New Year, New Farm

Here’s the thing, I love a New Years Resolution. I love the beginning of the school year. I love a birthday and the turning of the page to another year. Any time I get to stop, take stock of my life and make plans to improve I am all about it.

Luckily, I married Kenneth and he is 100% supportive of my drive to sit down, write a pros and cons list, and make a five year plan.

The tricky thing about starting a new farm (or, I assume, any new business) is that you can make a five year plan all you want but you won’t always know what the plan should look like until you’re already living it.

When we began farming we started, as one often does, with the gateway animal of egg chickens. In our little suburban house, we built a chicken tractor and kept five birds. Everyone knew who we were in the neighborhood.

When we moved to our farm we brought the birds and expanded the flock. Then began to raise meat birds. Our first year we raised 130 and last year we raised 1100. Then we added pigs. We talked about adding goats and maybe cattle. Instead we bought a few hives and started keeping bees.

Egg birds, meat birds, and pork are relatively simple. You raise the animal, feed and water it, keep it on fresh pasture, and in the end you get a quality product to eat. Honeybees are trickier. Kenneth kept bees for three years before having a successful honey harvest. It takes a little more finessing, a little more brainstorming, a little more tweaking and tweaking until you get it right.

All this to say, when we started farming we kind of threw everything at the wall to see what would stick. Chicken eggs, chicken, pork and honey. We knew we wanted to farm and raise quality meat for our family and our community so we gave a bunch of stuff a try.

And over the years we’ve learned a few things. We’ve learned that producing large amounts of eggs involves more labor than we are willing to commit. We’ve learned that our farm, which is all cleared pasture, is not the best place to run multiple batches of pigs through. And we’ve learned, best of all, that Kenneth really loves beekeeping.

So as Kenneth and I sit down to plan our next year, you will be seeing some changes coming to Wilde Rose Farm. You’ll see fewer animals but hopefully a lot more variety with our honey products. We’ll still be at markets but we’ll also be prioritizing time on the farm to get the work done.

One thing is for sure though, we are still committed to raising quality products for our family and for you.

Happy New Years,

Sarah