{"id":1226,"date":"2023-10-19T13:40:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T16:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2023-10-19T13:40:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T16:40:35","slug":"farming-close-to-nature-at-macdougall-meadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/farming-close-to-nature-at-macdougall-meadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Farming close to nature at MacDougall Meadows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Jake
Jake MacDougall and Rebecca Shirley with their children<\/em><\/strong>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jake MacDougall farms with one eye on the future and the other on the past. At 34, he embraces technology and uses it to market what his farm produces. The animals he raises for meat are free to forage outdoors, and his vegetables are grown without chemicals or pesticides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacDougall Meadows<\/a> is a small farm in Centre Burlington, Windsor\/West Hants, that produces and sells chicken, turkey, pork and duck \u2013 all pasture raised \u2013 plus eggs and vegetables. The farm serves markets in Halifax, the South Shore, and Windsor\/Hants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"MacDougall
MacDougall Meadows’s beautiful beets are grown without pesticides or chemicals.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jake is committed to natural and sustainable farming, and all the animals are raised as close to nature as possible, he says. According to the farm website, \u201cOur chickens spend their entire lives in paradise \u2026 The chickens can run, turkeys can fly, and pigs can root.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and his wife, Rebecca Shirley, are now in their eighth year of farming there. Rebecca had a full-time off-farm job until recently when she switched to a part-time at-home position with a bank. Now she also works on the farm. So does Jake\u2019s mother, including being there on Fridays to help get ready for the farmers\u2019 markets and then selling at a market on the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jake
Jake and Rebecca’s son Foster pitches in to help with the chores.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When they bought the property in 2014, the farm had outbuildings and good infrastructure, but the house was in disrepair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe borrowed from the Farm Loan Board to make improvements to the house,\u201d Jake says. \u201cHeating was a big issue. We couldn\u2019t keep the house warm in winter, and we had two young kids.\u201d The renovations included insulation, all new windows and doors, and a lot of work around the foundation including new sills. \u201cIt\u2019s a big project, but without the renovations, there wasn\u2019t going to be much of a house there for much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a young farmer himself, Jake sees more and more young people starting to farm. \u201cI think some of them get discouraged, though,\u201d he says. \u201cIt takes time to build, especially if you\u2019re going to direct market everything, and it\u2019s hard to break into the supply-and-demand chain. There\u2019s a lot of overhead. I\u2019m proud that we\u2019re still going, that we\u2019re making a go of it. And that we\u2019re producing delicious food sustainably and naturally.\u201d Being in a warm, secure house has given them peace of mind, he adds. \u201cThe people at the Loan Board were great. We did approach other lenders, but they didn\u2019t understand how the farming income situation works. The Loan Board made it super easy. It was a good experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jake MacDougall farms with one eye on the future and the other on the past. At 34, he embraces technology and uses it to market what his farm produces. The animals he raises for meat are free to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsfarmloan.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}