About

Wanna hear the one about the erstwhile regional magazine editor that started a Victory Garden blog and wound up being a lifestyle blogger?

That’s me. My name is Pamela Price.

This is me, too:

This was my original mission statement back in 2008, when I launched this blog over there:

Red, White & Grew™ (RW&G) promotes the victory garden revival and other simple, soulful, and earth-friendly endeavors as patriotic acts in an age of uncertainty.

As for my original goals, they were spelled out, too:

• To help the American public access information on the nascent “victory garden revival” and its leading proponents nationwide;
• To educate them on the movement’s history and progress;
• And to encourage us all to foster self-reliance through gardening and other earth-friendly endeavors.

With a laser-like focus on my topic, the blog swiftly attracted a lot of attention, in mainstream press and online. I even got to lead a TEDx talk with fellow San Antonian Holly Hirshberg of The Dinner Garden! I won a social media award. Was nominated for others.

In short, RW&G was a success.

In Paris, on vacation

Then things started to change significantly... my elderly, disabled mother moved closer to me. We discovered that my son has a food allergy (peanuts) and begin the long process of discovering what that means in the modern world. An awful drought ate my yard, chilling temporarily my enthusiasm for my own veggie garden. (I’m still a big believer in the concept of Victory Gardening, however! ) To top it all off, we decided that homeschooling was our best option for our family. Health and safety (re: the allergy) were our first concerns, but seeing as we’ve “always” homeschooled–well, let’s just say that I have a lot of positive stuff to say about it in our lives.

Not surprisingly, these twists and turns in real life brought about “mission drift” here at RW&G. I had trouble sticking to the topic of “gardening for food safety and security.” I resisted it, trying to find other places to park my non-victory garden themed content. (See: SlowBurbs.com) But none of the new things worked out. None of it felt as close to my heart as RW&G. And while I kept the much of the  “real world” stuff off of the blog, I shared much of it on the RW&G Facebook and Twitter  accounts.

Would you believe that I found even more like-minded souls following my work with interest?

To be honest, I was really surprised.

Finally, I decided in late September 2011 to see my blog’s mission drift–and the changes in my life–as opportunities rather than obstacles. Therefore, I am in the midst of reworking RW&G to reflect “Modern Life in the Spirit of the Victory Garden.”

What do I mean by that, “Modern Life in the Spirit of the Victory Garden”?

Through my RW&G writing, I seek to celebrate the past while planning for the future; to cherish and nurture well-being in the face of conflicting human desires for connection and autonomy. Essentially, I want to examine how we nurture and nourish our families (and ourselves) across the lifespan.

Related new topic areas include:

• Soil to Plate – The traditional RW&G topics of food safety, security and history (You’ll note that I kept the DIY Garden Notebook page and hope to continue to tinker with it, eventually creating a Victory Garden-specific page to educate readers on the topic.)
• Homegrown Kids – Secular, eclectic homeschool and afterschool advice and information offered from the front-lines of home-centered education (This topic is so important to me that it gets its own page now.)
• Old School – Topics related to the care of people and objects of a certain age–with a dash of personal memoir (New posts on this topic will be made along these lines.)
• Rants & Raves – A multi-purpose category that every blog should have
• Adventure Trails & Tales – Exploring the world, beginning in our backyard

I’m hoping that this redesign will bring more folks to the site and social media conversations currently running. It certainly seems to have helped land me in the 2012 Bloggies!

Thanks so much for your visit to this page today. You’re cordially invited to subscribe to the RedWhiteandGrew.com feed and to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Page last updated 25 December 2011