Property ideas

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! Farm stand Wrapped Bouquets 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! Wrapped bouquets Honey, beeswax and li

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. Summ

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! Follow us on Instagram for times and dates! @summerrainfarmstand

Ordering 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. The brooder setup 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 s

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. Barn in the distance Planning 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 neighb

Our property had some fencing for horses that the previous owners had put up and enclosed about 2 acres. We decided to devide this area into 2 pastures allowing us to rotate the horses as the grass grew. This was a good start. We added a third acre parcel later as well as another half acre temporary field. This is still an ongoing issue. Types of fencing We used wood fencing with electric rope, chest high to prevent the horses from chewing or pushing against the wood. The ele

When we decided to leave our suburban home we looked at real estate sites. We had 5 items to keep in mind. Our 5 requirements for our property To be within a half hour of the city where we worked. I would be working from home but my husband would be driving daily to his place of work. Weather would definatly be a factor as well since we live in the north and get a good amount of snow storms in the winter. We wanted it large enough to have our 2 horses live on it. This was o

So you've found your little(or big) slice of heaven. Congratulations! You've moved in and looked at all that space. What can you do with it now? I'm going to list some ideas for you to pick and choose what interests you most. A few things should be first if your looking down the road. These are just general suggestions. I will go more in depth for each suggestion in later posts. Check in the categories for updates. List of ideas Orchards should be planted first as they take a