We have celebrated many many anniversaires, weddings, engagements, and of course birthdays here with couples from all over the country. When we started The Martyn House we wanted to be an ‘adult only’ facility because we felt there were plenty of campgrounds for kids and we wanted an adult campground that took all the misery of camping and  turn it into a more glamorous style of being in the woods and in harmony with nature.

We do not allow cars up on the property so the first experience here is the quiet walk to your luxury sleeping tent. We have realized over the years that many people do not get out in the woods much. Our guests are often urban dwellers and camping is usually not on their bucket list. But it seems in some way Glamping tickles the fancy of many and they take the leap.

Once arriving at your tent you will find a beautiful interior with robes, french presses, electricity, indoor plumbing, hot showers, and being the linen snob I am scrumptious beds to sink down into with coverlets filled with down. Then comes the quiet……the birds, owls, and yes roosters in the morning all part of the incredible experience we give you.

Each evening a bon fire awaits you usually a glass of wine in hand you can spend the evening in stimulating conversation with other guests or by yourself with your significant other watching the moon rise or falling stars.

The next morning as you meander down to breakfast which we have appropriately scheduled at 9:30 for sleeping in time you are refreshed and engaged with one another, for many an experience they have not had in years, Holding hands, a little PDA and often tales at breakfast of what they learned that night when they went back to their tent and spent another hour or so talking on their veranda. Its amazing what the lack of TV, email, phones, or other stimuli does for a relationship. Seems talking is not practiced as much as it used to be!

After that first night you enjoy the property with walks, naps, picnics, and you may never  leave the property. Its the next night that we see the amazing difference in what disconnecting to the hectic world we all live in does. Most of our guests describe incredible feelings of relaxation, quiet minds, reevaluating their lives and most are already planning their next trip and adding another day to it.

We set out to offer an experience where our guests can be in nature without forfeiting the comforts of home!  We marvel at the stories wrote in the journals we have in each tent. We have met many new friends along the way and many of our guest have left with new friends they met here as well. We know the guys would prefer this to be called anything but Glamping …sounds  a bit girlish right??? And maybe it was created by girls who felt camping did not always have to be rugged with paper cups and plates, sleeping bags on the ground or tents you had to crawl into but I am here to tell you its the guys that fall in love not only with the experience of sleeping in a tent but with their wives all over again…ahhhhh love is a many splendor thing!

stay tuned next for the what girls love about Glamping Girl Getawys…

I love seeing a group of local folks come together to honor their little town, its achievements and create the vision for tomorrow. We sat a table with 3 couples we did not know and had the great opportunity to tell them about all the exciting things happening in Ellijay!! – Its so easy to sit back and complain about this or that…and each time we heard a little negative bit we turned it BACK AROUND to what can you do to change that! I believe that many people in communities are at a lost as to how to help-

start by calling your local chamber http://www.gilmerchamber.com/and get on the volunteer list, attend a local town meeting, join a club, start a club. See a need …..figure out how to fill it. Communities are built by people helping each other….you need to engage yourself.

We here in Gilmer county have so much to celebrate we have rivers and mountains.  We are an outdoor destination for so many activities. Does mountain biking interest you call Terry and Mike at Cartecay Bike Shop and see how you can volunteer your help at their upcoming 2013 Italian Road Bike Festival http://www.cartecaybikes.com 

Interested in hiking? get in touch with the folks at Benton MacKaye Trail and see how you can participate in trail maintenance or join a hike or organize one  http://www.bmta.org/

or get involved in the Appalachian trail http://www.appalachiantrail.org/home

i could go on and on of how you can get involved but this you must DO…..

See the vision of what you want the world you live in to be like and do something!

In Ellijay I see a thriving downtown known for its  specialty shops and shops of Antiqüités , river walks, downtown walking tours and in town biking trails, a Historical Society museum, Art galleries, a place to come browse eat and enjoy Nature at its best…remember we are an outdoor destination for the Ultimate in outdoor adventure!  We also are an incredible resource for agritourism, we have vineyards, and apple alley, we have dairy farms, and goat farms, and mushroom farms.

Want to join in the fun while creating Ellijay and Gilmer County as the BEST ? We start with building community…connecting with your neighbor…asking ..HOW CAN I HELP!!!!!

The leaves are piled up and already beginning to decompose and then there is this ever so slight bit of green spike and then one day and that happened to be today I see the buds—and I imagine in my mind the yellow topper that will show up in a few days if the weather stays warm and the sun shines down upon us.  So todays walk was a deeper look at nature and how it affects me.

The trees are barren, as it is, January. But the views are awesome as the Blue Ridge Mountains peek through the gapes that the now barren trees provide. Sunrises are so much more vivid against  the grey sky’s of winter . Today there is a slight drizzle out but its 62 degrees yes that’s right 62!! I am basking in this warmth even if it is raining. This is how winter makes me feel.

I feel clearer, I feel quieter, I feel open, I feel hopeful, I even feel a bit inquisitive. Sometimes I want the heavy snow to come so I can feel all these things even more as our entire town immobilizes.

