Bar M Ranch Farm Stay Plan 2023!

It's been an exciting time on the farm the last few months as we get the new farmhouse ready for guests in 2023! So far, most of the work has been giving the inside a fresh coat of paint and getting an empty house filled with all the things that make a house a home. We have spent most of the winter painting and shopping around to fill bedrooms, the dining room, the living room, and the kitchen with supplies to have it ready for people to rent as a farm stay this year!

We have been getting questions about the farm stay and we thought we would share some common questions with answers:

Question: Can I rent the farm stay in 2023?

Answer: Yes! For this year as we are new to short-term rentals, and have projects to complete like exterior painting and replacing wood shingles, we are only renting via our website (www.barmranch.ca) or you can reach out to us directly to ask for specific dates. You can email bar_m_ranch@hotmail.com or call/text 902-277-1780 (Dave's cell) and ask for specific dates. The minimum rental is for 2 nights and for March/April (while we work on the finishing touches inside between guests) it will be $100/night plus tax . From May onward it will be $200/night plus tax. The house is set up with 4 beds and 2 bathrooms and the whole house is included when renting.

Question: Where is the farmhouse in relation to the farm?

Answer: Since both our main house (Meister homestead) and the farmhouse were originally built by brothers, they are both on the same main farm property. The two houses are on either side of the barn, and all on the same side of the road. The farmhouse is a small fenced lot which is surrounded by pasture as you can see in the picture below. It has close access to a nature trail, our event building, and other highlights on the farm

Question: What's the layout of the farmhouse?

Answer: The house is a 2 story single family home with a kitchen, pantry, bathroom (with shower), dining room, living room and kitchen downstairs. Upstairs are 3 bedrooms (4 beds), a bathroom and an office space.

Question: Is it on Airbnb/Is it an Airbnb?

Answer: Although it is a short-term rental, it's not listed on Airbnb or equivalent online platform. We plan to eventually list it on that type of site but for right now, we'd like to take our time to complete the exterior work, and understand how to make a great short-term rental/farm stay and get great photos. That means for right now, bookings are done through our website and/or through contacting us directly.

Question: Can I tour the farm? Can I see the animals?

Answer: To get a farm tour of the animals, tractors and other farm sights, check with one of us before hand to coordinate a time. We will only offer guided tours because we are a working farm, and need to ensure a safe experience around equipment and animals. We will have a self guided nature trail through the farm and woodlot, and it will be marked with signage to go at your own pace and enjoy nature.

Question: Are pets allowed and why not?

Answer: We get this question a lot! Although we have dogs and are dog-lovers we don't allow pets at the farmhouse for a few reasons. With dogs of our own we know they sometimes have accidents, make messes, and can scratch the floor (most of our wood floors are original to the house and some are painted). The cattle can get spooked by dogs and with some dogs seeing our free range chickens as a lunch snack, we have decided to limit pets coming to the farm both for our events and for the farm stay.

Question: Do you have a hot tub/Do you plan to have a hot tub?

Answer: Although hot tubs are popular for many short-term rentals, we do not offer one or plan to offer one. Since the house is a historical farm home, we feel a hot tub wouldn't fit the rustic charm and character of the space. It may also not be practical or feasible based on the layout of the property. 

Winter Farmhouse Rental for Friends and Family

 As some of you will have already heard, in 2023, we be offering a short-term rental option at the new Farmhouse which is located next door to us on our farm. We will have more details (and dates) to come as we work to finish getting it ready for visitors!

After we finish painting and furnishing the house this winter, and before we pick an online platform to officially launch it, we will be offering a discounted rental rate to friends and family. Our intent with this is to make use of the winter months with people we know and work out a smooth system (for check in, cleaning, instructions/description) and make sure we have it outfitted with everything people need and expect. As fiends and family, we will ask you to provide us with feedback, suggestions or ideas so we can make any adjustments before launching through an online platform and hosting people that we’ve never met before. This offer will be for a couple months only this winter and will require a 2-night minimum at $100 a night (plus tax). The bookings for this special offer will be directly through our website.

