Michelle Schoffro Cook's Blog, page 4

Happy World Book Day--Celebrating My Contribution to Bookdom

Today, on World Book Day, I'm celebrating the many books that have had an impact on my life from the Romantic poets I read growing up to the many health-transforming books I've read and loved as an adult. I'm also celebrating my twenty-five book contribution to the world's books. Be sure to check them out here. I hope my books have touched you in some way and have helped you on your healing journey. 

Luna on the Lost Orchard Trail

The tree known as Luna, meaning the moon, appears to be reaching across the Lost Orchard trail as if to lend a hand. It is reminiscent of the moon’s steadfast light extending a silvery glow to illuminate our path on our bleakest nights. And, like the moon’s power to influence vast ocean tides and measure time month after month, there is reassurance in the moon’s consistent nocturnal light shining even as we traverse the greatest challenges and difficulties in our life. We are not alone, no matter how much we may feel it, as we place one foot after the other and move, even if slowly, toward our destiny. 

If you like what you see and read here, please consider using the links on my page (there are no costs to use them), purchasing my books and ebooks, or . Discover how apples and apple cider vinegar may help with weight loss, heart disease, and more in my ebook FOOD FIX: The Most Powerful Healing Foods and How to Use Them to Overcome Disease. 

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Winter Wonderland

The biting cold did not stop me from bundling up and heading out on my forest trails for a morning walk, camera in hand. Since you could not join me on my trek, I thought I’d snap a few photos to share with you. I did not imagine lasting long, particularly with fingertips peeking out of my gloves. But beautiful spot after breathtaking view captured my lens and heart until I had 165 photos, as well as the frozen limbs to show for it. Upon returning to my century-old farmhouse, I stoked the fire in the woodstove and curled up by its warmth to defrost my icy self, my heart already warmer from the excursion.

Here is just one of my photos (many more to come!) that I hope will lift your spirit as much as it did mine. If you like what you see and read, please consider using the links on my page (there are no costs to use them) or purchasing my books and ebooks. Discover how apples and apple cider vinegar may help with weight loss, heart disease, and more in my ebook FOOD FIX: The Most Powerful Healing Foods and How to Use Them to Overcome Disease. 

Transported to a Slower Time

The snow falls softly, gently caressing the landscape below, creating an air of stillness and peace. For a moment, I am transported to a slower time where the pace of life no longer steals the breath from my body, but rejuvenates my being. There are no hectic schedules, no deadlines, no to do lists, no voices interrupting my thoughts. I am one with the land below my feet and the landscape before me. I am the balance they proffer and the serenity in my soul. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I experience life as it is truly meant to be experienced and I feel free.

Photo: I grabbed my camera and headed out during today's blizzard for a brief walk to capture this photo of The Empress Kissed by Snow. That's my century-old, two-storey barn on the left of this statuesque Victorian-era apple tree named The Empress.

In the days, months, and hopefully years ahead, I’ll share with you my homesteading adventures, as well as insights, tips, recipes, and instructions for leading a more self-sufficient life blended with inspirational prose and photography. You might not find an apple orchard in your future, but you will undoubtedly find plentiful amounts of happiness and fulfillment on this exciting journey.

If you like what you read, please consider using the links on my page (there are no costs to use them) or purchasing my books/ebooks. Discover how apples and apple cider vinegar may help heal a multitude of ailments in my ebook FOOD FIX: The Most Powerful Healing Foods and How to Use Them to Overcome Disease. 

Fulfilling a Dream

From the first step I took in an apple orchard south of Ottawa, Canada, I was in love with them. I loved the lush green trees filled with ruby red apples and the heavenly scent that filled the air. I loved filling my basket and enjoying them in pies, crisps, muffins, or eating them on their own. From that first step, I dreamt of having my own apple orchard. Every autumn, I felt homesick for an apple orchard I had never owned.