Daily now some flock of birds show up heading to their winter getaway, the other day it was robins, my studio back meadow was filled with the chatter and worm pecking they do so well!~ geese squawk overhead every now and then but for some reason during winter all this seems so much more amplified. I look at how nature takes care of itself with the seasons and I feel comforted to know this gift is for human consumption.

Drink in the gift of winter my friends for it is the gift of clarity of your lives and the knowing there will be a bouquet of daffodils very soon.

http://joannsinsideoutcoaching.wordpress.com/

Please be sure to follow that site as well if you want to get those stories emailed to you. The Martyn House site will continue to have fun shorter blogs of life here and now. I have been busy in my studio making soaps so stay tuned for a blog about how i reinvented my soap line!

Always inspiring creativity and now exploring what it was in my life that inspired me!

And so it was in 1980 living in a small transit suburb in Charlotte NC  my daughter Heather was 8 and my son Chad was 2 that I began to dream of living on a farm. I was your usual early 70′s stay at home mom, worked one day a week at the local food co-op, had a great organic garden and spent lots of time in pursuit of peace, self sufficiency, understanding my higher power, and making the best ever granola. Then one day I  had a friend from college days come visit me, we had not see each other in years so we spent a few days trading stories while learning to cook new vegetarian meals.  In those days it seems someone was always visiting without a schedule which meant they could be staying for a day, a week or a year. My friend Mary Ann i was soon to find out had a one way ticket so our den was slowly becoming her bedroom.

One day while we were having  our morning coffee I saw an ad in the paper for a 75 acre farm for sale. There was an old hand-hewn barn on the property, chicken coop with chickens, native plant nursery, meat and herb drying shed, orchards , lush vegetable gardens, medicinal herb gardens, greenhouse, stream and a 1903 farmhouse. This was the kind of farm you would imagine in your mind you might have after 20 or 30 years of hard loving labor on the land! I asked Mary Ann if she wanted to come on a field trip with me to see where i was going to live next! The following day with an appointment to see the farm, which was an hour or so drive, my friend riding shot gun, kids in tow and a smile on my face I set out to experience what was to become my first of  many  miracles in my life. Now I have to add a footnote here ..of course like all kids i believed in Santa and the Easter bunny I kinda believed in the holy trinity or so my mother and grandmother told me i did, but until this event in my life i never understood the actual role we could play in making things happen -this was truly the beginning of my journey in creative visualization and I was 28 years old.

I still remember to this day pulling onto the side road that the farm was on. It was  off of hwy 49 in a little town called Misenheimer on Wesley Chapel Road.  I am sure  the reason it was named that was because the only other thing on the road was literally Wesley Chapel a very small old Methodist church.   I remember having that feeling i have now come to know as ‘the knowing’ that this is where i belong.  I looked at my friend and said “Mary Anne I am home”, she smiled that smile that says “uh huh I’ll play along until reality sets in”. The owners met us on the porch  their names were Frank and Sally. Frank was a Vietnam vet and was having some medical issues and the farm was becoming just too much. You could tell they loved that farm and I believe they were looking  for just the right people to take it over.  They were seeking that feeling that comes when people connect and again the knowing that this is supposed to happen and  this is the person that it is going to happen with. The house was just as i imagined each room had a stone fireplace, the kitchen had shelves filled with home-canned goods, and the air was filled with the aroma of fresh bread just out of the oven and the property itself was just breathtaking. Each step of the grand tour the knowing became stronger and stronger. As we hiked through the 52 acres of woods, crossed the creek and onto the 16 acres of rolling fields of soybeans I felt as if I had know Frank my entire life. As we walked he talked about how over the years he had built up the soil and the herbs he grew and their medicinal uses.  We talked about living a life of authenticity and that often that comes from living off the earth. When Mary Ann and I  left that day Frank was standing on the porch explaining the small bank mortgage they had and that we could possibly take it over and they could  maybe do a a bit of personal financing and then I vaguely remember hearing  $11,700 cash down payment. I say vaguely because i was learning that when the dream is so powerful that you cannot imagine life in any other way, then the facts are just  that facts and really quite incidental

In the end ‘the reality” Mary Ann was referring to was that the farm cost 3 times what we had just paid for our house in town which we had only owned for 11 months and barely qualified for it.  The continued reality was “where on earth are you going to get $11,700″ and on and on it went into the land of non believers. But i knew something so much bigger was a work, I could feel it and I believed in the impossible or maybe I just believed in all the possibilities. What I did know for sure was that  i was going to be living there on that farm in the next 30 days.

All the way home I talked about the different fruit trees and the greenhouse and herb gardens while Mary Anne talked about banks and what my husbands reaction would be when i told him especially since he did not even know we were on this little field trip. I imagined in my mind the kids room colors and having tea on the side porch each morning. I saw myself in the garden working and gathering the eggs every day. When we got back home i took the paper and neatly cut out the ad for the farm as if by this simple act i was taking it off the market and signing on the dotted line.  I laid the ad down by my husbands dinner plate that night and waited for him to see it…….

to be continued ……

I have the ability to be so high on life one minute and in the twinkling of an eye so low I tend to forget the high. I can weep when anothers pain and suffering touches my own heartstrings and I empathize with them in their mourning. I have faith that everyone will do the right thing and when they don’t and the circle is broken I wrench with fear of a society gone astray. I have laughed until I fall off the chair and wept until I cannot get up. I dream big and I believe in everything.

