Purpose

Welcome to the GFF (Genuine Faux Farm) Postal History Blog!

Last updated: Nov 30, 2020

This blog has three major goals:

1. To connect with others who may have interest in similar topics.
2. To provide other postal historians with (hopefully) interesting readings on postal history.
3. To organize my thoughts and resources into my own reference source as I learn about various areas in postal history.
   

One of several items I continue to research - 1866 item from Boston to Rome.

The simple fact that I am organizing knowledge for use by persons other than myself motivates me to accomplish a better and more complete understanding of the things I enjoy researching.  It also could encourage others to help me move forward in my projects.  Thus far, the experiment appears to be mildly successful.  I have made a couple of connections and I still enjoy putting posts together.  I foresee this blog experiment continuing at least into the near future.

Some Ongoing Themes as of November 2020

Since this blogs inception in 2017, the intents and purposes of this blog have been modified to fit how things seemed to be going.  You can probably find blog posts that follow a few basic themes or approaches.

Postal History Sundays

Postal History Sunday posts are written for a broader audience, including interested persons who are NOT currently postal historians or philatelists.  These started as posts for our farm blog and we started to cross post them here as I found that even philatelists and postal historians enjoyed reading them.  I try to keep the content accessible and use a 'light' tone.  At the same time, I work hard to provide some interesting facts that most people would enjoy and some that might actually be interesting to folks of all levels of knowledge (unless you are the expert on a given topic - then I bow to you on that!).

Cover A Day(ish)

To keep myself writing AND to avoid losing information I dredge up as I research a particular item, I have begun trying to do write-ups that feature a single item.  I have enjoyed doing this, but sometimes find these are more work than they might seem.  I intend to keep doing these because I find them to be valuable for my own research AND I think people like them.  The adjustment that needs to follow is that I must find ways to call a halt to the plethora of "rabbit holes" a person can go down for each cover!  Some of these may get adapted for Postal History Sundays - but with these I don't often restrict myself from getting into the nitty gritty of postal history if I so desire (and the item calls for it).

Treaty Mail

You will find that I prefer items dated prior to 1875 that are mailed between nations.  I am fascinated by all of the different postal conventions that were negotiated to insure the movement of mail between nations.  Some of these posts will show up on Postal History Sunday and some will be a Cover A Day(ish) in nature.  Others, such as this one exploring the mails between the United States and France, will dive in deeper.

Big Exploratory Projects

There are a number of larger projects that may always be works in progress as I learn (and then find the time to express that learning in writing).  For example, I have a post on mails between Switzerland and Italy that merely represents my knowledge base at the time of the last edit.  If you find an error there, I appreciate hearing about it.  I may already know about it, but have not had time to make a change - but I might not - so send me a note!

24 cent US 1861s

My area of strength is the postal history surrounding the 24 cent 1861 issue of the United States.  These are probably the blogs where I feel most secure in my knowledge.  Can I get something wrong?  Of course.  But, I feel fairly comfortable with most of what you will see on those posts.  In fact, my exhibit of this material is being put in order on this page so you can view it.  Almost done!

Want to just read from newest to oldest?  Or want to follow this blog?

You are welcome to either or both.  If you sign up on the right side bar with your email you will only receive a note when  new blog post is published.  It will NOT notify you if I edit an existing post.

The Caveat:
There are certain realities that come with the territory.  First, my available time will typically concentrate around the Winter months.  My full-time job is operating the Genuine Faux Farm, an actual small, diversified farming operation in Iowa.  We have authored a blog for the farm for several years titled Genuinely Faux that passed the 1000 post mark in 2017.  I have succumbed to the temptation to write about postal history more than once there, but it is written in a way that is hopefully accessible to all readers.

My part-time job is as Communications Associate in Iowa for the Pesticide Action Network.  I am featured on their Ground Truth blog about once a month.

And, sometimes I write about philately and postal history.  That's a lot of words - good thing I enjoy it.  I hope you will too.

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This is a working blog.  In other words, posts that appear here are not necessarily "finished" works.  Many or most will be in progress efforts that illustrate my current state of data gathering and synthesis for the given topic.

Many of the posts also include an "open questions" segment that may or may not be used.  And, sometimes you will notice a "last updated" note on the post.  As of August of this year, I started moving away from making posts public that I felt were full of inaccuracies.  There is still much to do on that front, but it is improving.

Labels could be: Belgium, Printed Matter, US 1861 Issue

Labels:
Are you looking for posts on certain topics?  Take a look at the labels shown to the right of the blog content.  If you click on one of these lables, the blog will show only the items that have that label.  For example, if you only want to read about mail to and from Belgium, select the Belgium label at the right and you will view only posts related to Belgian Postal history on this blog.

Multiple Posts - Same Title and Topic?
It is possible that there will be more than one post on the same title and topic.  I might create a second copy for a couple of reasons.  I may want to work on a "final" version that could see publication elsewhere.  In this case, there may well be some resources and other tidbits of information I do not want to lose, but it will not fit in something that is intended to be an article. The other reason?  I might like to 'jump' a post to the top of the blog by reposting with a current date.  I could also end up gathering related posts chronologically in this fashion for later work.  Once again, I might keep an older version just to avoid losing past thoughts and resources.  However, when this happens, I will attempt to include a link at the top for the most recent full version.

Page Tabs at the Top of the Blog
Just under the description of the blog you will see some tab links that read "Home," "Purpose," "Sources," "Genuinely Farming Exhibit" etc etc.   These will take you to different pages on the blog.  The "home" page is the LIFO (Last In First Out) series of blog posts organized by date of publication.  You are currently on the "Purpose" page. 

"Sources" will give out links to references I find useful - as I find time to put them there.

Other pages will provide locations for exhibit pages.  It is also possible that I will create a page for some other sub-topic in the future.  It really depends on how the structure of this blog software succeeds or fails as I expand content.