT IT IS

This blog is about Vermont, and motherhood, and life — three things that are usually fun, frequently hilarious, and sometimes difficult.

HOW IT STARTED

The original Pickle Patch blog was born in 2008, when our first daughter was 6 months old. I began the blog as a way of keeping our family updated on our (okay, really just the baby’s) adventures as we traveled up and down the East Coast for the summer. When that summer ended and we returned to California, multiple family members asked me to keep the blog going. So I did. Over the next three years, as we added two more daughters to our family, it served as a sort of newsletter where I’d post occasional updates.

By 2011, we had three daughters and were preparing to move cross-country to Vermont. Baby news — like walking and talking — isn’t quite as interesting the third time around, and I had my hands full trying to shepherd our little family across the U.S. What to do with the blog?

I decided to change it up. Instead of writing updates for immediate family, I wrote about what I was experiencing, feeling and thinking — as a wife, as a mom, as a recent transplant to small town Vermont.

In 2012, I started writing a bi-weekly blog called “Faith in Vermont” for our local newspaper, The Addison Independent, and it won “Best Blog on a Newspaper Website” in the 2018 New England Newspaper and Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest, which was nice! You’ll find links to all my “Faith in Vermont” columns here, too.

WHAT’S WITH THE NAME?

Nothing, really. I just made it up on the fly. Because she was TINY at birth, we affectionately called our first daughter “Pickle,” and we’ve used it as a term of endearment for all of our daughters. “Patch” came along because…well, alliteration is fun and easy!

Yes, I’m aware that there’s actually no such thing as a Pickle Patch. Pickles don’t grow in patches; they’re made by pickling cucumbers in brine, vinegar, or another solution and then allowing them to ferment.

But the more I think about it, my accidental name may be appropriate after all. A patch is a small space for growing things. That describes my hopes for my life, my home, and this blog.

And if that patch happens to be growing pickles? Well, aren’t pickles fitting metaphors for US? We start off fresh, but then we have to go through so much bitterness. The thing is, if you can go through the bitter and then ferment a little, you may just turn into something wonderful. The sour doesn’t have to spoil us. After all, what’s more complex and interesting to eat: a cucumber or a pickle?

Okay, that might be a stretch, but I’m sticking to it.

Thank YOU for reading!