Home Sweet Home

A hobby farm, by definition, is a small farm operated for pleasure or supplemental income rather than for primary income.


That being said, welcome to the farm. 


Hubs and I and our three boys live on ten acres where everything we farm is strictly for pleasure. We use our resources to teach the kids self-sufficiency, hard work, and the satisfaction that comes from both. Our "operation" is small and in no way fancy. We don't have any livestock, a situation we hope to rectify soon. That being said, what do we do?

Let me show you around.



Almost every farm has a good dog. Meet Indiana Bones (yes, the kids named him). He may not be ferocious, but he's loyal. He chose us by showing up at our doorstep one day and refusing to leave. When no one claimed him and the pound was looking imminent, we took him in.






We have fruit trees that we nurture every year. At harvest time, I bake desserts, slice the fruit to freeze, and make jam. All of which are great to pull out in the winter and enjoy. We have peach and apple trees and blackberry bushes. My goal is to add blueberry bushes to the mix this year.




We plant a vegetable garden every spring with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, watermelon, banana peppers, (sometimes) corn and green beans, and pumpkins. We till, plant, cultivate, and harvest the garden as a family. And I must say there's nothing better than a ripe, juicy tomato straight from the garden.






We cut, split, and stack our own firewood to keep warm on cold winter nights.








And as many farms do, we have kittens!









The chickens are by far my favorite addition. I enjoy watching them, spoiling them (I've turned them into big babies), and a farm fresh egg is no comparison to store bought. Currently, we have Rhode Island Red hens, but hope to raise other breeds this spring.

Every year we try to improve on our little place. This spring/summer, I'd like to add some landscaping, a few bat houses, blueberry bushes, build a larger chicken coop, and possibly eliminate our trash service by recycling, turning food waste into compost, and burning paper products.

Though this blog is titled "hobby farmer by day, author by night," nowadays it seems like the roles have switched. The chores that can't wait until evening are done in the morning before I sit down to write, laundry and house cleaning are sprinkled throughout the day when I need to get away from the computer and stretch, and the rest of the chores are done in the evening. This routine will change yet again when school is out for the summer and all the kids are home, making writing more difficult to accomplish.

So, that's what we do.

It's not much, but we love it!