Artisanal chicken for the North: Timmins farmers aiming to raise 3,000 birds.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay

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After meeting at agricultural school, Harold and Patsy Schmidt married, found work outside the food industry, and started a family, all the while holding out for their long-time dream: a farm of their own.

Today, the couple is living out their aspirations on 65 acres in Timmins--called Acres of Dreams--where they produce beef, sell fresh farm eggs, and, new this year, produce chickens as part of a new artisanal chicken program.

Introduced by the Chicken Farmers of Ontario (CFO) in 2015, the program allows farmers to produce between 600 and 3,000 chickens a year. It's aimed at small-scale producers who are targetting specific, niche markets, like farmers markets or local retailers.

"Originally, the farmer was allowed about 300 chickens, where he was only allowed to sell at the farm gate," Harold explained. "You were not allowed to advertise, you were not allowed to put an ad in the paper or farmers market to say you had chickens, and they still had to be government-inspected chickens unless you were using them for your own use."

Following a whirlwind application process, the Schmidts were approved as one of nearly 100 farmers across the province to apply to the new program. But that was the easy part.

They quickly discovered the challenges associated with raising chickens in the North, not the least of which is climate. After delivery of their new brood last spring, the Schmidts had to visit the barn every few hours to check on the chicks.

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"When they're those cute little yellow fluffballs, they can't regulate their own body temperature," Patsy explained.

"It has to be between 30 and 32 degrees (Celsius) in there all the time until they get their white feathers, and then you can slowly decrease their temperature by two degrees a week."

It was a hard lesson to learn, and the Schmidts lost a few chicks during those first precarious weeks of April when the temperature dipped without warning.

Then they learned about feed. The chickens, which Pasty endearingly calls "couch potatoes" for their sluggish, lethargic manner, gorged themselves with free-choice feed, and the Schmidts had to change to a feeding schedule so they could reach their optimal weight of between six and seven pounds.

In early June, as the first batch of chickens was being readied for the abattoir, the Schmidts faced a new challenge: once their chickens were slaughtered, where would they put them all? Harold estimated they would need...