Honey Hill Country

Reflection and Renewal — Gently Finding Our Way Into the New Year

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A gentle welcome for the year ahead — and an unhurried way to begin again.

January has a way of arriving with instructions already written for us, doesn’t it?
Begin again. Improve. Fix. Hurry.

But some years ask for something different.

Some years do not need to be conquered at all — only entered. And once inside, listened to. The quieter truths tend to reveal themselves that way, without ceremony or noise.

Here, reflection is not a reckoning, and renewal is not a contest to be won or lost.
What if it never needed to be?

Instead, it can be something simpler — an ongoing process of noticing what still matters, what has endured, and what might simply need a little tending rather than replacing.

If you have arrived here tired, or curious, or simply passing through, you are in good company. And welcome here.

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A Fresh Stack of Mornings

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A quiet New Year arrives in Honey Hill Country, bringing stillness, reflection, and the promise of days yet to be read.

The New Year has come quietly to Honey Hill Country.

A cold winter morning has settled in. Snow lies clean and unbroken beneath the trees, save for a line of rabbit tracks stitching their way across the yard and disappearing into the brush. Frost rests easy on the fence rails, and the woods hold the kind of silence that only follows a good snowfall — deep, listening, and kind.

No fanfare, no fuss — just the slow turning of the calendar page, with a fresh stack of new mornings waiting to be opened on the kitchen table. The old year folded itself away politely, and the new one stepped in like a neighbour removing their hat at the door.

Out here, the year always begins the same way — with a pause.

There is time to look back at what was carried, what was learned, and what, perhaps, is ready to be set down. There is time to stand a moment longer at the window and consider what might yet come walking up the lane. And there is time — always time — to say, You Are Welcome Here.

Honey Hill Country remains much as you left it — and Little Red Bear is still right where he has always been.

The paths are familiar. The front porches are swept. The kettle is warm — Little Red Bear is keeping it so. Your choice, coffee or tea. Fresh biscuits, always. The stories continue — some by the fire, some on the page, and some quietly, heart to heart.

As the new year unfolds, there will be small kindnesses, ordinary miracles, and a few good surprises tucked between the days. There will be laughter that arrives unannounced. There will be reflections that linger. And there will be new rhythms settling gently into place, one week at a time.

Later this month, something long-planned and much-loved will find its way into the light — The Hearth & Holler Gazette, a weekly visit of tales, tidings, and old-time country comfort, shared from Little Red Bear’s corner of Honey Hill Country and meant to be read slowly, like the morning paper at the table.

But for now, there is no rush.

This first week of January is for standing still just long enough to take a breath, to look around, and to remember that beginnings do not need to be loud to be meaningful.

So welcome — to the New Year, to Little Red Bear’s Honey Hill Country, and to whatever good may yet come.

The gate is open. The light is on.
Come in when you are ready.

— Jim  (and Red!)

“A new year does not ask us to be different people,”
Clara Thimblewick once wrote,
“only to listen a little more closely to the better parts of ourselves.”

Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.

My Year-End Reflection & Looking Ahead

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On Writing, Story, and the Road Ahead

As the year draws to a close, I find myself less inclined to sum it up than to simply set it down — like a coat hung by the door at the end of a long day. Some years ask for that. Not a tally, not a verdict, just a moment to breathe before turning toward whatever comes next.

Earlier this week, I shared a few thoughts meant simply to steady the heart as the year turns. This piece is something a little different. Less about what has been weathered, and more about what has quietly taken shape along the way.

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Bunny Tales — “The Fence Post Carrot”

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From the critters near home . . . to the wildlands beyond.

Critter Tales are small, gentle stories — meant to be read in a few quiet minutes, enjoyed with a smile, and written and shared simply for the fun of it.

The two brothers were not looking for anything in particular that afternoon.

They were doing what bunny brothers often do on mild days — wandering along the roadside, stopping now and then to inspect a pebble, a bent leaf, or a place where something interesting might have happened earlier and could possibly happen again.

That was when the younger brother stopped so suddenly the older one nearly walked straight into him.

They both stared.

Lying just off the road, half in the grass and half in the dust, was a carrot.

Not a carrot carrot.

A carrot the size of a fence post.

It was long and thick and sun-warmed, its orange skin dulled with soil, its green top snapped short as if it had once belonged to a wagonload of respectable vegetables that had not expected to lose a member along the way.

The brothers walked slowly around it.

They stood beside it.

They placed a paw on it, just to be sure.

“It’s real,” said the younger one.

“It’s ours,” said the older one, immediately and with confidence.

The only problem was getting it home.

They tried first to drag it.

They braced their feet, leaned back, and pulled with all the seriousness such a carrot deserved. The carrot did not move. It merely sat there, unimpressed and unmoved, as though it had been waiting for this moment and was quite prepared to wait longer.

They tried lifting one end.

That end rose exactly as far as the other end sank, and the carrot pivoted neatly back into place, landing with a thump that rattled their paws.

They rested, catching their breath.

“Maybe if we roll it,” said the younger brother.

This seemed reasonable.

The carrot was round, after all. Mostly.

They pushed.

The carrot rolled.

Not forward.

It rolled sideways, drifting lazily toward the road, as though it had somewhere else to be.

They scrambled to stop it, wrestling it back into the grass before it could embarrass them in front of any passing wagons.

They tried again, this time from the other side.

The carrot rolled the opposite direction, wobbling, curving, and clearly unwilling to be guided in a straight line.

“It doesn’t listen,” the younger brother said.

“It’s shaped wrong,” said the older one.

They studied it closely then — the thick top, the narrowing point, the subtle curve that promised cooperation and delivered betrayal.

