Market bouquets, honey and fresh eggs.
Coming this year we will have a lovely farm stand at the roadside to sell our farm fresh eggs, local honey and new for us beautiful home grown flowers for market bouquets!
@summerrainfarmstand
The farm stand has been up and running since Mother’s Day weekend! We started with just Friday afternoons and Saturday morning. We are now open most days of the week for flowers!
Our bouquets are a mixture of focal, spike, airy and foliage florals. We have dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers, gladiolus, sweet peas, cosmos, celosia and mints this summer season. The colours are amazing and the fragrance is delightful!
Summer Rain Farm has 3 hives this year and they are doing great. We look forward to harvesting our honey in August.
We have about 30 chickens that roam our property and enjoy all the grass, bugs and worms that they can find. We feed them omega layer ration as well as veggies and fruits from the garden as treats.
They lay one egg on average every 25 hours so we get about 2 dozen eggs a day to package and put out at the farm stand.
Summer Rain Farm stand goals for this year are to have enough items to draw a crowd to our farm. I’ve had this goal in the back of my mind since we started having bees in 2015.
We have 2 hives of bees that gather nectar from nearby wildflowers. Summer Rain Farm harvests the honey every fall making sure to leave enough for the bees to overwinter. Our honey is delicious and we put it in 1 kg and 500 ml jars.
Now I’m ready to bring something of even more value to the farm. Summer Rain Farm stand goals for this year are to grow beautiful flowers from seeds, tubers and bulbs as well as the many perennials we have already have on our property.
The flowers will benefit the pollinators as well as our customers. I’m researching all about the flowers and how to harvest, condition and wrap into lovely market bouquets.
Our flock of chickens lays delicious brown eggs and we would have dozens of eggs ready for customers each week.
Flowers will be the beauty that draws the customers to our farm stand and gives them something to enjoy on their dining table as well as having delicious eggs and honey for their meals.
We will have beautiful seasonal market bouquets wrapped in kraft paper. They will be grown on our property and hand picked by me less than 24 hours before. These flowers will be grown without the use of chemicals and conditioned for long vase life for you to enjoy once you bring them home.
If you have raised meat chickens, you can raise turkeys! They take a little longer to get to butcher weight but they also grow to 15 to 24 pounds of delicious turkey meat.
We actually recommend you start your turkeys at the same time as your meat birds. The turkey poults will follow the meat chicks to the water and feed therefore this helps them learn faster.
We start 5 turkey poults with our 25 meat chicks every spring, ordering from the same hatchery and they come in the same perforated box. Turkey poults have a little bump on their beaks. This is how to tell them apart the first time you see the little puffballs. After a week it is easier as they grow much faster than the chickens.
We order turkey starter and use it for both the chickens and the turkeys for the first 4 weeks. It is higher in protein as they need it for faster growth but it doesn’t bother the chickens. Always have fresh water with a splash of apple cider in with them too.
The brooder can be anywhere like a barn, shed or garage with electricity that can be used to hold the baby turkeys. Some people use a tote container or old kiddie pool. We use a stall in our barn that we have sectioned off with some fencing and made a circle out of cardboard and hay bales.
We hang a heat lamp from the ceiling and use some insulated boards to cover the top.
Keep the brooder at 95 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week and lower it by 5 degrees each week. You will be able to tell if they are warm enough by how they move about in the brooder. If they stay huddled under the lamp they are too cold so lower it. If they are pushed to the edge of the brooder then raise the lamp a few inches. When the poults are content to go to the food and water and aren’t peeping loudly they are good to go.
We use pine shavings 4 inches thick then cover that with paper towels for the first week. this keeps them from eating the shaving as well as allowing them to walk around easily. I lay fresh towels down twice a day, morning and night and that keeps them pretty clean and dry.
After a few weeks, the turkeys will be about double the size of the chicks. They also like to hop around a lot and flap their wings trying to fly. They can usually hop right over a two-foot barrier. If you are not careful they can hop right out and not be smart enough to hop back it and can become chilled and die. We make our brooder bigger after 2 weeks and it’s enclosed with 3-foot walls and covered with chicken wire or a lid of some type to keep them inside.
