Cedar Ridge Farm has been a gathering place for generations of my family. I grew up here, surrounded by a lot of love and hundreds of acres of rolling pasture lands set along the Raritan River at the foothills of the Watchung Mountains.
This place drives my writing–the views of fields full Timothy grass dotted with cedar trees and sycamore in the fall, my perennial gardens in spring, the sun rise glinting off the tips of the soon to be cut hay outside my bedroom window on a summer morning. My parents moved off the farm years ago, but I was able to return with my husband and daughter decades later– the proud owners of this family heirloom.
In the twenty-three years I have lived back here, my life has undergone transformations I couldn’t begin to imagine.Through all of the changes, the farm has been the place that grounds me.
Here, I learned acceptance and a willingness to dig deeper into myself when I thought I was too old, too set in my ways and often, too weary to try. I came to terms with who I am and what I can accomplish—in and outside of a family and a marriage—as a wife, a mother, a friend, a daughter, and a writer.
I hope you’ll settle into the farm with me while I write, read, and garden–wander through the house, meet my family and friends, explore the shadowy places out by the barns. Come and walk the cedar lot with my terriers and me, pick a sun-warmed peach from our orchard on your way there.
Look from our old and bubbled wavy glass windows, wait for the hiss and clang of the radiators to sing you to sleep at night. Delight in my gardens, breathe in the scent of the apple blossoms from our trees in spring, and the heady perfume of the stargazer lilies in August.Pick some lavender for your pillow in my herb garden by the kitchen door.
I hope you will hear echoes and revelations from your own life and sweet memories calling out to you.
Ryder S. Wyatt 