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Tuesday 10am - 7pm Wednesday 4pm - 7pm Thursday 10am - 7pm Friday 10am - 7pm Saturday 10am - 2pm

Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery, 53 Hayward Bishop Way, Senoia, GA (2026)

09/02/2026

📣 A Little Business Boundary Reminder from Hayward Hens Bakery

Owning a small business does not mean being available 24/7.

If you message me after 8 PM—or especially after 11 PM—please understand that you may not receive a response until normal waking/business hours. I’m a baker, not a 24-hour cake emergency hotline. Sadly, Facebook rates my “response time” to your messages even when you message me after business hours

And because this has come up more than once lately, I need to make something else very clear:

An inquiry is NOT a booking.

If you ask about a date, I provide availability, send you my website and pricing information, and then I don’t hear back from you for several days, I cannot assume you are ordering. I will continue accepting other paid orders for that date.

I do not hold dates without payment. Period.

When a weekend is nearly booked, waiting several days and then returning late at night expecting the same availability—or an immediate response—does not obligate me to rearrange my schedule.

I am one person running a legitimate cottage bakery while terminally ill, baking from scratch, decorating custom orders, managing clients, maintaining a website, purchasing ingredients, packaging orders AND running a farm. Somewhere in there, I also have to sleep. 😴🐓

I also want to say this respectfully but plainly: I am allowed to have boundaries with my business.

Setting a boundary is not being rude. Explaining my policies is not mistreating a customer. And someone becoming upset because I enforce those policies does not mean I have to abandon them.

There also seems to be a misconception sometimes that because someone inquires about an order, I am obligated to accept it.

I’m not.

Just as you get to decide which baker you trust with your celebration, I get to decide which orders I accept. A custom bakery-client relationship requires mutual respect, communication and trust.

You either trust my experience and ability to bake for you, or you don’t—and that’s okay! There are many talented bakers out there who may be a better fit.

But my time has value, my policies have a purpose, and my boundaries are not up for negotiation because someone waited until the last minute.

So, one more time for the folks in the back:

🐓 Inquiry ≠ booked.
💳 Payment = booked.
📅 No payment = no date held.
🌙 Late-night message = response during reasonable hours.
❤️ Mutual respect = happy baker AND happy client.

Thank you tremendously to the overwhelming majority of my clients who respect these boundaries, trust me with their celebrations, and understand that there is an actual human being behind Hayward Hens Bakery.

You are precisely why I love what I do. ❤️🎂🐓

Baking you happy one bite at a time,
Birdie

09/01/2026

HOW MUCH CAKE DO I NEED?! 🍰

It’s one of the most common questions I get when someone is planning a celebration:

“What size cake should I order?”

Because there are few party emergencies more tragic than realizing you have 30 guests and 18 slices of cake. 😳🫢😂 Nobody wants to be the person cutting those last few pieces into communion-sized portions.

So I created the Hayward Hens Bakery Cake Cutting Guide!

This handy little chart gives you an idea of approximately how many servings you can expect from different sizes and shapes of cakes—from smaller 4” and 6” celebration cakes all the way up to larger rounds, squares and sheet cakes.

A few things to remember:

🎂 Serving counts depend on how the cake is cut. If Uncle Bob gets handed the knife and starts cutting wedges like he’s at The Cheesecake Factory, all mathematical predictions are officially out the window. 😂

🍰 When deciding on a size, think about your guest count AND your crowd. Some people politely take one slice. Others have been thinking about the cake since they walked through the door—well, maybe before the car ride too!

And personally? I would much rather see you have a little cake left over to enjoy the next day than watch your last six guests stare sadly at an empty cake board…truly depressing.

So save this guide for your next birthday, shower, anniversary, graduation, wedding or “I survived another week and deserve cake” celebration.

Because at Hayward Hens Bakery, my goal is simple: Bake you happy one bite at a time…AND, to make sure nobody leaves the party without a slice of deliciousness. 🐔🎂🫶🏽

https://haywardhens.com/

08/30/2026

**UPDATE: SOLD OUT as of Monday morning!

🍰 LAST-MINUTE CAKE FLIGHTS AVAILABLE! 🍰

Well…somebody else’s change of plans can be YOUR delicious little win! 🦆🐓

I currently have FOUR Cake Flights available and ready for pickup this evening or tomorrow at Hayward Hens Bakery in Senoia!