At 4 weeks the poults have feathered out and can be moved to their own house. We have kept them in tractors with the meat chickens but find they do better on their own. Our turkey area is about 40 by 15 feet pasture with a 4 x 8-foot house. This house is not insulated and is only enclosed with boards around the bottom 2 feet and has hardware cloth around the top 6 feet. It has a slanted roof to protect them from the weather. By now it’s the heat of summer so they don’t have the cold weather to worry about.
The fencing surrounding them is about 4 feet high chicken wire. The turkeys come outside every day to enjoy the grass and bugs and go back into the house at night for safety. Sometimes the females will fly upon the fence but usually, they won’t fly far if they come down on the wrong side. You will find them cuddled up on the wrong side of the fence with the other turkeys. The males tend to be too heavy to fly at all.
Their feed pans are filled with turkey grower feed every morning and they will eat grass and bugs also during the day. We put out a bucket of clean fresh water 2 times a day. They will go in and out of the house for shade or to get out of the rain.
Turkeys take about 18 weeks to grow to butcher weight, therefore we call our processors early on after we order the poults to set our 18-week date. We use med-size dog crates to transport the turkeys to the processors. Our pickup truck with a covered back and open windows is used to drop the turkeys off in the morning. We come back the following day for 5 frozen vacuum-packed turkeys with weights of 15 to 24 pounds.
Who doesn’t want a Christmas turkey in their freezer? Let me know if you will be adding turkeys to your hobby farm.
We fill our freezer every year with 25 roaster chickens. We order rustic rangers in early January from a hatchery for a pickup in mid-May. By then the worst of the cold weather is gone and I can be sure the brooder in the barn will be able to keep the baby chicks warm enough.
We set up the brooder in one of our empty stalls but a garage or shed with electricity will work. We use 12-inch corrugated paper to make a circle of about 3 feet diameter to start. It is filled with 4 inches of shavings then topped with paper towels which is easier for the chicks to walk on and keeps them from trying to eat the shavings at first. The small size circle will keep the chicks close to the brooder lamp, food and water. It also keeps them from getting stuck in a corner.
We hang the brooder lamp from a chain in the ceiling to be about 10 inches up from the shavings. The temperature should be around 95 degrees Fahrenheit or 35 degrees celsius the first week. I recommend you use a thermometer to check it and to have it all ready to go the day before you bring your chicks home.
The chicks will huddle under the light when they are too cold and move away if it is too warm. We want them moving about comfortably from water to food and under the lamp occasionally to warm up. I also recommend you put the food and water in the night before to allow it to warm up a bit before placing the chicks inside.
On the day we go to pick up the chicks we make sure the heat is right by laying a thermometer on the shavings a little away from the light. The chicks will come in a little perforated box. 25 little puff balls all peeping quietly. Some people order them by mail and the post office will call to have them picked up.
When we get them home we carefully place the beak of each little chick in the water quickly so they know where the water is. We place them one by one into the brooder this way, being gentle and counting them as we go. They should all look healthy and start peeping around the brooder checking out the feed and water dishes. We try to refrain from holding them away from the heat for too long as they need that heater to regulate their body temp. The chicks are very cute at this stage.
We use small quart/litre size water dishes and long plastic or metal feeders that all the chicks can get to at one time. Add a splash of cider vinegar to the water to help their guts begin to work. We use medicated chick starter feed for the first 4 weeks. It is best to feed enough that it is always available to them. You will be amazed at how quickly they grow.
By week 2 you will have to enlarge the area by 2 feet. I cover the area with clean paper towels morning and night. This helps keep them clean and dry and able to walk around easily. By the end of this week, you can probably remove the paper towels and let them be directly on the shavings. They now know where their feed is and won’t be tempted to eat the shavings. We also raise the lamp slightly to reduce the temperature. They won’t need it as much as they start to get their feathers coming in.
As we watch them move around the whole brooder we know they are warm enough. If they huddle peeping under the light then we know to lower it slightly. We take into account the outside temperature of the barn or shed we are using. If we suddenly get a cold snap we will need to adjust the heat lamp. The more they move around in the brooder the better it is.
