The photo's above are a selection which have been published on the blog over the course of the past two years of our farm house in different light/seasons/angles - the house & it's location with Kilimanjaro behind it, has probably been one of my biggest sources of inspiration for this blog ! I can’t believe that it’s been a whole two years since I decided to start this blog ! I never knew, when I published my first post on Valentine’s Day 2008, how wonderful blogging would turn out to be …. how many wonderful people I’d ‘meet’ along the way and how it would change the way I saw the world around me.
I have each and every one of YOU to thank, for reading what I write, for (hopefully !) enjoying what I write about my life here in Tanzania and for all the comments and emails you send me. If it weren’t for the people who read this blog, there would be no blog – ‘cause what’s the point of writing if no one is there to listen ?! So, thank you all for your support and for being such loyal readers – and to all the new readers, too – it’s always lovely to welcome you !
For last year’s anniversary post, I did a recap of the best/worst/most popular posts of that year (you can see that post over here) and I thought it would be fun to do the same again this year, as ‘Food, Fun & Farm Life !’ reaches her 2nd year anniversary …. so …. here goes !
Two of the most popular & most visited posts of the year were -:
‘The Incredible Kitten Rescue Operation” where I wrote about the lengths we went to, to save 2 kittens which had fallen down between 2 storage containers and faced certain death, and ‘Come For A Drive Out To The Farm With Me ?’ where I took you on a tour out to our farm !
My most anticipated post was when I was awaiting the birth of my son in South Africa in May/June last year … he was born with some problems and had to spend a week in Neo Natal ICU and I even did some late night blogging from my hospital bed !
This past year was also the first time I’d ever met an online friend … my dear friend Jo who is also a fellow blogger over at Memorable Meanders – I was in South Africa & just about to have my son and you can see the blog post and photo’s of our meet-up over here.
And then a few months later I disappeared and had you all guessing as to where I was when I posted greetings from the top of Kilimanjaro (?!?!) and a few days later some photo’s as clues as to which country I was in over here !
I had a scathing couple of comments on this post over here and I retaliated over here and what was most hurtful about these comments were the fact that they came from a couple of fellow Tanzanians – when my blog has done nothing but sing this country’s praises and promote it over the years & I was being accused of showing it in a negative light. But there you go …. I was amazed at the support of all my readers as people rallied around in my defence – thanks once again, everyone !
Some interesting stats – the majority of my readers live in the USA, followed closely by the Australians and then the British … and my visitors come from as far afield as Malaysia, Japan, Slovenia and Puerto Rico …. I have more and more local Tanzanian readers, too, as the months go by.
‘Life’ posts still seem to be more popular than ‘Recipe’ posts and many new readers find the blog through Google searches for certain African recipes.
I know that I haven’t been putting as much in to the blog lately as I used to, this is mainly just down to time issues …. with an 8 month old baby, a home schooled 5 year old plus a home to run, family meals to cook … I really never have enough hours in the day ! But hopefully that will all change as the months go by … I certainly want to keep the blog going and to also improve on it without changing it too much, too.
There are some exciting prospects in the future, too, for us as a family, which will also affect the blog. So all I can say for now is … watch this space and THANK YOU, THANK YOU for continuing to read, comment, email and support the blog …. you’re all great !
