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

Ekarius, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 162008144X ISBN 13: 9781620081440

Publisher: CompanionHouse Books, 2015

Synopsis

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

About this title

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.

From the Back Cover

The Essential Guide to
Hobby Farming
2nd Edition

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, The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming will answer many of your questions with practical how-to advice.

In this beautifully illustrated, updated, and expanded second edition, Leslie J. Wyatt joins author Carol Ekarius to bring readers an all-new chapter on beekeeping, an in-depth discussion on community-supported agriculture (CSA), a closer look at chicken keeping, a wealth of new information on gardening and planting trends, and more.

Inside The Essential Guide to Hobby Farming:

• 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 farm troublemakers
• Get acquainted with different types of plants and their requirements and prepare your soil for planting produce, trees, and flowers
• Meet the most common types of animals for a hobby-farm flock or herd; the authors include special discussions on chicken keeping and beekeeping on properties of any size
• Prepare your homegrown meat, dairy, and produce for the market or the dinner table
• Plan your small-farm business by looking at different types of "agripreneurship" and meeting hobby farmers who have created innovative, successful enterprises.

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