I viewed properties in British Columbia replete with orchards, but they were always out of reach. Then, after a series of distressing experiences, circumstances necessitated moving across the country and to an unseen home, relying only on the photos and descriptions of realtors, inspectors, and lawyers to make the selection. After poring through about 200 properties online, I kept feeling pulled to one although I told myself that I would never tackle another renovation project and this one was enormous. I could not stop the feeling that I was being pulled toward the property or silence the voice that told me the property would feel magical.

After about eight months of what felt like non-stop renovations, and still living without a fully functioning kitchen and seemingly constant disarray, I could feel the tension rising. Magnify the stress with a phone call from my agent telling me that the publisher that had assured me for several months that my book contracts were on the way, was suddenly acquired by a massive book retailer and all contracts, mine included, were halted during the acquisition process. I pushed aside the book I had already spent countless hours writing and stormed outside to get some fresh air. And, if that wasn’t enough, I had lost my primary income source only a few weeks earlier and still had mounting house restoration costs.

“That’s it,” I angrily announced in my own head. Then, I immediately decided I wanted trails on my forested acreage so I could walk through them to clear my head whenever life became unbearable, as it felt at that time. I needed help getting the first ten to twenty feet started and then I literally trailblazed my way through thick brush and small trees with an old riding lawn mower. I knew it wasn’t the best tool for the job but it’s what I had and I was determined to start immediately.

I briefly stopped after finding a massive old apple tree and shrieked with excitement. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I had found an apple tree, my heart’s desire. I couldn’t help but wonder if there might be another one nearby. As if directed from one tree to the next, I cut a path through thick brush directly to another apple tree, and then another.

After countless days of my own diligent trail-cutting and enlisting help for the massive task of removing invasive trees that surrounded the Victorian-era apple trees with their unique, seemingly extinct varieties, it suddenly dawned on me that I had found twenty-four. I had been so focused on reaching each one that I hadn’t stopped to consider that I had discovered an apple orchard. My eyes filled with tears as my heart swelled. I had longed for one for years. I couldn’t believe my good fortune in discovering one in the forest on my acreage.

Jump ahead several years and what has felt like endless clearing of invasive trees and brush that required a lot more than my old, now defunct riding mower, there are a whopping seventy apple trees  in my orchard. Just writing “my orchard” still feels surreal to me, but it’s a great feeling. I couldn’t have imagined that after enduring so much hardship that seemed to lead merely to more adversity, I have my coveted apple orchard.

Needless to say, I’m a firm believer in following the longings of one’s heart and allowing instincts to lead the way even when the path seems nonsensical and arduous. After all, the yearnings of our heart and our own intuition are the guiding light on our soul’s quest.

In the days, months, and hopefully years ahead, I’ll share with you my homesteading adventures, as well as insights, tips, recipes, and instructions for leading a more self-sufficient life. You might not find an apple orchard in your future, but you will undoubtedly find plentiful amounts of happiness and fulfillment on this exciting journey.

If you like what you read, please consider using the links on my page (there are no costs to use them) or purchasing my books/ebooks. Discover how apples and apple cider vinegar may help with weight loss, heart disease, and more in my ebook FOOD FIX: The Most Powerful Healing Foods and How to Use Them to Overcome Disease. 

Happy New Year!

The famous Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, once wrote: “fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” which is sound advice for any writer. The sentiment could be expanded to be: “fill your life with the breathings of your heart.” So, in 2023, instead of making resolutions to change yourself in some way, why not resolve to be more of who you truly are? After all, your heart is a perfect blueprint for your soul’s passion and purpose so filling your days with more of its breathings can only lead to a better life. That is why I am wishing you a life filled with the breathings of your heart in 2023. Happy New Year! The photo is of The Empress, my four-storey-tall apple tree and one of the breathings of my heart, standing in all its majesty.

Merry Christmas

The apple tree I named The Embrace, depicted in the photo below, was one of the most challenging trees to extract from the seemingly endless prickly ash and buckthorns surrounding it. Like guards surrounding a treasure, these invasive barbed gatekeepers seemed impossible to navigate and often left me scratched and bloodied in my efforts to do so. The tree takes its name from the trunk that appears to be lovers held in an embrace across time. But, The Embrace is also the botanical embodiment of overcoming the challenges we believe hinder our ability to attain our heart’s longings. Like barbed trees, the lies we tell ourselves that we cannot reach our heart’s desires are merely obstacles on our path to doing so. What once seemed an impossibility, this beautiful tree now stands peacefully wrapped in its eternal embrace.