They attempted to lever it with a stick.

The stick snapped.

They attempted to roll it while running alongside, paws scrambling, ears flapping.

The carrot rolled faster than expected, slower than hoped, and then gently pinned them both in the grass until they agreed to let go.

Eventually, they sat down beside it.

The afternoon was quiet. A breeze stirred the grass. The carrot lay peacefully between them, as though nothing at all had happened.

Their house sat below them on the hillside — not far, really, when one looked at it that way.

The younger brother tilted his head.

“What if,” he said slowly, “we don’t take it up to the house?”

The older brother followed his gaze.

The hill sloped gently downward, straight toward their front wall.

They looked at the carrot.

They looked at the hill.

They smiled.

Getting it started was easy.

Stopping it was not.

The carrot tipped, rolled, hesitated, and then gathered confidence, wobbling its way downhill with growing enthusiasm. It veered left. It corrected. It veered right. The brothers ran alongside, shouting helpful suggestions that the carrot ignored entirely.

The curve took over.

The carrot picked its own path.

The brothers watched, helpless and hopeful, as it rolled faster, straighter, and with increasing purpose — directly toward their house.

There was a sound.

A solid, unmistakable WHUMP against the wall.

Silence followed.

Then the front door flew open.

Their mother rushed out, apron askew, eyes wide — ready for disaster.

She stopped.

She stared.

Leaning neatly against the wall, as if it had always belonged there, was a carrot the size of a fence post.

The brothers stood very still.

Then their mother laughed.

She laughed the way one does when something is too unexpected to be annoying and too useful to be ignored.

“Well,” she said happily, “that’s carrot soup for a month.”

The brothers sat down in the grass, dusty and pleased.

The carrot did not move again.

It had arrived.

Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.

Why do I write these? Aw, I don’t know. Just thought it might make you smile.

Introducing “The Hearth & Holler Gazette”

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A Small-Town Paper from Little Red Bear’s Honey Hill Country

Before we get too far along, there is one small thing I would like to settle right from the start.

These days, the moment someone hears the words “weekly” and “email,” a little voice pipes up:

Oh no… not JAN.

Just Another Newsletter.

You know the kind.
Crowded inbox. Loud subject lines. Endless self-promotion.
More noise than nourishment.

And if that is what The Hearth & Holler Gazette were going to be — I would not blame you one bit for steering clear.

But here is the thing —
This is not JAN. Not even close.

The Gazette is not a newsletter.
There will be no book pitches.
No launch announcements.
No character reveals dropped like bait.
No “Pre-order Now!” or “Don’t forget to buy!” reminders elbowing their way into your morning.

Instead, think of it this way —

The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a fictional small-town paper, delivered once a week on Saturday mornings, the way such things used to be — its pages set in the early years of the twentieth century, beginning in January of 1904.

A place for:

  • Short Stories and Sketches
  • Bits of Humour
  • Kind News
  • Happenings and Events from Little Red Bear’s Honey Hill Country
  • Old-fashioned Advertisements that Exist Only for the Smile
  • And the sort of Gentle Company you might enjoy with a cup of coffee while the house is still quiet

It exists for one reason only —

To offer a pause.
A smile.
A little warmth.

That is the why.
Everything else grows from that.

One might think of The Hearth & Holler Gazette as something closer to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion —
without the live music, and without needing to go buy a radio.

A familiar voice.
A small town and folks you come to know.
Stories and observations that take their time, and trust you to do the same.

Or perhaps it brings to mind Charles Osgood’s quiet pieces — the kind that never shouted for attention, yet somehow always earned it.

If you ever found comfort in evenings spent with The Andy Griffith Show, The Waltons, or Little House on the Prairie, then you already understand the spirit at work here.

Not because those stories ignored the wider world —
but because, for a little while, they set a different table.

That is the neighbourhood the Gazette hopes to live in.

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A Christmas Blessing from Honey Hill Country

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This morning in Honey Hill Country, the air feels different — softer somehow — as if the whole hollow has agreed to speak in a whisper. There is wood smoke lingering in the distance, a hush on the porch boards, and that rare kind of quiet that does not feel empty. It feels held.

Somewhere, a kettle is warming. Somewhere else, a pan of cinnamon rolls is nearly ready for the oven. Orange juice is being poured, chairs are being pulled close, and the day is just beginning to stretch awake.

And before the hours fill themselves with meals and messages, memories and visiting, Little Red Bear and I wanted to leave a small Christmas Blessing here — simple, neighbourly, and meant to be kept.

May your Christmas morning find you welcomed, whether your house is full of laughter and wrapping paper, or wrapped instead in a gentler quiet. Some folks wake today to stockings and noise and the happy clatter of family traditions. Others wake to softer rooms — and the quiet is not always easy.

So let this blessing be for both kinds of mornings.

For the full tables, and for the empty chairs.
For the hearts that feel light today, and for the ones doing their best just to carry kindness forward.
For joy that arrives easily — and for joy that must be noticed in smaller, braver ways.

May warmth find you today — in your kitchen, in your memories, or simply in the knowledge that you are not forgotten. May peace rest easy in your home, even if only for a moment at a time. And may the love that Christmas promises — quietly, faithfully, year after year — feel close enough to touch.

Little Red Bear padded in long enough to add this, and he insists it be included —

“If your heart feels full today, share it.
If it feels a little tender, guard it gently.
And either way — you belong at the table.”

From our little corner of Honey Hill Country to yours, we wish you a Christmas filled with warmth, grace, and the comfort of being held — by memory, by love, and by hope that still knows the way home.

— Jim  (and Red!)

May warmth find your door, light fill your window, and peace know your name — this Christmas and always.

Merry Christmas.