Land Conservation

In 2009 we placed over 86 of the farm’s one hundred acres into a conservation easement. The easement is a legally binding document gifted to the Georgia Land Trust that insures the land will never be developed and must stay in its natural state or in limited agricultural use in perpetuity.

 

Solar Power and Energy Use

Our photovoltaic solar collector was installed in Oct 2011. The motivation behind the idea was to produce clean energy and reduce the cost of the Farmhouse Inn‘s energy consumption. The collector produces 70-85 KWh per day on a sunny day and produces about 1/3 of the energy required to run the inn. The solar panels are on a track that automatically follows the suns position enabling the system to produce about 50% more electricity than a stationary solar panel. The advantages are no noise, no pollution, and plenty of sunshine left for others. The Farmhouse Inn also has an active conservation policy, that reduces energy and water use in our laundry rooms, as well as a recycling program.

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Pesticide Free

As of a few years ago, we are pesticide-free here at Hundred Acre Farm. Previously, when we used pesticides, we ran into several issues with not just our lawns, but our farm animals and even our staff. Chickens would eat dead, contaminated insects and become sick themselves. Our dogs and employees would develop skin reactions from walking around outside. The chemicals even gave one of us splitting headaches like none we had ever had. This all changed when we eliminated pesticides from our landscaping regimen, and today we employ more natural solutions to our problems, such as trapping garden slugs in alcohol or pouring grits on anthills to kill the residing ants.

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Sustainable Farming and Gardening Practices

Hundred Acre Farm is diligent in applying the most sustainable practices in our agricultural and horticultural endeavors. From the way we feed and pasture raise our flock of free-range hens, raise our own hay for our beef cattle, and use our own natural fertilizers in our fruit and vegetable production, we try to make the least amount of impact on this valuable, fertile land we are blessed to be on.

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Community Garden

Hundred Acre Farm has been naturally growing vegetables, fruit, and of course our famous beautifully colored, free-range eggs for most of the 16 years we have been in business. Most of our products from our community farm go to feed our farm family and our guests that stay with us here at the Farmhouse Inn. We offer our pastured, free-range eggs and our organic produce for sale to our guests and through an online farmers market, Madison Locally Grown madison.locallygrown.net.

 

We take pride in providing produce that is pesticide free and has been sustainably grown using naturally composted fertilizer produced here by our own livestock. Our 130+ hens are a mixture of Araucanas, Rhode Island Reds, and Barred Rocks, and produce a wide range of different colored large, high protein eggs. They get their bright yellow yokes from the all-natural plant material and insects they consume while free ranging our pastures.

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Farm to Table Breakfasts

Our regular guests look forward to our home grown breakfast that don’t only include our locally grown products, but also have local meats, cheeses, honey and many other products from our neighboring farms. Hundred Acre Farm is a grower featured with many of these nearby farms on FARMeander, which is a guide for people looking for locally grown produce and agritourism activities in our area.

Go to http://www.mmcgeorgia.org/programs/farm-to-market-alliance to see map.