These are some current pictures of the house with more features and furniture to be added in the coming weeks. We both have a week of vacation booked from work in mid January and plan to work on the house that whole week. We hope to have the house “ready” by the beginning of February.

If you are interested in a winter stay, think about dates in the winter and early spring that would be of interest to you and watch for more posts on when we’re ready to launch this offer.

2022 Farm Wrap Up

I am writing this blog post, almost like how I used to write our Christmas letter in years past. It's been so busy around the farm the last few years, I never seem to have time, but this year I really wanted to take time to reflect on 2022. 

Christina and I have Christmas break off from our office jobs and with the weather being damp and cold, we have used the last few days to catch up on rest and start planning for 2023. 

2022 was one of the biggest years on the farm since we transitioned over from Dad running it. We started off with a short but rough winter, losing power every few weeks and a bad ice storm. Although we enjoy the winter time to slow down and rest, losing power makes it really tough to keep the barn from freezing up and generally makes operations harder. 

We were able to use the winter time to really build a great list of events for the entire year that included seed saving, bouquet making, Forest Bathing, and a herb planting workshop to name a few. Christina really did most of the work on developing the curriculum and supplies for them, where I helped get them up on the website and helped set up the event building. These workshops really brought our vision for the event building to life since we had planned for these in the business plan for the building but COVID really got in the way of that the last few years. 

As summer rolled around, we had an abundance of activity on the farm with haying and firewood season, as well as getting the cattle out to pasture and in July, Christina's dahlia's coming into bloom. The dahlia's were a new addition to the farm and will only expand in 2023, as they were beautiful and very popular! We also had an increase in monarch butterflies on the farm due to the milkweed plant Christina planted around the event building! We can wait to see more next year :)

Haying season, I can safely say now, was the best haying season since we moved back to the farm. I was able to get all the manure on last year, I had it all chain harrowed twice and all the equipment worked (after getting all new gear the last 3 years). We made over 3600 square bales over the home lots and a neighbor's field and over 500 bales of second-cut hay. Having this much hay the last two years, with a smaller herd of 9-10 cattle takes the pressure out of feeding them. It only takes 1500-1700 bales to feed our cattle all year and we make almost 4000 bales, which means, not only do we have lots of hay, but we can sell some as well. 

In August we also had a big surprise! One of our heifers, which we didn't think was pregnant, had a calf in the field, in the middle of a big storm. To say we were shocked, was an understatement and little "Stormy" was a lot of work initially to get connected to its mother (a first-time mother) but after working to keep them together, she finally took the new calf under her wing. This made up for a hard loss we had in April when "Molly" lost her little heifer calf, so we were very thankful.

In October we wrapped up something we had been working on since May, which was purchasing a second property for a future Farm Stay/Airbnb on the farm. This house is right in the middle of the farm and had been owned by the neighbors for 25 years. It was originally a Meister home that was built at the same time as our farm home but was sold off by my grandfather years ago. This will be a huge part of 2023 as we get it ready and list it as a farm stay option on the farm, which we are super excited about! Stay tuned for more details in the new year but below is a picture of where it's located on the farm.

Later in the fall we had a big loss in the family with the passing of my Dad. He was a huge mentor for Christina and me over the last 11 years living here and to say we are able to keep the farm going here because of him is an understatement. Growing up with Dad he taught me everything about working in the woods and on the farm, and it was amplified over the last 11 years when we worked together every day until he couldn't get up to the barn as much and we talked a lot on the phone or in person. In my last conversation with him, the night he passed, he asked about the cattle, Christmas Trees and Christina's wreath workshops. Although I am at peace with his passing as it was in his sleep and painless, he loved the farm and was a sounding board for so much of what we are trying to do now since taking over operations. As he passed close to our u-pick and Christmas tree season in New Ross, he was a presence in all we did during that time and so many people shared stories of him cutting their tree, like my brother or I did this year for them. 

