About the Country Chic
It started with a hen in a box.
Suzanne Smit grew up on a farm and still lives on one, in the Riebeek Valley. She loves walking it barefoot, and always dreamed of a farm business of her own. In 2018 one arrived, more or less as a surprise.
How it grew
From one mother hen to a shop on Main Road.
1
2018
A present in a box
Her husband went to a nearby farm to look at a tractor and spotted a hen with her chicks. They belonged to one of the farm workers, and he bought them on the spot. Suzanne opened the box when she got home.
2
A few days later
The chicken chase
Driving past a house near Gouda, Suzanne saw a yard full of chickens of every shape and size and asked to buy some. Catching them took the whole farm team, running around an open yard.
3
The first flock
Six eggs in a basket
Fifteen farmyard hens, one rooster and the original mother hen. Suzanne took their eggs to town in a little basket: six, then nine, then twelve, then twenty-one.
4
Growing
Trays and an order book
More baskets, then egg trays, then orders written down in a book. The first 25 Lohmann hens arrived, and more soon followed.
5
Today
A shop on Main Road
The Country Chic now has a shop of its own at 1a Main Road, Riebeek Kasteel, with fresh stock coming in every day.
“I just love my chickens. Whenever I collect the eggs they run towards me and follow me wherever I go.”
Suzanne Smit
How the chickens are raised
The short version: they are left to be chickens.
Out all day
The flock roams the farm from morning to evening, finding bugs, seeds and grass.
Nothing added
No hormones and no antibiotics. Ever.
Hand-reared
Suzanne raises every chicken herself on the family farm.
Collected daily
Eggs come in every day and reach the shop the same day or the next.
Come and say hello
1a Main Road, Riebeek Kasteel. Suzanne is usually in the shop.