Wherever you are, it is my hope that you obtain your heart’s desire and that you will be wrapped in the embrace of hope and love this holiday season.

 

Revisiting Passion

Life had taken over as it often does so I hadn’t been in my orchard for a while. Unlike today’s orchards that are neat little rows of miniature trees, mine is made up of massive, Victorian-era apple trees spread over several acres. A walk through the forest trails to visit them was long overdue and gathering cedar branches to make a Christmas wreath gave me the perfect excuse to head out.

Every season is beautiful along the orchard trails and winter is no exception. While apple season finished last month, it is no less stunning at this time of year albeit in the way a black and white photograph is beautiful rather than its typical lushness.

I cut fresh cedar branches that were encroaching on Passion’s space. When autumn approaches, this classic-looking, oversized vintage tree bursts with nearly a thousand deep pink apples sporting tiny white speckles that taste similar to delicious apples but with a more intense flavour. As I carried the cedar branches back to my home and laid them across a picnic table I found at the beginning of summer, I couldn’t help but think that too often we place the practicalities of life ahead of our passions, desires, and longings, without realizing that this tendency frequently lessens the joy we experience.

Practicalities like earning a livelihood, paying bills, responding to others’ demands on our time, and other tasks slowly but definitively erode the joy we experience. Before long, we may wonder why sadness and lethargy have settled in as our new norm. A visit with Passion and an hour or so spent gathering branches and creating my homemade decoration reminded me of the importance of taking time out to convene with the longings of my heart and the desires of my soul. As I proudly adorn my front door with my simple and natural creation, I vow to carve away time to tend to the truly important things in life--my soul’s needs.

 

Christmas with the Piano Man

In large families, it may be easy to overlook the true significance of each person’s contribution. Such is the case with my Uncle Bill. He often took a backseat, which was typically a piano bench, to those bolder family members. My grandparents were larger than life, the kind of people who were unlike others of their time, held unique views, and were the glue that held my family together, albeit many people might have mistaken them for humble farmers. In the shadow of such bright lights, it might be easy to feel unnoticed, and I imagine that my uncle may have felt that way on more than one occasion.

But not at Christmas. It was as Christmas that my uncle truly shone. A rather shy and mild-mannered man, his love of music, theatre, and family could not be missed. He’d gather up his nieces and nephews, thirteen of us in all, and usher us to the basement of my grandparents’ farmhouse, where you’d find shelves upon shelves of preserves, root vegetables, and other rewards from the previous summer’s harvest. While the Christmas meal always delighted, it was not the star of the holiday. We were. My uncle sat at the piano in the one large finished room in the basement, gathered us around to sing carols and begin to brainstorm the Christmas play or pageant we would reveal to our audience in only a few hours’ time.

We’d open trunks of old clothes, shoes, boots, and other items and turn them into the costumes for our evening where we’d gather our parents and grandparents for our annual play, complete with singing and dancing, and plentiful amounts of hilarity. One night every year we’d magically transform into something akin to the vonTrapp family, where the musicality of our Austrian heritage mixed with the merriment of our French ancestry, for a lively and unforgettable evening of laughter.

It was the stuff of holiday movies from a forgotten time. I loved our annual tradition but I’m not sure I fully grasped how rare and special this custom was. Over the years, I spoke to many friends about their traditions, and it was during this time that I learned that these experiences, were largely unheard of, making them all the more legendary to me.

Happy to take a backseat piano bench, my Uncle Bill, known to many as the Piano Man, was a unifying force that brought untold joy to our family. Through whole evenings of music and even more encouragement, he’d help us find our moment in the spotlight. It is especially at Christmas that I cherish these memories and my uncle whose presence still brings a smile to my face and a heart full of merriment by which to remember him.

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