While COVID-19 put a halt to many plans and activities, it also helped people find new hobbies, learn new skills, start up their dream businesses, and find new ways to build community.
Keene residents Ashley Foreman and Chris Duff experienced all of this firsthand when they began running their own hobby farm called Duff Acres — with an unexpected result.
In 2019, the couple built their dream home on the 50-acre property where Chris had been raised and which has been in his family since 1987. Two years later, after a year of online schooling due to the pandemic, Chris and Ashley wanted to do something to encourage their four children to get out of the house.
“We wanted to have something for our kids to do and give them a bit of purpose and teach them a bit of work ethic,” Chris explains. “And just have a little bit of joy in the times that we were in.”
So when a family friend had a couple of cows available, they jumped at the opportunity. They then built a pasture, added four chickens, created a big produce garden, and suddenly they had their very own hobby farm.
“At one point we started having too much to feed ourselves and be sustainable on our own end,” Chris says. “So we started putting that out and sold our meat and we had a great response.”
Though the couple began by just selling the eggs and produce they were unable to consume within their own family, now — only a year into the business — they can’t even keep up with the demand.
“We decided last year to try doing some meat chickens,” Chris says. “Again, it was for ourselves, and we were just going to try and sell a couple to cover the costs, but then we wound up selling every chicken.”
This year, the couple has “upped their game” by getting 90 meat chickens instead of the 40 they had last year. They’ve also recently added more hens to keep up with the demand for eggs and, on top of raising Christmas turkeys as they did last winter, they’ll also be raising Thanksgiving turkeys. They currently have 12 on the farm, two of which they will keep for themselves.
“We’ve never had such good food as what comes out of the animals that are in our backyard,” says Chris, adding that all the animals are pasture-fed. “Just knowing what we’ve put into it, and know what we’re eating, and being able to see the whole process — we think it’s really great for our kids and for anybody else that stops in to see it, too.”
Chris spent some of his early childhood helping on his extended family’s dairy farm and on a close friend’s beef farm. This was the only farming knowledge that either Chris and Ashley had — the rest had to be researched — and they’ve also learned by trial and error.
“We’ve had some failures and we’ve had had some loss too, but it’s all a learning curve,” Chris notes. “We feel like we learn something every day, and every day we get better. If we’re losing something or something’s not going right for us, then we learn from it and we move on.”
Ashley adds that other farms in the region have been very supportive in offering advice, especially when they were just beginning their hobby farm.
“That community has been totally different than anything I’ve really experienced before,” she explains. “We’re able to connect with other local small hobby farms too, and network and be able to basically help each other out. If we’re having an issue or they’re having an issue, we can help each other out and have a community network going on here.”
With Chris still working full-time in maintenance for Peterborough Utilities at the Riverview Park and Zoo, and Ashley running a daycare from their home, the couple relies on their children to help with caring for the hobby farm.
The couple estimates that 13-year-old William and eight-year-old James do 75 per cent of the work on the farm by watering, feeding, and cleaning up after the animals. Four-year old Evelyn and three-year old Charles also help out by collecting eggs and picking fruit and, of course, by keeping the animals company.
“They love interacting with all the animals,” Ashley says.
“They get to see that and know exactly what their chicken or their meat looked like eight weeks ago when it was just a little thing,” Chris adds. “They don’t just think that their food comes from the grocery store out of a box. They know exactly what goes into it.”
If four young children and a farm of animals isn’t enough to keep track of, Ashley also cares for a handful of children for her home daycare, Duff Acres Farm School. These children are just as eager to interact with the animals, and Ashley will often take them out for walks through the pasture or to watch tractors on the neighbouring farmlands.
“People love the experiences their kids can get here,” she says. “It’s totally different than centre-based care where I’d worked for years.”
Ashley explains that getting to watch her children care for the animals and appreciate where their food comes from is one of her favourite things about running Duff Acres. The other is the support and connections she’s gained from other local farms and surrounding community, something she didn’t anticipate.
“This local area of Peterborough County is just full of so many great small local businesses that are willing to help and support everybody because they were there themselves at one time,” Ashley says. “They want everybody to thrive and that and, in turn, that helps them to thrive.”
Like the life cycle of the animals they raise, the couple is giving back to their community in appreciation for all the help they’ve received.
Last year, when they had an extra Christmas turkey, they decided to do a “giftaway” and donate it to a family in need of a Christmas dinner. Community members privately messaged them nominations of people who were going through a hard time or could use something special around Christmas time.
Other local businesses chipped in to donate to the giftaway, until there was a whole package of goodies — complete with bottles of wine, home décor, butter tarts, treats, and more.
“We want to do that again this year too, and we’re hoping that we get just as good or a better turn-out from our local business community to be able to give back to somebody who needs something, because everybody’s gone through hard times,” Ashley says. “We’ve gone through hard times too. We’re so lucky with everything that we have here that to be able to give it back to somebody that could really use it. It was very heartwarming.”
Duff Acres is located at 784 Serpent Mounds Road in Keene and can be reached at duffacres@hotmail.com. You can follow them on Facebook and Instagram for more on the day-to-day life of a hobby farm.
