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Logo of 13 Hens Farm featuring a chicken, surrounded by colorful illustrations of vegetables and flowers, emphasizing their offerings of fresh vegetables, eggs, and flowers.

Farm & Garden Coaching

Our purpose is to inspire, educate and facilitate your journey to grow delicious and nutritious food right in your own yard

Our Why

Now you might be asking yourself, with all that going on, why on earth would we want to add a coaching element to our business? Well here’s why- We do what we do because we love it and we want everyone to be able to experience the joy and health benefits of growing your own food. This is our passion and we want to share it with you. Some of the most common conversations we have with our clients at the farmers market revolve around their desire to grow food like we do but they are unable to achieve the results they want because of one or more of the following:

  • Don’t know where to start
  • Tried a garden but nothing grew
  • I kill every plant I grow
  • Not enough room

  • Not enough sun

  • The Deer/rabbits/slugs eat my garden every year

  • Overwhelmed by the amount of information available on the internet.

The truth is that all of these problems can be overcome with the help of a knowledgeable guide. Humans are natural growers and nurturers of animals and plants. It’s how we’ve evolved and thrived through the millennia. 

You can do this, and we are here to help in a variety of ways.   

Our four tiers of services

Please reach out to us through the form on our contact page and a member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you!

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Vision Casting- Initial consult

Imagine being able to pick the brain of a professional farmer and permaculture designer for 90 minutes at your home. We will walk your property with you, hear your vision, your challenges, and your design ideas. We will –

  • Take you through a visioning worksheet designed to help you bring your goals for your garden into focus.

  • Help you identify what you can grow successfully in our climate and your context. 

  • Discuss ideal garden bed placement for your property.

This is ideal if you want to do most of your own research but would like a professional opinion on certain design ideas. Or perhaps you have a specific set of problems that you would like to discuss. 

Whatever the case, this is a great way to get a lot of information for a very reasonable fee. 

Cost: $250

Backyard Garden Coach

Turbocharge your garden’s production with our help. Take advantage of our years of experience in home gardening and commercial production to achieve the gardening success of your dreams. This service includes the initial Vision Casting process but adds an assessment of your current garden or future garden location and a whole lot more- 

  • A comprehensive growing guide for all your traditional annual crops specific to our climate. 

  • Placement of beds to take advantage of your landscape and sun exposure.

  • Pest management techniques

  • Soil fertility assessment and assistance

  • Irrigation plan

  • Fertility management throughout the season

  • Guidance on crop varieties to grow and where to place them in your garden.

  • Addition of perennial fruit, nut and berry trees and bushes

  • How to integrate farm animals (if desired).

  • Unlimited (within reason) calls/ emails to us for the first year to address any questions or problems you run into.  

This level is ideal for you if:

  • You want to avoid the early years of gardening by trial and error and reach your full growing potential much more quickly. 

  • You would like to take your garden to the next level.

Cost : $750

Full Property Design Plan

  • Full Property Design Plan- A full property design is a thing of beauty and will give you a detailed blueprint to build out your land the way you want. The goal is to take your vision, critique and improve upon it, and put it all down on paper so you are ready to get to work with confidence. This is a process that typically takes 1-2 months to complete because there is a lot of detailed research done on my end and then a considerable amount of drafts and back and forth with you to ensure the end design is exactly what you are looking for.

  •  Each design will contain everything that is included in the Backyard Garden Coach tier PLUS...

    • A detailed map of your property as you envision it, broken into different permaculture zones.

    • A notated plant list of most or all of the perennial plants that you want to incorporate and their locations

This level is ideal for you if:

  • You would like to make sure that your property is designed with utmost care for efficiency, beauty and production.

  • You want to save on costly design mistakes that you might make without the oversight of a permaculture designer. 

  • You want a blueprint that is ready for you to act upon or hand off to a landscape company to start work. 

The cost for this service will vary considerably based on the size of your property. Anywhere from $1000 for a small suburban backyard to $5000 for a 10 acre or larger property. 

Farm Based Business Coaching

The world desperately needs more small farms that produce nutritious and delicious food. If you are interested in becoming a farmer of any type or size we will do everything in our power to help you succeed! 

This service is for those of you who want to utilize your property to generate a level of income for your family. This could take to form of a market garden selling produce, a home bakery, beekeeping, agrotourism and so much more. In this role we become as much of a business coach as we do a garden coach. 

We will help you:

  • Determine the viability of potential income streams

  • Write a business plan and help you craft your mission, vision and value proposition. 

  • Assist you in finding the technical skills and knowledge necessary to succeed at your chosen craft. 

  • Help you market your product and make connections within the community to get your jump start your sales. 

  • Become your accountability partner to help keep your efforts on track. 

Cost: 6 month to 1-year program ($3000 - $6000)

A La Carte options- Special Projects

Our goal is to help you and your garden succeed and thrive however we can. Sometimes there are certain projects that may fall outside of the packages outlined above. 

Maybe you’d like on site help installing raised beds or transporting and planting fruit trees. Or perhaps you’d like to install a fence to keep out the deer. 

Regardless, if it is within our scope of expertise and size appropriate, we may be able to help. If it isn’t, we can refer you to another company that can help. 

Cost will be on a per project basis, and we will give a formal proposal before starting work.