Keep an eye on their bottoms as some can develop pasty butt. This is where the manure sticks to their feathers around their bottoms and can seal it closed which stops them from pooping. It can be caused by stress or from being chilled. If it happens we take a wet paper towel, preferably warm and hold it to their bottoms to soften and loosen the manure. We try to be very gentle and patient as the clump can be stuck on pretty good and you don’t want it to rip their skin by pulling it off. We just remoisten it until it can be gently removed then dry them well and place them back in the brooder near the lamp.
By the fourth week, they will have a lot of their feathers and lose that puff ball look. If the weather is suitably warm and sunny we can move them to their adult home. They will need more room to move about.
We use something called chicken tractors for our meat birds. This is a movable tent-shaped structure built to protect the chickens as they eat the grass around the property. It is covered in hardware cloth to deter predators and covered with a tarp to protect the chickens from rain and give shade. We put feed and water inside and move it 2 times a day so they have fresh grass to eat and sleep on. We use 2 tractors, each one holds 12 or 13 chickens. They are 4′ x 8′ in size. We do this for another 7 to 8 weeks.
The rustic ranger chicken takes about 11 weeks to grow to about 5 to 7 pound chickens. Knowing this we pre-book a time at a poultry processing plant to take them for butchering. They are government inspected at the plant. Some people do the butchering themselves but we prefer to take them in and have them vac sealed and weighed as well as frozen to be picked up the next day.
By doing this we get lots of pasture-raised chicken to fill our freezers. It is a great way for us to use our property and we like the chickens to go through our orchard as it helps fertilize and remove pests. We have also run them through the pastures with the horses and it helps there too. Depending on how many you want to raise you can do this a couple of times a year starting a new batch every 2 months.
Would you want pasture-raised chickens on your property and in your freezer?
Soon after we had our country property we decided to get a few laying hens to have fresh eggs. We ordered 6 layer chickens and built a small raised coop, 4′ x 8′ and only 4 ft tall. we put in a roosting bar and feed and water buckets. This worked well for us for a few years but when we wanted a few more chickens we had to build bigger.
This time we wanted a walk-in coop which is easier to clean and has lots of windows to let in the sunshine. We doubled the size to 8’x 8′ and insulated the walls. It has four 1′ x 3′ windows that open outward in the summertime. They are covered on the inside with 1/2 inch hardware cloth to keep out predators.
The walls, floors and nesting boxes are painted white as well as the roosting bars. We put in 4 nesting boxes and a 4 rung roosting bar that started at 2 ft and stepped up to 4 ft high. We used 1’x 2′ boards for the roosts so the chickens can cover their feet in the winter. The roosts are 4 ‘ long and the top one is at window height.
The nesting boxes are 14″ x 14 ” x 14″ with a sloped roof to prevent them from sleeping on top of them. We fill the nests with fresh straw or shavings to keep the eggs clean. This also protects the eggs in the winter cold. We have 30 chickens now and they all share the nests. There is sometimes a lineup of chickens waiting for their turn in the nest.
We buy omega layer feed for our chickens as well as scratch grain, kitchen scraps and mealworms for treats in winter. In the summer they have a lot of fresh greens from the garden as well as some free-range time when I can watch them. We tried to totally free-range when we first got them and if I let them out in the morning they would end up as far as the neighbour’s deck by afternoon. Our neighbours are very kind and thought it was cute but I’m sure that would not be tolerated for long.
We put up a large fenced-in run that is 50′ x 25′. It gave them plenty of room to hunt and peck and we place garden scraps and trimmings from around the property for them to investigate. This way they are not only happy and safe but now the neighbours don’t have to worry about chicken manure on their deck.
A chicken lays on average 1 egg every 25 hours. This means that we get about 25 -30 eggs every day from our 30 hens. We have 2 types of chickens right now. A red sex link is a brownish red hybrid that is a top-performing layer of brown eggs. The other breed is Ameraucana which lays blue eggs. We have 10 of these. They are a little less productive. There are many other breeds out there and if you want a pretty flock rather than egg production you have a lot to choose from.