2022 was a year of highs and lows but one of constant reflection. The joy of living on the farm was one I shared with Dad during my visits during the last months of his life, and being able to share all we were doing, with his approval, will forever be in my mind as we move forward into 2023. We are excited for more on-farm events, haying and growing seasons and the upcoming farm stay but all in the shadow of the last 5 generations of Meister's before us. 

Christmas Wreath Sizes – Explained

 Every year, people ask for an explanation of Christmas wreath sizes to help decide what size they’d like to purchase. It’s no wonder we get this question because the sizes are confusing! Typically, the size of a wreath advertised actually corresponds to the diameter of the wire ring base that it’s constructed on. Except for special orders, we make and sell 12”, 14” and 16” wreaths. Here are photos of the rings used to create those 3 sizes of wreath.

The size of the finished wreath varies depending on the length of the brush used to construct it. Some wreaths are neat, tidy and compact while some are more full or intentionally shaggy. Again, unless we have a special order, we produce three sizes and styles of wreaths. Here’s how ours generally appear when constructed. The 12” wreath is roughly 19 inches across, the 14” wreath is roughly 22 inches across and the 16” wreath is roughly 24 inches across.

wreath price considerations

Wreath prices fluctuate wildly. The larger the wreath, the more expensive it is because the more supplies it takes to make it. But, price not only relates to the size, but also the materials used, if it’s decorated or not, and if it’s double sided or single sided. Some ribbons, greenery (like magnolia leaves and eucalyptus) are very expensive so a fancy ribbon bow or some added greenery could make a small wreath more expensive than a large plain one. Our default is double-sided wreaths which means the back appears the same as the front, but this is not always the case. A double-sided wreath is nice when you’re putting it on a door with a window where you can see the wreath from the inside. We find a double-sided wreath also provides a little more weight so it sways less in the wind than a single-sided wreath. Wreaths can be made using a machine (sort of like an industrial sewing machine) or handmade where each little bundle of brush is attached by wrapping a continuous length of wire by hand. All of our wreaths are made by hand. When considering all of these factors in addition to the advertised size, you can see there are many factors to consider when purchasing a wreath. 

Farming/Non-Farming Schedule

Probably the most common question we get related to the farm is how do we do it all since we work full-time "office" jobs as well as maintain the farm. For those who see the things we post on social media, one could wonder when the work on the farm gets done when we're both working non-farm jobs during core working hours. The first point I'd say is that I'm the 6th generation Meister to work on the farm so it's been done by many families over the last 200 years and even my grandparents had off-farm jobs with my grandmother working as a teacher while my grandfather worked 100% on the farm. 

The three major reasons we can schedule two jobs are; automation, flexibility, and limited commitments. Automation is the first thing I'll talk about.

The picture above is of my firewood processor. This machine cuts back my time to making our 7 cords of firewood from 3 hours per cord to 1 hour per cord. The processor is an example of finding ways to do work in a shorter and more efficient way with less people power. We have tried to find machines or processes that shorten the time to complete our work which saves time to do other things. 

The second part is flexibility and the ability we have with our "office" jobs but also with the farm work. We are both lucky to work at companies that value the farm work we do and also our careers themselves allow us, particularly post-COVID, to work remotely.  This means we usually are up at 5 or 6AM to do morning chores (instead of commuting) then start working our office jobs around 7:30AM until lunch when we can pop out and do something like take the dogs for a walk or ted hay for 20 minutes or so. Once our work day ends at 4pm we can go right outside and start working on farm work until 9 or 9:30PM in the summers. This gives us about 5 - 6 hours a day to get farm work done, and that doesn't include weekends and vacation time. 

Limiting commitments probably sounds odd when I am talking about the commitments we have with our office work and farm tasks but it really means the evaluation we have on taking on new things. The big one is that we don't have kids, which frees up a lot of capital and time from raising children to doing things like fencing or haying. This also includes things like volunteer activities which we do a lot less then we used to do when we first moved home. It also includes limiting commitments on the farm which for us meant reducing the cattle herd from 31 at peak (calves included) that dad could raise to 12 (with calves). For my dad, it was his full-time job but for us we can't raise that many but 9-12 cattle at any given time is a perfect number for us. 