I have begun each day these last few weeks wondering is age really that important? Does there come a time when we are suppose to think well done my friend now hang up your working gloves and sit back and enjoy the rest of your life.

Is life really about going…..going…… going…… achieving, gathering, pushing , shoving in an effort to arrive at our very own place on society’s plateau and definition of a successful life? I don’t want to get so old I do not remember the lessons and I do not want to be so proud or naive as not to remember the lessons. I want us all to care. I want us to not be followers but inquisitive curiosity seekers of what is real and authentic. So what is real? Big houses filled with over priced furniture, fancy cars, stuffed bank accounts, super duper expensive education, the climb up the corporate ladder, the inability to know your neighbor because you are too busy, the prestigious title in your name? Or is it taking time to listen, caring about someone else’s struggles, creating a community of people who know their neighbors, living below your means and if you have been blessed with wealth sharing it so others do not suffer, educating yourself about the earth we live on by gazing at the stars and understanding true humility and how small we really are in the scheme of things or planting a tree and living like you care about how much food you waste or garbage you produce.

One of my dearest friends in the world lost her son to cancer last week….on facebook I saw one of her other sons post a picture of the three brothers and my friend when she was in her early 20’s ..i wept and wept and felt an extraordinary love for us all. A few days latter I heard a group of very grown up folks telling 1^st grade jokes and laughing so hard they could hardly contain themselves…simple silly jokes and again an extraordinary love for us all came over me.

I turn 60 this Saturday…. I never have thought about age until now…I was working on a recent project …a new project to help connect my community and someone asked why on earth would you start something so ambitious at your age! I was stunned because it never occurred to me that dreams and ideas have a time limit.

And so when I look at my life now approaching 60…..if I live to be 100 that’s another 40 years which is exactly how old my daughter is turning 3 days after me.  What an amazing gift she continues to be for me each year even if she did arrive 3 days after my birthday.  And now she is angst about her 40 years on earth using this society scale of where we should be and when we should arrive there and what it needs to look like to be valued.

So I wonder what does 40 look like or 60 and what will it look like at 80?

I ask myself what are my life lessons.. the things I would have said 40 years ago when I rocked that little girl to sleep that I have now learned in my 60 years on this planet.

Life is ever changing …be in the front seat the thrills are much more exhilarating and it seems to overcome fear because you have no time to see what’s coming…forget all society tells you about the way things should be… listen to your own intuitive self and know that you are right where you need to be with the lessons you need to be learning…remember you are in the front seat not the drivers seat….know there is something far greater than all of us …guiding us …connecting us and that something has given us a beautiful universe as our teacher listen to the birds, watch a falling star, remember to breathe… feel your pain and grief and sit with it …feel your joy and fully embrace the feeling of being alive… and do not get so hung up on what this ‘guide’ needs to be called or look like….instead just know that it just is…. be reverent, humble and honor it in whatever way that needs to look for you….feel the ebb and flow…..smile more…be less selfish…and before you do anything ask yourself this one thing —

Will what I am about to do make the world a better place…then by all means do it and do it the very best you can! And finally do at least one thing …once a week ..for someone else….and do it every week for the rest of your life …with no self motivation …so you will not forget that you are not alone on this planet….we are all kindred spirits…powerfully connected  on this  journey we have come to call  ‘the human experience’….it is this thing I wish most I had learned 40 years ago…

…Happy Birthday Heather….

This is the first year I decided to visit our local cannery. Most canneries are connected to the local agriculture department of a High school and ours is no different. Upon entering I felt a bit like a kid in a candy shop.

Huge pressure cookers and pots, beautiful jars of yummy food everywhere. Folks were canning beans, corn, applesauce, tomatoes both stewed, whole and juiced! 

I had brought a special concoction of peppers, tomatoes, leeks, garlic and basil all picked that morning from my garden to make my own special winter broth for stews..….. hmmmm hmmm good— it wasn’t too long after I arrived folks were lingering around my pot smelling that roasting garlic and wondering what on earth I was brewing. I happen to be one of those cooks that likes a little of this and a little of that and why not some of this here too:)

So into my witches brew it went and as it bubbled away and the sweet aromas filled the air  my sense of community and food just grew and grew. I wanted to take home a can of every  persons cannery that day.

I heard that in October its apples, apples and applesauce. November is Brunswick stew and canned Deer meat  OOOooooooH . The best part was everyone was so nice and helpful and farmers!!!- Those huge steam pots can brew over 60 jars. 

The shelves in my basement which really is a root cellar are getting stocked and I feel a sense of settling in for the winter with lots of summertime memories from the garden. Its nice to be part of a community effort and this year as I built my confidence in the cannery I began to think about gardens that the students could tend and cultivate and harvesting produce that can be made right there with our own local brand. ahhhhh…..Another something for The Martyn House to promote and support in our local agri tourism effort!~

Recipes and Entertaining Ideas