We have 2 types of waterers for our chickens. In the summer we use large plastic waterers that are easy to clean and refill. They need a lot of water when it is hot out. We usually put extra pans out for them to walk in as it cools them down this way too.
In the winter we use metal waterers that can be put up on a heated platform. This keeps the water from freezing at -25 degrees Celcius. It also keeps the water raised up and out of the shavings which can get kicked around a lot in the coop. We have electricity run to our coop so we can have the heaters and light inside.
Lighting can be for 2 reasons. One so you can actually see what you’re doing at evening chores in the winter when the sun goes down at 4:30 pm. You need to collect eggs, check their feed and water and do a headcount before you lock up for the night.
The other reason is to keep your chickens laying throughout the winter. Chickens need at least 14 hours of daylight t continue to lay eggs. In October the nights are starting around 6 pm and increase to 4:30 pm by December 21, the longest night of the year or winter solstice.
We add programmed timer lights that add 2 hours of light at first then increase to 6 hours by December. Then we reverse this as the daylight hours increase. Some people feel that giving the wintertime break to their chickens is the way to go so it is up to you whether to light the coop or not.
Of course, having laying chickens led to meat chickens, turkeys, Muscovy ducks and now geese. I’ll share more about these animals in upcoming posts. Will you start your hobby farm with some chickens?
When we decided to move to the country, a large reason for this move was to bring our 2 boarded horses home. We had boarded our horses where we took riding lessons and it was expensive. After 4 years of learning all we could about horsemanship and taking care of the animals, we took the first step by finding a country property.
We consider our little place a hobby farm because having horses for us is a hobby! We compare our hobby to other hobbies like golfing or classic car owners. Our horses don’t make us money. They are not used for farm chores other than eating the grass but we still have to mow occasionally. They are not our prominent mode of transportation. We do ride them as much as possible but just watching them graze our land and having them come to us for an apple is a pleasure for us.
Our property is 6 acres of land with some rolling pastures and a small creek running through it. We built a 3 stall horse barn and fenced in about 2 acres for pastures. Our trainers who owned the boarding farm brought our horses to our farm in their horse trailer. In the 10 years we have had our horses, we have not needed a horse trailer but it is something a lot of horse owners have.
Over the years we have built 10′ by 10′ run-ins in 2 of our pastures for shelter from wind or rain. Our horses mainly stay outside all year round. They only come into the barn for the vet, the farrier, to be brushed and saddled or if the weather is particularly nasty. Only freezing rain, blizzard conditions or hail causes us to bring them in. They prefer being outside otherwise and it is much healthier for them to get exercise and fresh air.
We have added 2 more fenced-in pastures and practise rotational grazing to help keep the pastures in shape. Horses will graze on the tenderest grass first and eat it down to the ground. They will pick an area to go to the bathroom then will not eat the grass in those areas. If you don’t move them from this pasture they will kill the new grass and only weeds will grow. With 4 pastures we can usually allow each pasture 3 weeks of new growth between grazing time. This pasture management works well in the spring and fall when the growing season is good.
We use a rough cut mower on our tractor about 3 times a year to cut down the weeds. In June, August and late September we mow it down to an even 4 – 8 inches. We also fertilize the areas that need it and overseed them in the spring to help keep them lush. Only one field in the winter is used. We picked the highest and driest pasture to keep the horses out of the mud. It is also closest to the barn so we can use 16 gallon heated buckets and fill them from our hoses. Our horses can feed on pasture from May to October in our area.
Come wintertime we use hay bales to feed our horses. We researched and decided early on how to get our hay and how it would be delivered. There are large bales and small square bales available to us.
If you don’t have a tractor for moving large bales then using small bales is the way to go. The small bales weigh between 40 to 70 pounds and can be cut open and used as flakes. These are compressed layers that come apart easily to feed in portions or you can put the whole bale out in feeders. We use a hay hut and it has saved us a lot of wasted hay.
We use our Kabota tractor to move our large square bales that weigh about 500 pounds. This allows us to put a bale in the hay hut and depending on how cold it is, the hay can last from 1 to 2 weeks.