Each $20 Cake Flight includes a generous slice of FOUR of my gourmet cakes:

🍋 Lemon Curd Cake — bright, fresh lemon cake paired with luscious lemon curd

❤️ Red Velvet Cake — rich, velvety, naturally RED and decadent with that classic tangy finish

🍌 Banana Cream Cake — soft banana cake with a creamy, dreamy filling that includes fresh bananas, banana cream filling and Nilla vanilla wafers topped with whipped cream clouds

🍪 Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake — because sometimes cake AND cookie dough is the only reasonable answer

These aren’t tiny little tasting bites, either. You’re getting four generous slices of cake for $20—perfect for sharing…although Hayward Hens assumes absolutely no responsibility if you decide not to. 😂

As always, my cakes are made from scratch using quality ingredients and our own farm-fresh duck and chicken eggs. 🥚🐓🦆

I only have FOUR Cake Flights available, and once they’re claimed, they’re gone!

💗 $20 each
📍 Pickup at our farm in Senoia
⏰ Available this evening or tomorrow
🍰 First come, first served

Comment SOLD or message me to claim yours!

Hayward Hens Bakery
Farm fresh eggs make ridiculously good cake. 🐓🍰

08/29/2026

This week has been hell…

I’m still recovering from back surgery, and am still in a lot of pain. And anyone who has lived with significant pain knows that eventually, physical pain drains you emotionally too. You get tired of hurting. Tired of self-advocating. Tired of pushing through. Just…tired.

I had to say goodbye to half of my ducks, chickens and my quail as I will no longer be breeding. I am also selling my GQF cabinet incubator and hatcher is anyone is interested…This has been an emotional process.

And, then we lost Dolly Parton this week. 😭

Next to my Mammy, Dolly was about the second-best thing to Jesus walking around on this earth as far as I was concerned. She seemed to carry the embodiment of love wherever she went. No matter how successful she became, she never forgot where she came from, and she never stopped reaching back to help somebody else along.

Some of my sweetest childhood memories involve Dolly…

My grandparents owned a restaurant with a little pub next door, and I loved sneaking over to listen to the old jukebox. I cannot even imagine how many dimes I fed that thing to hear Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers sing “Islands in the Stream.”

And, one of my favorite family vacations ever was our trip to Pigeon Forge and Dollywood with my parents, Mammy and Aunt Peggy.

I remember seeing Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors that her momma lovingly made for her. I remember butterflies everywhere. We met some of Dolly’s own family members who worked at Dollywood, and they were every bit as sweet and down-to-earth as you would imagine.

We watched people make lye soap by hand. We listened to bluegrass—which felt like home because my own family has deep Appalachian bluegrass roots. We watched glassblowers work their art. We ate homemade biscuits and apple butter. We mined for gold and gemstones, and I came home with quite a bit of rose quartz. And we went horseback riding through the Smoky Mountains. Naturally, MY horse encountered a rattlesnake. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Because apparently even my wholesome family vacation memories require a little chaos.🥴

But the butterflies are what I remember most.

Years later, when Mammy was in hospice and I desperately missed her and longed to see her, it seemed like God would send a butterfly fluttering through our paddock at exactly the moment I needed to see one.

After she died, when the grief felt almost unbearable, somehow a butterfly would appear again.

So imagine my surprise the day after Dolly died when I walked outside and realized my parsley plant was rapidly disappearing.

And no, for once it wasn’t my goats, Duke and Dolly 🐐. 😂

Upon closer inspection, I discovered somewhere around FORTY very hungry caterpillars munching their way through it.

Black Swallowtail caterpillars.

Apparently they’re also called “parsley worms,” which feels pretty appropriate considering they are currently treating my parsley like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I cook with quite a bit of parsley, and Duke and Dolly happen to love it too, but this week?

They can have it.

Every last leaf.

If forty-something Black Swallowtail butterflies eventually emerge around this little farm, I cannot think of better visitors to have right now. I hope they stick around awhile.

This week has also reminded me of something else—something Dolly seemed to understand better than most:

People matter.

And that includes respecting the people doing work for you.

I had a few situations this week where clients asserted earlier pickup times for their orders rather than asking whether an earlier pickup was even possible.

I need folks to understand something about custom decorated cookies: they aren’t always as predictable as cakes. Royal icing has to dry completely before cookies can be safely packaged, and humidity (we have had rain), design complexity, layers of icing and other factors can affect that drying time. 😩

When an earlier pickup time was never agreed upon and someone simply tells me they will be picking up their order by a certain time, it doesn’t just affect their order. It can force me to rearrange every other client’s work on my schedule.

And that isn’t fair to them. You should also be waiting for your pick-up notification to be texted or emailed from my website before driving to our farm.

One of my clients this weekend booked her cookies all the way back in FEBRUARY. Another needed her order to travel to an event in South Carolina and was also booked way in advance. I feel like I failed these valued clients by having to re-arrange their orders. And, with all the commotion, I made a huge mistake on the age of their child. It was enough to cause me a full-on panic attack as I didn’t have enough time to fix the age on the two dozen custom cookie order. 😭 I was in a puddle of tears and had to call Mark home from work. This scenario cannot happen again.

Every celebration on my calendar matters to somebody.

