At long last it is finally 2021! We can all put the hot mess of 2020 behind us and look ahead to the new year as a blank canvas to be anything we want it to be!
With this new year, I have what seems like an endless lists of things that I'd love to do whether it be for the farm or with the horses. But I wanted to make this blog post here to talk in slightly more detail about my "big" goals and plans for Painted Charm Farm in 2021.
First off, the biggest thing, I want to become an official business in the state and begin selling various homemade products. I still need to iron out quite a few details such as how I want to sell while some farmer's markets and other events are still on hiatus due to COVID. My current options I'm looking at for selling online are either through Etsy or right here through my website. Both have pros and cons, so it'll just be a matter of seeing which would be more customer friendly, which is easier to set up and manage, things like that.
Going off of my big goal above is to actually attend farmer's markets and other vendor friendly events and start selling! I have a few products in mind to make (going to keep that a secret to myself until I'm ready to sell!) that I definitely think I have a demographic for in the area I'm in. So, I want to start researching any events or markets that have a chance of being open this year, write myself a tenative schedule, look into any rules or guidelines for each individual event/market, find out what kind of licensing I may need for selling, and so on and so forth.
Another goal for this year is to add a few new species to the farm to actually make it more of a farm! First of which I'm thinking will be a small flock of chickens. I've been able to experience first hand chicken husbandry and learn about a mere handful of the different breeds available. From my time spent with friends' chickens as well as conducting some of my own research I'm leaning towards maybe four to six hens to start and looking into Sussex, Rhode Island Red, Australorp, and Leghorn hens.
Next up is probably the first goal I'm hoping to achieve this year, is to expand the horses' pasture area. I was only able to fence in an acre to start since we were on a time crunch to get posts in before the ground froze and the snow started to fall (update... the ground still hasn't froze...). But since we have a total of 11 acres I want to utilize that space! My horses will always be my first priority on the farm, no matter what other species I decide to get, they get the most space. With that being said here's what I'm hoping to add on to start come spring time:
The black area is what the horses are in now, and the pink is what I want to add on! I also want to add a track system to my pasture, which is basically where you make a track that outlines the perimeter of your pasture leaving the inside grass closed off to the horses. This allows for better grass management so that they don't graze everything down but also encourages more movement by the horses making their way around the track for hay, which would be stationed around the track, and water, which is up at the barn.
I think getting that pink outline fenced in along with putting in my track system is totally achievable come spring! Just as long as the weather all cooperates with me...
Another thing I'd like to do is start a vegetable garden. I've been reading Homesteading (the second edition) by Abigail R. Gehring and have been concentrating on the huge section about gardening as well as canning food and even making herbal medicines and other products and it sounds like a lot of fun as well as being a very cool experience!
And finally, my last big goal for the year is to put in an actual outdoor riding arena. I haven't settled on a place where I'd like to put it, and selecting a footing option is a whole other thing, but that makes for good research during these gross winter days.
So, those are all my big goals for the year! At least the ones I've come up with so far, I'll probably encounter more ideas as time goes on. I also have a lot of "smaller" ideas (i.e. ones that will be accomplished fairly quickly, I hope) like getting new doors for the run-in shed to close it off from the weather when I need to bring the horses in in incelment weather, putting in a proper rodent-proof and temperature controlled tack room, getting cameras for the barn and house to keep an eye on things when we're not home, putting mats down in our aisleway, putting in a wash stall, all things for the barn of course!
Bottom line, this year I want to mold Painted Charm Farm into what I've dreamed it would be, or at least start to mold it into my dream. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm so excited for the challenge. Let's do it 2021!
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