Hay and grass are the majority of feed needed for a healthy horse. We only give apples and carrots in the warmer months to have them come over and be friendly. As our 2 horses are over 15 years old now, we give them a scoop of senior feed in the winter. Each morning feed allows me to see them up close to check on their appetite, their gait, their eyes etc. to catch any problems early.
Now all horses should have some regular maintenance. The vet should see them once a year for their annual shots and checkup. The horses need their teeth checked as well to see if they need to be filed down. This usually needs to be done every second year as their teeth can get sharp edges that will irritate the inside of their mouths. A farrier needs to come out and check their hooves and make a schedule for trimming or horseshoeing as needed. This is usually a 6 to 8-week interval and longer intervals in the winter as their hoof growth slows.
Other items you will need for your horses are headstalls and leads to move them around safely on your property. If you plan to ride them you will need saddles and bridles.
You can buy blankets and rainsheets for different weather situations. We have bought brushes, horsepicks, curry combs, shampoo etc for grooming purposes as well as feed and water buckets to use for feeding.
The sky is the limit for buying items to pamper your horse as well as training items like pylons, barrels, wooden jumps and poles, lunge lines, sand rings. OK, I will stop now but I think you can see how this hobby can be addictive.
We love having horses on our hobby farm and therefore wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t been part of our lives. Do you want horses on your hobby farm?
Our most recent acquisition of farm animals has been a gaggle of geese. We wanted something that would graze the grass and weeds around our small pond. We had previously raised muscovy ducks but they are not grazers and the area became a small jungle.
We got five goslings that were 1 day old from a breeder that was close to us. We ordered them in early winter and we had a choice of four breeds, Brown Chinese, Embden, Saddleback Pomeranian and Toulouse. The Toulouse breed was chosen both for the size and the looks as well as not being as aggressive as some breeds.
We put the goslings in a brooder with feed and water and shavings for absorbency. Geese love water and will make quite a mess with it. A heat lamp was used and kept the temperature at 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week. We lowered the temperature by 5 degrees every week as their feathers grew in. It took about 4 weeks for the goslings to have their adult feathers and look like full-grown geese. By now the weather had improved outside so we move them to their new home.
Our geese have a 6′ by 8′ wooden insulated house with windows and a door on the south side to let the sun in. It has a wooden floor and we lay down shavings and straw for absorbency and warmth in the winter. It gets topped up every couple of weeks and then in spring and fall it gets a total cleaning. They have a rather large run which includes a pond, trees for shade and a lot of pasture to roam. We let them out every morning rain or shine and then close them up at night for their protection.
Their yard is fenced in with hardware cloth on the lower 4 feet and the cloth is bent outwards at the bottom to prevent animals from trying to dig their way under. Then the fence has 1-inch chicken wire about 5 to 6 feet high on top of this to prevent predators from jumping over. We used 8-foot steel posts to hold the fence and buried them 2 feet in the ground. The total area is about 50 x 50 feet. This year we hope to fence in around our apple tree and expand their area a bit.
Our pond is only about 15 x 15 feet and maybe 2 feet deep. It is just a wider area in our creek that runs through our property. If it’s a wet year the pond stays full for most of the time but if we don’t get a lot of rain the pond can dry up and we supplement with a large trough for them to swim in. In winter the pond will freeze during the coldest weather so we use heated buckets of water for them to drink from. Geese need to be able to submerge their heads to clean their nostrils and eyes.
Geese are grazers much like our horses. They eat grass and weeds during the warm seasons when the grass is available to them. During the winter we give them hay and game bird feed. We give them a flake of hay every week and that seems to keep them very happy. Geese are probably the easiest keepers on our hobby farm.
Geese can be a bit on the noisy side so if you have close neighbours it could be a problem. They have a warning honk that they use whenever they sense something different in the area. It could be people, an animal, a bird, a blowing bag or a cloud in the sky and they let each other know about it. This can be a good warning alarm for your farm but you would need to see what the issue is each time. We find the males are the protective ones. They will stretch out their necks and give a little hiss to warn you to leave them alone. Otherwise, they go about their business of eating grass and waddling about as a group.
