A photo of our house & part of the garden taken last Sunday, in evening light. The house, farm & my life on the farm & in my beautiful adopted country of Tanzania has been my inspiration for this blog ! Today is the one year anniversary of “Food, Fun & Farm Life In East Africa !” I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging – daily – for a whole year already ! (Well, I’ve missed a few days here and there but only if I’ve been away from civilization & internet connection). In total the blog has had almost 82 000 hits from every continent in the world (including the oceans - "Ships at Sea" !) & I have published 417 posts …. and I still haven’t run out of things to blog about !
Actually, when I first started blogging I would publish 2 posts a day (how crazy was I ?!) but changed it to 1 post a day when I realized just how difficult that would be to keep up ! I now alternate my daily posts between sweet & savoury recipes and what I refer to as ‘life’ posts – anything to do with my life, farm life or Tanzanian life. So let’s say that on Monday you will read a recipe for a sweet treat like a cake, perhaps on Tuesday a post about a walk I recently did on the farm and on Wednesday a recipe for a chicken casserole.
I’m not sure how many people actually read the recipe posts (because I don’t read the entire recipe on other blogs, I’ll be honest here !) but most of my recipes contain ‘life’ posts within them, as I will tell the story of how I discovered the recipe or where I first ate it, or who I’ve served it to, or how I came by certain ingredients.
My main aim is to have original, quality posts on my blog with interesting content that people want to read about, so I rely a lot on feedback from readers either via comments or emails. Every photo ever published on my blog has been taken by me (or my Mum – the ones when I visit them in South Africa) and as a result they are all original.
So, to celebrate my one year blogging anniversary, I thought I’d give you a summary of my best and worst posts of the past year, along with some other interesting snippets -:
I started this blog because friends and family nagged me (!!) for years about doing something like this, my brother-in-law Chris was the most persistent and put the idea of a blog into my mind, and on Valentine’s night last year (hubby was away on a business trip & I was feeling rather lonely & sorry for myself *sniff sniff*) I published my first post -:
“Every Man & His Dog Has A Blog” …. it was a pretty embarrassing first effort now that I read back on it (!!) but you can read it over here and cringe with me if you like !
My most favourite blog post out of all 417 has got to be “It’s Raining Today In Africa” which you can read over here. This is my ‘true’ writing style, or should I say the way I most love to write, where I really feel it from my heart although I think that this style of writing is perhaps a bit too ‘heavy’ for everyday blogging !
The most difficult post I ever wrote was “Devastated” - when my beloved dog Zonde lost her battle with cancer. I had tears pouring down my face as I wrote it, and could barely get my words out or see my computer screen. I have not been able to read it again since, but you can read it here. This was also the post which brought the most comments ever on my blog, along with a flood of emails from blog readers & made me realize what wonderful & caring people you all are, to have reached out to me (a relative stranger) in comfort during one of my darkest hours.
The angriest blog post I ever wrote is this one over here “Just A Comment” which I wrote in retaliation to a particularly nasty (and unpublished) comment I received. I’m happy to say that I’ve had no more since !
The most read blog post on this blog is “Goodbye Faithful Old Donkey” which you can read over here and is all about the revamp of our hot water “donkey boiler” – go figure !
The most searched for recipes on the blog are dessert recipes, and the most searched for and read recipe of the entire year is the one over here for “Peppermint Crisp Caramel Fridge Tart”. This has, hands-down, brought me the most Google traffic, despite not even appearing on Google’s first search page. This is not a recipe that I would’ve though would bring me so much traffic – which just goes to show, that you never really know, do you ?!
Three interesting snippets for you about my blog -:
My husband has never read my blog, and wouldn’t even know how to access it online ! (I just asked him the name of my blog & he knew that, though !) There have been times when I’ve asked him to read certain posts for me & give me his feedback before publishing them though, which he happily does.
No one in my ‘everyday’ life knows about this blog. As an expatriate, my family live all over the world so they all read my blog, along with close friends who’ve known me for a very long time – but friends here in Tanzania, even my closest female friend or people I see often ? No ! Not one person here knows that I have this blog and I certainly won’t be telling them anytime soon ! (I guess because I’m happy for you all to know what I do/cook/eat/think/feel on a daily basis, but not the Mum’s at the school gate, my bank manager, or my husband’s colleagues for example. Am I weird, or what ?!)
I have people who read my blog every day but instead of commenting, they send me emails instead. Which is nice too, as I’ve got to know many readers this way. I’ve also exchanged things (ingredients, cards, gifts) with fellow bloggers around the world in the past year, too !
