There are yaks in the pasture, heritage pigs in the barn, chickens and ducks underfoot, seeds waiting to become something and at least one fence that needs my attention. There is also a laptop open on a surface somewhere, probably about to topple over onto my coffee cup.
That feels like the right place to begin. I’m Mema…a Gen X writer, farmer, grandmother, creator and keeper of things worth keeping. I live with rare animals, believe in real food, I am flush with unfinished projects, beautiful ideas, and the stubborn belief that we can still build lives with meaning. I also live in the same strange digital world you do…some days feel magical, or like sci-fi…
Artificial intelligence can write a grocery list. Our phones know where we’ve been. (Not creepy at all!) Appliances want passwords. Every company has an app, every app needs an update, and somewhere along the way we apparently agreed that refrigerators should send us notifications. I’m not sure who asked for all this. But I’m curious. I think that is how we got here.
We rebuilt differently
In 2020, our family lost nearly everything in a house fire.
Loss has a way of editing your life without asking permission. It strips away the unnecessary and leaves you staring at what remains—along with the difficult question of what you want to rebuild. We rebuilt with the idea that we could create a legacy.
What began with animals and a tiny piece of land in NH became Mema’s Inclination: maybe it was part farm, part experiment, part act of preservation (for us and the animals), and part refusal to let meaningful ways of living quietly disappear. We are raising heritage livestock because genetic diversity matters. We grow food because knowing where it comes from matters. We care for the soil because we cannot keep taking from the ground without giving something back. We support local food because communities are stronger when they can feed themselves. And we keep learning because old knowledge survives only when someone practices it, questions it, improves it, and passes it along. None of this is especially tidy. In fact, I am not an organizer, I’m a pile it up and find it like it is organized girl. But I’m trying.
Animals do not care about my organization techniques. Seeds fail. Equipment breaks. Feed bills arrive with impressive reliability. Some days feel deeply meaningful. Other days involve chasing another escaped animal while reconsidering every decision that brought me to that exact moment. This is not a picture-perfect farm. It is a real one.
What deserves to come with us?
The world is moving quickly. Technology is changing our world. It would be easy to stand in a barn full of heritage animals and decide that my job is to resist all of it. But I don’t believe preserving the past means hiding from the future. I think the more interesting question is:
What deserves to come with us?
Can technology help small farms survive?
Can it connect more people with local food?
Can it help teach a new generation about endangered livestock, seeds, soil, and self-reliance?
Can it help a woman in muddy boots turn a lifetime of ideas, mistakes, experience, and hard-won wisdom into something that reaches beyond her fence line?
I don’t know all the answers. That is part of why I’m here. I’m wandering through this new world one curious click at a time. I’ll try things. I’ll misunderstand things. I’ll occasionally threaten (or throw) a device that insists my password is incorrect when I know perfectly well that it is not. Then I’ll learn something and try again. That may be the most Gen X approach possible: skepticism, curiosity, and the firm conviction that we can probably figure it out ourselves.
What you’ll find here
Mema’s Inclination is where old-fashioned know-how meets restless modern curiosity.
We’ll talk about:
- Heritage animals and the people trying to save them
- Real food, gardens, and useful skills
- Home, farm, and beautifully practical projects
- Rural reinvention and community
- Books, creativity, business, and original thought
- Technology—and whether it can help us preserve what progress too often leaves behind
There will be successes, failures, experiments, expenses, opinions, and absurdities. I’ll share useful ideas, lessons learned the expensive way, things I’m still trying to understand, and honest glimpses of life behind the farm gate. Because some things are worth keeping: Rare breeds. Good soil. Real food. Useful hands. Original thought. Hard-earned knowledge. A well-set table. A neighbor who shows up. The courage to rebuild. The freedom to remain curious. And the ability to laugh when the beautiful plan collapses before breakfast, at lunch, and again after dinner.
Pull up a chair
You don’t need a farm to belong here. You don’t need livestock, acreage, spotless taste, or clean boots. You only need some curiosity about how we might live more thoughtfully in a world that hasn’t ever slowed down long enough to ask where it is going.
Consider this your chair at the farm table. Come for the animals and practical ideas. Stay for the sharp observations, unexpected experiments, and the ongoing adventure of keeping what matters while remaining open to what comes next.
Welcome to Mema’s Inclination. The boots are muddy, the Wi-Fi is temperamental, and something is always growing, hatching, simmering, breaking, being repaired, or we are working on another way we might be able to make that one “impossible” something that could become something possible.
If this sounds like your kind of place, subscribe and join me. Then leave a comment and tell me: What do you believe is worth keeping?