Our hope for our little gaggle of geese is that they pair up and produce a few goslings this year. We will let the geese raise them up and then process them at about 18 weeks or in November. Giving us a Christmas goose to put in the freezer or sell to others is our goal as well as trying a few of the eggs as they begin to lay in the spring. A goose egg is the equivalent of 3 chicken eggs so a goose omelet will be on the menu this spring too.
So do you think you would enjoy having a gaggle of geese on your hobby farm?
We were a little slow to put in our orchard. We started this in our third year of ownership. we did have one fully grown apple tree from previous owners but it needed to be renovated slowly although we did get apples from it.
First, check your growing zone. It’s no sense trying to grow something that doesn’t work in your area like lemons in the north although that would be great to have!
Find a reputable nursery to buy your plants from, either online or in person. Research what fruit or nuts grow in your area. We started with apples and pears. We have added plums, nectarines and hazelnuts to our orchard area.
Find the best place on your property to grow your trees and bushes. Orchards usually need full sun and enough room to have space between the trees. We chose to plant in the older traditional planting with about 8 to 12 feet between our trees. We wanted it for the look as well as for picking and having a wide range of fruit. Some people plant in long rows of trees close together but that is usually for commercial properties to make it easier to get mechanical pickers in the rows.
Now that you’ve decided on your fruit of choice and ordered and brought home your plants it’s time to plant. There are two ways most plants come to you. The first is in a pot. This plant can be put in the ground almost any time from spring to fall. The second is bare-root. These plants should be planted during their dormant period which is early spring or late fall.
For a potted plant dig a hole slightly deeper and about 2 times wider than the pot. Break up the native soil and release the plant from its container. Gently place the root ball into the hole and make sure the plant is at the same level that it was in the pot. If you need to add some soil back into the hole then do that. Now refill the hole with the native soil that you dug out previously. Water this in and then you can top this up with compost or good bagged soil and water this in again. Place a garden stake about 6 inches away and tie it loosely to the trunk of the tree.
If your plant is bare-root then place it in a bucket of water to rehydrate well as you dig the hole. Look at the plant and see where the roots spread out from the trunk. Make the hole big enough that all the roots can be spread out in all directions. It is best to build a small mound to place the roots around. Do not plant too deeply as you want the trunk just above the ground level. Now cover the roots with native soil and water well. Fill in with compost on top and water again.
I find it best to use your native soil so the roots have a reason to continue to grow out searching for nutrients and water. If you fill this hole with all the good soil the roots will curl around themselves and not try to spread out leaving the plant vulnerable to blowing over or strangling itself.
You can now mulch around the tree to help keep weeds down and help the ground retain moisture. Just be sure to keep the mulch at least 6 inches away from the trunk of the tree. Keep the tree well-watered, at least 1 inch of water a week or more for the first year and during droughts in later years.
I’m always amazed each spring when the trees that look like dead sticks all winter start to break dormancy and leaf out in spring. What fruit trees are you planning to have in your orchard?
My daughter and I had boarded our two horses where we took lessons for 4 years. We learned so much about taking care of them we found we were prepared to design our barn for what our family wanted.
After going to our municipality and asking what we were allowed to build we had plans drawn up. This depended on our property size as well as where we could put it on our property. We had to have set backs and distance from our property line and neighbours’ homes. We love that it is a bit of a walk from our home especially in the fly season.
Our plans included three stalls, an area for hay and a tack area. Another item on the want list was a water line to the tack area and heat to keep that waterline from freezing.
Another item was a upper viewing area or loft for my daughter to hang out in. This really wasn’t needed and became a storage area in the end.
When we were ready to build we had a concrete floor put in and rubber mats in the stalls. It was framed up and we had aluminum siding put on that matched our home. We added the stalls and accessories ourselves like insulated bucket holders and corner feeders. Of course, nameplates and halter hooks were included for convenience.
We use our barn for our horses, barn cats and chicken brooder area. As you can see our farm animals seem to approve. What kind of animal shelter are you going to have?