My Story
My name is Jenn, and I started Hymn & Harvest to refocus my life on the things that bring me the greatest joy: practicing my faith, playing my violin, and being a wife, a dog mom, and a homemaker.
I had been spending a great deal of time online, watching other people live their lives, and telling myself that I ought to spend less of it there. Then, as summer turned to autumn, all the rituals of the house and the season crowded into my head, and with them the Feast of St. Francis and the blessing of the animals, one of my favorite days of the whole year.
It came to me that if I was going to spend so much time online, I should make something there that was meaningful to me, and perhaps to others. And I wanted to hold myself to it: to live with intention, and to give my time to the things that matter and that bring me joy.
The seasons can be kept commercially, as the stores keep them, or they can be kept in faith, with feasts and a reason behind every custom, as part of a larger dedication to living with intention.
I grew up Italian American and Catholic in Buffalo, where we kept St. Joseph's Day every March. I have always embraced tradition, and in recent years I have drawn closer and closer to that heritage. Since my beloved dog Ruby came to live with us, I have grown especially devoted to St. Francis; there is a medal of him on a table and a ceramic plaque on the wall in the living room. I have also begun to guard the twelve days of Christmas. The world is quick to put Christmas away on the twenty-sixth of December, or by New Year's Day, but the season runs twelve days to Epiphany and, in the old reckoning, forty days to Candlemas, and I keep every one of them.
I have played the violin since I was two and a half, and I have always loved playing in churches most of all. I simply love churches, and sacred art, and sacred music, and I will seek out a church wherever in the world I travel. I studied theology, too, so along with the recipes and the flowers you will find here a word or two on what each feast is and why it is kept.
So much of life happens on a screen now, and I believe that the more it does, the more we will long for the things a screen cannot give: a table set for the people we love, and a hymn played in the same room. I hope Hymn & Harvest can be a warm and welcoming place, where you feel a sense of belonging, where you can ground yourself in your faith and find the inspiration to live a beautiful life.
I called it Hymn & Harvest because the hymn is my faith and my violin, and the harvest is what each season gives, in the garden, at the table, and in the house.
I am so glad you are here, and I hope you will keep the seasons with me.