About

My name is Jess. I live in Belchertown, MA. I love life, family, food and fun. Conscious consumerism is the way of life in my household.

My full time gig is in operations at a healthcare IT firm. I am a partner in life with Neil and our home is blessed with a kitty, Petunia and a doggo, Roosevelt (see the flower theme there?).

I am adamant about utilizing local products. We grow our own squashes, green beans, beets, cukes, lettuce, chard, radishes, spinach, herbs, tomatoes and peppers on our parcel. Ever a work in progress, we added fruit trees to the mix recently- apple, peach, nectarine, apricot, pear, plum, persimmon, and fig. I hit up farmer’s markets and farm stands regularly to ensure our hard-earned money goes back into the local economy. I am lucky enough to live in an area that offers a wide variety of heirloom organic veggies to choose from- hundreds of types of tomatoes, carrots, beets, lettuces. I could go on forever about the beautiful produce of the northeast.

I am passionate about food and about its preparation and about its nutritional value to our bodies. I was recently enrolled in a degree program majoring in nutrition. Why? Just for the hell of it. I want to better understand my body and how it uses natural ingredients as I age.

Home food preparation is something that I learned early in life. Way back in the early 80s my mom didn’t have a stand mixer. She had two little girls and two strong arms of her own. At Christmas time she would bake all varieties of cookies and quick breads and artisan breads and we would help by creaming butter and sugar together in a big mixing bowl or by cutting out sugar cookie dough in various shapes and decorating with colored sugars before baking. Our friends and family would get tins brimming with fresh baked cookies, or a loaf of sandwich bread, or maybe a handmade apron. To these roots I have returned as an adult. Grow or buy it locally and fresh, prepare it yourself with love, and teach your children/nieces/nephews/neighbors how to do it too.

I’m also zealous about wildlife and supporting its native environment. As such, we are constantly transforming our property, removing non-native species and replacing them with native plantings. This helps to support the ecosystem, requires less maintenance on our part, and conserves precious water. We have a happy, healthy bird and insect population, yet not a single “feeder” gets filled here- we feed the fauna by planting the native species they require for a healthy diet and stable breeding. We’re slowly but surely populating our property, which was completely deforested in the decade before we became its stewards, with trees and plantings for the birds, insects, pollinators, and general wildlife of our area.