An announcement from the shepherdess’ desk:

Serena here, manager and owner of Fiberculture farm, the one-woman-show who runs the business from the field to the craft studio.

I wanted to make this announcement to you all publicly, since it is very important, and since you all are more than just followers or customers, you have become my extended community of friends and family, and I’d like you to be informed. Also, I have been known as the type to suffer in silence to a fault, however, I am also a firm believer that silence only helps the oppressor. This is not easy for me to share, but I am drawing on all my courage to be ever open with you.

So friends… my farm and small business are under attack. You may have noticed I’ve been intermittently absent from social media, and some of my pages are rearranged. I even had to shut some down for a while to regroup. And for this, I apologize. Here is why.

Some-time around the end of last year, I sadly found that I needed to end a personal relationship with a very close individual. It was a very hard and sad decision for me to make, but I knew it would be healthier for us to go our separate ways. I had hoped we could move forward with our lives in respect, peace, and understanding, having grown and learned from the relationship. And for a little while I thought we did. Until now.

It was brought to my attention that this individual has chosen not to go peacefully, and instead has taken to hiding behind a screen, and attacking those things which are most important to me, in both my personal and professional life. This includes my small business. In choosing a path of complete vindictiveness, this person has created multiple fake accounts on nearly all types of social media, and has been using them to severely harass, slander, stalk, and vilify my business and myself under entirely false pretenses since the beginning of January. Using these accounts, they have posted, shared, and pressured other individuals to share entirely false, misleading, and outright malicious lies about my personal and professional life. I have repeatedly asked this person to stop these attacks, to no avail.

And friends, the effects of these attacks are….devastating, to say the least. On top of raising my beautiful little girl, managing a 36 acre farm and business, entirely by myself- through a pandemic, no less, I must now work to defend my good name, and I am struggling with losing revenue from the only income I have worked so hard to build. I faced the beginning of this year with pride and excitement that my business would continue to grow in success. Now it is with trepidation.

For those who know my story, you know I moved to this homestead 5 years ago with a mission. To establish a working fiber farm and small business which would support my family, and share the love and joy of fiber arts and homesteading with the community. And to those who have already shared their patronage with this small business, my previous customers, my family, my friends, my local community members- you know that I am a person of honesty, integrity, and generosity, who places the ultimate values of her life based on kindness and understanding. You of course know that these malicious lies being spread are not representative of me or my business.

I know my followers and my supporters. I have grown to know you through your own shared stories over the years, and you are one of the kindest, craftiest and most genuine group of folks I have been blessed to find. And for this reason, I refuse to be a victim. I refuse to give in to these terrible attacks, and refuse to allow my life’s work to fall at the hands of one hurtful individual. I will do anything in my power to not allow these malicious attacks to ruin the beautiful world of fiber we’ve taken part in this small corner of the interwebs.

It is because of you all that I am able to dry my tears and calm my fears over the future of this homestead and business, and keep pushing forward to face a new day. I know you will continue to stand strong with me during this difficult time. I have already informed the local authorities of this individual’s actions and steps are being taken to get this stopped entirely. If there is anything, you, my followers would like to do to help, I can only ask this- continue to be kind. Live with integrity and compassion. Keep supporting local small businesses and families- it makes so much of a difference! And thank you for being here with me, and being ever understanding. I plan to continue to run my shop as normal as possible for everyone to continue enjoying the fun of natural fiber arts! Feel free to comment or shoot me an e-mail if you notice anything concerning on my pages, or if you’d simply want to share any words of advice or encouragement- it is sorely needed for this tired mama’s heart. I will keep you updated on the situation as time goes on.

If you are a person who was asked or coerced by this fraudulent individual to come to my page and continue the harassment on his behalf- I ask that you please, reconsider. Choose kindness and integrity. You are more than welcome to reach out to me if you must, to let me know if you’ve been contacted by this person to do this, and I will be forever grateful of your choosing to tell me and doing the right thing. Let the hate stop with you.

And if you happen to be the individual who is behind all of this, because I know that somewhere, on some new fake account you’ve made, you’re reading this, I can only say this. It is unfortunate that the end of our relationship has driven you to this extreme. I want you to know that there is no hate in my heart, only sadness. Perhaps seeing this sadness can give you the closure you are so desperately seeking. I want you to know that you can stop this madness right now. Choose to take the good from our relationship and learn from it, so you can move forward and be better. Be the person your family needs you to be, your children want you to be, your grandparents hoped you would be…and stop this now.

Thank you.

Serena

Owner · Textile Artist