Forest Bathing at Bar M Ranch

 We had been hearing about forest bathing for quite some time when we finally learned about a local, Nova Scotia, company offering forest bathing experiences. For Christina’s birthday (March, 2022) we finally took the chance to schedule an off-farm day involving a forest bathing wellness walk in the Watershed Nature Preserve, in Wolfville and then lunch at the Wolfville Farmer’s market. This was our first opportunity to meet Wil Bruner, a certified forest therapy guide, for a forest bathing experience. For those of you who’ve never heard about forest bathing, there’s lot of info online, but here’s a short explanation from Soft Pine Wellness’ website (www.softpinewellness.ca).

Nature’s Cure for Stressful Times

“Forest Bathing or “Forest Therapy” was created in Japan in the early 1980’s in response to mental and physical health problems from a more urbanized population. Inspired by Japan’s spiritual and cultural connection to the natural world, scientists began studying nature’s effects on human health. Now Japanese people regularly practice forest bathing within their healthcare system to maintain good health and wellbeing.

A forest bathing walk is like a walking meditation that focuses on the felt senses and each person’s unique perspective. Once the walk begins, you will be offered a series of “invitations”, sensory experiences that helps you connect to the natural world. You may be invited to carefully feel plants with your fingers or listen to the rippling of water. Through the sequence of invitations, a closing activity incorporates the experience.”

Although we spend a lot of time outdoors including in the forest here on the farm, the guided walk provided a new and different perspective of the nature that surrounds us. Even on a cold winter day, after our 2-hour experience, we felt very relaxed and satisfied with the experience that stayed with us for quite some time.

Soon after our walk with Wil in Wolfville, we coordinated the first forest bathing experience here on the farm. Our pavilion is the meeting/starting point for any of our on-farm events. The participants then walked a farm road through a series of hayfields to a path we carved through the woods and around a small pond. The path leads back up onto an existing woods road which continues to a resting spot that we created in an opening in the forest. We constructed rustic benches and stumps in the opening such that people could sit, rest, and participate in the final invitation before walking back to the pavilion. The sights and sounds will vary by season, even when using the same route. Now that the hayfields are cut and the temperatures are cooling, we’re planning a second forest bathing session here on the farm.

                                        

Calf in August!

 Well farming is nothing short of surprises in a normal season but this year we've had a few, including a recent surprise with a new calf!

"Stormy" was born on August 13 in the middle of a rain storm to a young heifer we didn't know was pregnant. Typically our cattle are let in with the bull in late May, early June and that's when they get bred to have a calf in March or April of the following year. This cow was in with the bull for 2 weeks in November of last year and was bred at that time. 

We wouldn't have even known it was born until Christina noticed it walking around while she was drinking her morning coffee. She alerted me with a quick "What's that?!" and we both looked out the large picture window in the house to see a fresh calf taking it's first steps. Since it was a new mother, she wasn't 100% sure what to do, so we have to keep getting the calf back to it's mother and also bottle feeding it for a few days until it figured out how to get milk from it's mother. We're happy to report that both the mother and calf are healthy and the calf doesn't need help from us. That said, it was a stressful few days making sure the calf stayed alive and well with a new mother that wasn't sure what to do with a new calf. This meant we (but mostly Christina) was in the field most of the day watching where the calf went or looking for it if the mother left her somewhere. 

Since posting about this on social media, we've had some questions I'll try and answer in this blog. The biggest question we get was how did we not notice!? Well, the simple answer is she hid it well with no sign of her udder being swollen and her weight not looking much different than the other cows her age. This year, like last, we have an abundance of hay and pasture feed for the animals so none of the cattle look small by any means. This means, even though we see the cattle every day, we didn't notice much of a difference between her size and the other cattle of the same age. 

So since she was born out of cycle, what will we do with her come wintertime? Normally we ween the cattle of the mothers milk after 8 months or so but since she can't be weened off until March of next year, she'll have to stay with her mother during the winter. 

After losing a calf earlier this year, this surprise, although stressful at first, is a nice addition to the farm this summer.