March 2025 - Flourish Farms

At the beginning of the year, Lyndsey and I sat down and created our vision board for this year’s upcoming busy season. We have been attacking that checklist so far with finishing our greenhouse, getting our garden plans ready, and starting on our outbuilding/barn. Last weekend we had some help out at the homestead to get most of our pole building put up. We are so fortunate to have people around us that can jump in and make quick work of things. One of my customers linked me up with a couple Amish workers that did most of the construction, I was the grunt running around getting them what they needed. The building structure only took about 4 hours to put up, and now we just have to put steel on it. We are excited to add this additional space to our homestead.

It will be an area that we can work, store tools/equipment and build off of for future use. We have plans to expand our livestock on the homestead in the future, and this will be a place that we can branch off of for more animal housing.

Chicken Update

Branching off of the building update, we can now open up the entire smaller shed we have currently for the entire chicken coop. This will allow us to easily expand our laying stock which we are doing today! Lyndsey is picking up another eight chickens for our flock, having this larger space for them is crucial. I will make sure to update once we have names picked out for all the new ones. Our coop will be revamped and allow more space and easier egg gathering.

Seedling/Garden Update

Lyndsey and I had to replant our seedlings, life got crazy, and we may or may not have forgotten to turn the heat light off….

We have started more seedlings that are all starting to germinate now and hope to start hardening them off and moving them into our new greenhouse soon. Our gardens are going to be tilled this week, and we are super excited for warmer temperatures coming! One thing we are learning through this journey is not to bite off more than we can chew. It feels like everything is chaos right now, but sometimes that is the fun of it. Our boys have been troopers, and love being out in nature with us. Watching them learn a long with us has been very rewarding. I look forward to sharing more updates as our progress continues!

Have any of you ever thought about building a farmstand to share your produce, eggs, bakes goods, and lots more with your local community? Lyndsey and I have been seeing a lot of farmstand ideas and have come up with a plan for Flourish Farms to start its own farmstand starting Spring of 2025. Farmstands can be simple in structure with just a few items, or they can be intricate and complex with power, water, and temperature control. They can be as simple, or elegant as the owner wants, and Lyndsey and I’s main goal is to serve our local community with fresh produce, eggs, and bakes goods out of our farmstand.

Plan

Now that the construction on our greenhouse is complete, the plan is to start construction on the farmstand. The weather looks great to allow a quick build, our farmstand is going to be quite simple as well which will aid in the process. We acquired some antique steel sheets that will look great on our farmstand. We plan to make it small enough that we can move it around easily if we need too. I have had a knack for constructing things out of pallets, they are usually cheap and easy to build with. Lyndsey bakes a lot of sour dough bread and other goods that we will sell out of the farmstand along with our garden produce, fresh eggs, salsa, and vanilla extract. If anyone has any other ideas, please reach out to us and let us know what you would like to see in the farmstand! Farmstand social media pages have inspired us to pursue this journey I have attached some links to our favorites at the end of the blog.

Execution

Our main goal for this farmstand is to serve our local community with whole foods and treats that the entire family can enjoy. If this is something you are interested in, please reach out to us for information on how we learned about it. We are still learning ourselves, and group learning is the best! Once the farmstand is built we plan to have it at our property just outside of town and make it a self-serve style kind of farmstand. People can take what they want and leave money in a box or Venmo us. We will bake multiple times a week for the farmstand and try to always have new and improved items available. Also, a farmstand is a great way to have some extra supplemental income. The input cost is fairly low, but the time is the most expensive part! Lyndsey and I dedicate a lot of time to our garden, animals, and preserving/cooking. We have learned to love the work that goes into making our homestead a homestand. Our family bonds in nature, and our son Wells has grown up getting dirty, caring for animals, and learning how to be self-sufficient. I will try and update this blog with posts as our farmstand starts being constructed, as always stay tuned for more updates and opportunities to grow with us!!