Our Blog is Growing

This is what our backyard garden looked like a few years ago.

In previous years, we had made raised garden beds along the side fence to grow our tomatoes. But when Annie got more serious about growing many different varieties of heirloom tomato plants, we needed more space. So I built three more raised beds on top of the existing yard. It took a lot of time, sweat, and more bags of compost than I can count, but we eventually had space for more tomatoes as well as other veggies and herbs.

Right now, our blog is a little like the garden in this picture. It needs room to grow. To do that, it will take some time and sweat, but not so much posting. Here’s what I mean by this analogy:

From Simple to Serious

It’s been a little over a year since the “Spring is Coming” post announcing that we were getting more serious with this blog than we had been before. And we certainly have gotten serious. Our writing has improved, our photography has improved, even our blog design has improved over the past year.

Our monthly blog visitor count has improved as well. Since we started counting visitors, this blog has now reached the 300,000 page view mark. That might not seem like much to some, but for us it is an exciting milestone.

On top of that, our subscriber count has reached 500. (You like us, you really like us! :-D ) I guess we must be doing something right.

Getting Even More Serious

But I believe the blog has outgrown its platform. We’ve been running on Blogger/Blogspot since the beginning. It has been adequate but there are things I want to do with this blog that just can’t be done on Blogger. The time has come (actually, the time came a while ago) to move over to our own domain, running WordPress.

I’ve been wanting to make the move for many months now. But we had so many recipes and foodie experiences to share with you that I just didn’t have the time to set aside for migrating over. I lose enough sleep as it is, just working on regular posts.

Finally, I’ve decided that if I don’t do it now, I’ll never get around to it. There are templates to test, designs to tweak, and over 350 posts to sift through, reformat, and republish. It’s a hefty job, but I believe it’s for the best.

What it Means

What this means for the blog is, posting frequency here will drop off to one or two a week. But no way are we shutting down. I will still moderate and respond to reader comments. We also have a very exciting event in the works coming up, so watch for that next Monday!

I will of course keep you updated on our progress. But if you haven’t already subscribed to our blog, do so now by clicking on either of these Subscribe via RSS or Subscribe via Email links.

Do Us a Favor?

I would like to ask a favor of you. One of my main concerns for the new blog is to make it user friendly. The easier it is to find what you’re looking for on our site, the happier you’ll be. So if you want to help beta test the design once it’s semi-ready for rollout, would you please click here to enter your name on our signup form.

I am hopeful we’ll be able to go live with the new site within a month. Until then, you’re welcome to peruse our Categories list over on the right sidebar. Who knows? You may find a recipe you’d like to try!

Aloha, Nate