The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming: A How-To Manual for Crops, Livestock, and Your Business (CompanionHouse Books) Beginner-Friendly Advice for Starting Your Own Hobby Farm, from Chickens to CSAs - Softcover

Carol Ekarius

Softcover

ISBN 10: 162008144X ISBN 13: 9781620081440

Publisher: CompanionHouse Books, 2015

Synopsis

Your essential guide to hobby farming!

• Assessing resources: finances, land, water, and tools of the trade (trucks, tractors, and various implements)
• Choosing the best crops for your land, climate, hardiness, and profitability
• Livestock that best fits your hobby farm (chickens, goats, cows, sheep, etc.) and how to select and care for them
• Protecting crops and livestock against predators, pests, and disease
• Business options for marketing and 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

If the idea of getting back to basics, growing your own food, raising livestock, or venturing into a small-farm business appeals to you, this is the book to help you get started!

Whether you're a city dweller heading to the country or a suburbanite who wants fresh produce and eggs from the backyard, this comprehensive beginner-friendly guide will answer your questions with practical how-to advice. 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," this handbook is your best first step to making that hobby-farm aspiration a pleasurable and profitable reality!

A hobby farmer for the past thirty years, author Carol Ekarius shares the joys, challenges, and rewards of living the rural life. Carol is also the co-author of Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep and the author of Small-Scale Livestock Farming, Storey's Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle, and Pigs, and many more.

Hobby farming is as much a state of mind as it is a country address, 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 yield.

In this updated and expanded second edition, Leslie J. Wyatt joins author Carol Ekarius to bring you an all-new chapter on beekeeping, an in-depth discussion on community-supported agriculture (CSA), a closer look at chicken keeping (including urban and suburban poultry accommodations), a wealth of new information on gardening and planting trends (including miniature vegetables, heirloom varieties, and hot new vegetables and hybrids), adding a barn or annex building to the farm, adding flower beds to the property, and more.

Learn what defines a hobby farm and how to take steps toward a more sustainable lifestyle, consider the practical elements and challenges of small-scale farming, discover what to look for in potential hobby-farm property or how to work with the land you have, explore the tools and equipment you'll need for the type of farming you want to do, make farm safety a priority for your family and livestock, arm yourself with strategies for handling pests, predators, weeds, and other troublemakers, get acquainted with different types of plants and their requirements, prepare your soil for planting produce, trees, and flowers, meet the most common types of animals for a hobby-farm flock or herd, prepare your homegrown meat, dairy, and produce for the market or the dinner table, and plan your small-farm business by looking at different types of "agripreneurship" and meeting hobby farmers who have created innovative, successful enterprises.

Get answers to all your questions about starting your own hobby farm, with The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming!

About this title

About the Author

Carol Eckarius: Carol Ekarius, a freelance writer on the subjects of hobby farming and sustainability, has been living the rural dream with her husband on their Colorado hobby farm along with their cattle, sheep, horses, mules, and poultry. She is a regular contributor to Hobby Farms magazine and is the author of various books including The Field Guide to Fleece, Pocketful of Poultry, Small-Scale Livestock Farming, and How to Build Animal Housing.

Edition details

• Publisher: CompanionHouse Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 162008144X
• ISBN 13: 9781620081440
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 304