The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business
Six containers of heirloom tomatoes, miniature squashes, and herbs on your back patio or six acres of beets, cabbages, and strawberries? Five chickens and a honey bee hive or a small farm with three dozen sheep and a couple of quarter horses?

Regardless of the size of your “field of dreams,” Essential Guide to Hobby Farming is your best first step to making that hobby-farm aspiration a pleasurable and profitable reality. A hobby farmer for the past thirty years, Carol Ekarius shares the joys, challenges, and rewards of living the rural life. Hobby farming is as much a state of mind as it is an address in the country, and this instructive, beautifully photographed manual addresses every topic beginning hobby farmers need to know, from purchasing the right land and equipment to choosing and maintaining crops and livestock to marketing and selling your hobby farm’s yield.

TOPICS DISCUSSED INSIDE:

-Assessing finances and resources—land, water, tools of the trade (trucks, tractors, various implements)

-Choosing the best crops for your land, climate, hardiness, and profitability

-Selecting and caring for the livestock—chickens, goats, cows, sheep, etc.—that best fits your hobby farm

-Protecting crops and livestock against predators, pests, and disease

-Business and marketing options for selling your “local food” directly to restaurants and farmers’ markets and through CSA programs

-Preserving the harvest, through canning, drying, and freezing, plus over two dozen original recipes for your homegrown produce

NEW FOR THE SECOND EDITION:

Expanded section on chickens, including urban and suburban accommodations; honey bee keeping; adding a barn or annex building to the farm; trends in planting, including miniature vegetables, heirloom varieties, and “hot” new vegetables and hybrids; adding flower beds to the property; getting involved with a CSA
1121486640
The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business
Six containers of heirloom tomatoes, miniature squashes, and herbs on your back patio or six acres of beets, cabbages, and strawberries? Five chickens and a honey bee hive or a small farm with three dozen sheep and a couple of quarter horses?

Regardless of the size of your “field of dreams,” Essential Guide to Hobby Farming is your best first step to making that hobby-farm aspiration a pleasurable and profitable reality. A hobby farmer for the past thirty years, Carol Ekarius shares the joys, challenges, and rewards of living the rural life. Hobby farming is as much a state of mind as it is an address in the country, and this instructive, beautifully photographed manual addresses every topic beginning hobby farmers need to know, from purchasing the right land and equipment to choosing and maintaining crops and livestock to marketing and selling your hobby farm’s yield.

TOPICS DISCUSSED INSIDE:

-Assessing finances and resources—land, water, tools of the trade (trucks, tractors, various implements)

-Choosing the best crops for your land, climate, hardiness, and profitability

-Selecting and caring for the livestock—chickens, goats, cows, sheep, etc.—that best fits your hobby farm

-Protecting crops and livestock against predators, pests, and disease

-Business and marketing options for selling your “local food” directly to restaurants and farmers’ markets and through CSA programs

-Preserving the harvest, through canning, drying, and freezing, plus over two dozen original recipes for your homegrown produce

NEW FOR THE SECOND EDITION:

Expanded section on chickens, including urban and suburban accommodations; honey bee keeping; adding a barn or annex building to the farm; trends in planting, including miniature vegetables, heirloom varieties, and “hot” new vegetables and hybrids; adding flower beds to the property; getting involved with a CSA
24.95 Out Of Stock
The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business

The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business

The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business

The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business

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Overview

Six containers of heirloom tomatoes, miniature squashes, and herbs on your back patio or six acres of beets, cabbages, and strawberries? Five chickens and a honey bee hive or a small farm with three dozen sheep and a couple of quarter horses?

Regardless of the size of your “field of dreams,” Essential Guide to Hobby Farming is your best first step to making that hobby-farm aspiration a pleasurable and profitable reality. A hobby farmer for the past thirty years, Carol Ekarius shares the joys, challenges, and rewards of living the rural life. Hobby farming is as much a state of mind as it is an address in the country, and this instructive, beautifully photographed manual addresses every topic beginning hobby farmers need to know, from purchasing the right land and equipment to choosing and maintaining crops and livestock to marketing and selling your hobby farm’s yield.

TOPICS DISCUSSED INSIDE:

-Assessing finances and resources—land, water, tools of the trade (trucks, tractors, various implements)

-Choosing the best crops for your land, climate, hardiness, and profitability

-Selecting and caring for the livestock—chickens, goats, cows, sheep, etc.—that best fits your hobby farm

-Protecting crops and livestock against predators, pests, and disease

-Business and marketing options for selling your “local food” directly to restaurants and farmers’ markets and through CSA programs

-Preserving the harvest, through canning, drying, and freezing, plus over two dozen original recipes for your homegrown produce

NEW FOR THE SECOND EDITION:

Expanded section on chickens, including urban and suburban accommodations; honey bee keeping; adding a barn or annex building to the farm; trends in planting, including miniature vegetables, heirloom varieties, and “hot” new vegetables and hybrids; adding flower beds to the property; getting involved with a CSA

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781620081440
Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
Publication date: 06/09/2015
Edition description: Second Edition
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 7.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Carol Ekarius is the co-author of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, The Field Guide to Fleece, and Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep, and she is the author of several books, including Small-Scale Livestock Farming, Storey’s Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds, and Storey’s Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle, and Pigs. She lives in the mountains of Colorado, where her four-legged and winged family keeps her busy.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 5

Back to the Farm 7

Are You Ready for the Country? 17

Jumping In 47

Nature's Troublemakers and Farm Safety 63

Gardening: The Land 83

Gardening: The Planting 97

Farm Animals 139

Beekeeping 195

Preserving the Harvest: Fruits and Vegetables 221

Preserving the Harvest: Dairy and Meat 243

Agripreneurship 265

Resources 288

Index 293

Photo Credits 303

About the Authors 304

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