Actually, when I first started blogging I would publish 2 posts a day (how crazy was I ?!) but changed it to 1 post a day when I realized just how difficult that would be to keep up ! I now alternate my daily posts between sweet & savoury recipes and what I refer to as ‘life’ posts – anything to do with my life, farm life or Tanzanian life. So let’s say that on Monday you will read a recipe for a sweet treat like a cake, perhaps on Tuesday a post about a walk I recently did on the farm and on Wednesday a recipe for a chicken casserole.
I’m not sure how many people actually read the recipe posts (because I don’t read the entire recipe on other blogs, I’ll be honest here !) but most of my recipes contain ‘life’ posts within them, as I will tell the story of how I discovered the recipe or where I first ate it, or who I’ve served it to, or how I came by certain ingredients.
My main aim is to have original, quality posts on my blog with interesting content that people want to read about, so I rely a lot on feedback from readers either via comments or emails. Every photo ever published on my blog has been taken by me (or my Mum – the ones when I visit them in South Africa) and as a result they are all original.
So, to celebrate my one year blogging anniversary, I thought I’d give you a summary of my best and worst posts of the past year, along with some other interesting snippets -:
I started this blog because friends and family nagged me (!!) for years about doing something like this, my brother-in-law Chris was the most persistent and put the idea of a blog into my mind, and on Valentine’s night last year (hubby was away on a business trip & I was feeling rather lonely & sorry for myself *sniff sniff*) I published my first post -:
“Every Man & His Dog Has A Blog” …. it was a pretty embarrassing first effort now that I read back on it (!!) but you can read it over here and cringe with me if you like !
My most favourite blog post out of all 417 has got to be “It’s Raining Today In Africa” which you can read over here. This is my ‘true’ writing style, or should I say the way I most love to write, where I really feel it from my heart although I think that this style of writing is perhaps a bit too ‘heavy’ for everyday blogging !
The most difficult post I ever wrote was “Devastated” - when my beloved dog Zonde lost her battle with cancer. I had tears pouring down my face as I wrote it, and could barely get my words out or see my computer screen. I have not been able to read it again since, but you can read it here. This was also the post which brought the most comments ever on my blog, along with a flood of emails from blog readers & made me realize what wonderful & caring people you all are, to have reached out to me (a relative stranger) in comfort during one of my darkest hours.
The angriest blog post I ever wrote is this one over here “Just A Comment” which I wrote in retaliation to a particularly nasty (and unpublished) comment I received. I’m happy to say that I’ve had no more since !
The most read blog post on this blog is “Goodbye Faithful Old Donkey” which you can read over here and is all about the revamp of our hot water “donkey boiler” – go figure !
The most searched for recipes on the blog are dessert recipes, and the most searched for and read recipe of the entire year is the one over here for “Peppermint Crisp Caramel Fridge Tart”. This has, hands-down, brought me the most Google traffic, despite not even appearing on Google’s first search page. This is not a recipe that I would’ve though would bring me so much traffic – which just goes to show, that you never really know, do you ?!
Three interesting snippets for you about my blog -:
My husband has never read my blog, and wouldn’t even know how to access it online ! (I just asked him the name of my blog & he knew that, though !) There have been times when I’ve asked him to read certain posts for me & give me his feedback before publishing them though, which he happily does.
No one in my ‘everyday’ life knows about this blog. As an expatriate, my family live all over the world so they all read my blog, along with close friends who’ve known me for a very long time – but friends here in Tanzania, even my closest female friend or people I see often ? No ! Not one person here knows that I have this blog and I certainly won’t be telling them anytime soon ! (I guess because I’m happy for you all to know what I do/cook/eat/think/feel on a daily basis, but not the Mum’s at the school gate, my bank manager, or my husband’s colleagues for example. Am I weird, or what ?!)
I have people who read my blog every day but instead of commenting, they send me emails instead. Which is nice too, as I’ve got to know many readers this way. I’ve also exchanged things (ingredients, cards, gifts) with fellow bloggers around the world in the past year, too !
And last but certainly not least -:
I want to thank YOU, each and every one of YOU wonderful readers for reading this blog and for the wonderful support and encouragement you’ve given me over the past year – because if it were not for each and every one of you, I probably wouldn’t still be blogging today – ‘cause who wants to write a blog that few people actually read ? So thank you, all of you, and I look forward to the next year of blogging, improving my blog further, and seeing what another year of blogging brings !
I want to thank YOU, each and every one of YOU wonderful readers for reading this blog and for the wonderful support and encouragement you’ve given me over the past year – because if it were not for each and every one of you, I probably wouldn’t still be blogging today – ‘cause who wants to write a blog that few people actually read ? So thank you, all of you, and I look forward to the next year of blogging, improving my blog further, and seeing what another year of blogging brings !