Custom cakes and decorated cookies are skilled, handmade work. I can plan. I can organize. I can work very long hours and through the night with no sleep to get a job done. That is not always healthy. I am not in the miracle-making business. I need proper rest.

It’s also why I refuse last-minute orders. The stress simply isn’t worth it to me anymore.

More importantly, I believe people are worth celebrating well.

They deserve better than being treated like a last-minute thought.

And maybe that’s another little piece of Dolly that somehow found its way into Hayward Hens without me realizing it.

Dolly took care of her family. She took care of people back home. She invested in children. She watered other people’s gifts instead of being threatened by them. She encouraged people to learn, dream, create and SHINE.

It wasn’t until this week that I realized she probably influenced one of my own favorite little bakery traditions.

Whenever I make a baby’s first birthday smash cake, I try to choose a special new book to send home with that child and write a personal message inside for their very first birthday.

Because the cake will be eaten.

The pictures will eventually be tucked away.

But someday that child may pull a book from a shelf and see a little handwritten note reminding them that somebody thought their first trip around the sun was worth celebrating.

People ARE worth celebrating.

People deserve to be reminded that they were created with purpose and that they are deeply loved.

Life is hard.

Sometimes the person smiling at you is carrying physical pain you cannot see. Sometimes they’re grieving someone. Sometimes they’re scared. Sometimes they’re exhausted. Sometimes they’re simply doing everything they can to make it through the week.

So maybe we could all stand to give each other a little more grace.

Dolly once said, “If you see someone without a smile, give ’em yours.”

I think that’s a pretty beautiful way to leave the world.

So if you’ve been struggling this week too…

I see you.

And if you happen to see a Black Swallowtail fluttering around Hayward Hens in the coming weeks, just know that little butterfly was very well fed.

🦋🤟🏽🫶🏽

08/23/2026

The Hayward Hens Cake Flight is here!

Why choose just one cake flavor when you can have four to try?

Our Hayward Hens Cake Flight is the perfect way to sample four of our gourmet, made-from-scratch cakes in one delicious box. Each flight includes a generous slice of:

🍌 Banana Cream Cake — Moist banana cake layered with a rich, creamy banana filling and our homemade buttercream.

❤️ Red Velvet Cake — A tender, velvety red velvet cake paired with smooth, decadent frosting for that classic Southern favorite.

🍋 Lemon Curd Cake — Bright, buttery lemon cake layered with luscious lemon curd for the perfect balance of sweet and tart.

🍪 Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake — A chocolate chip lover’s dream, layered with indulgent cookie dough-inspired filling and finished with rich chocolate goodness. And, YES, the buttercream tastes like cookie dough too!

Every cake is handmade from scratch right here at Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery, using our own farm-fresh duck and chicken eggs and the quality ingredients our customers have come to expect.

$20 per Cake Flight

Cake Flights are available by pre-purchase only and must be ordered through our website by Wednesday 8/26. Because these are prepared especially for you, walk-up purchases are not available.

Scheduled farm pick-up times are available Thursday–Saturday mornings ONLY in Senoia, Georgia.

Whether you’re trying Hayward Hens for the first time, sharing with someone you love—or hiding the box in the refrigerator and telling your family you ordered “just a little something for yourself”—four flavors means you don’t have to choose. 😉

Four flavors. One sweet experience.

Pre-purchase your Cake Flight on the website.

Baking you happy one bite at a time,
Birdie

08/20/2026

🐓🍑 THE BAKERY IS OPEN… AND YES, I MAKE WEDDING CAKES! 🍑🎂💍

After having surgery on my lower back Monday, I’ve spent the last few days doing something I’m admittedly not very good at—resting. 😂 But today is Thursday, and Hayward Hens Bakery is officially back open for business!

And while wedding season may be winding down in some places, it certainly isn’t slowing down around here. I already have THREE weddings booked for October, and I am still accepting wedding orders for the remainder of the year and next Spring.

And because I’m sometimes asked this question…

YES! I make wedding cakes! 💍🎂

I wanted to share a few beautiful photographs from a recent wedding photography shoot featuring one of my tiered Peaches & Cream wedding cakes. 🍑 (photographers listed below)

This isn’t a cake that simply tastes vaguely like peaches. When I say Peaches & Cream, I mean PEACHES. AND. CREAM.

I make my fruit-flavored cakes with real, local fruit, and this one was made with beautiful locally grown peaches from The Shed at Fitzgerald Fruit Farms. The fruit is incorporated throughout the cake, paired with a luscious fruit filling and finished with fruit-infused buttercream.

The same goes for favorites like my Strawberry Cheesecake and Blueberry Cheesecake cakes. 🍓🫐

There is something completely different about baking with real, fresh fruit instead of relying on an artificial flavoring to do all the work. Local peaches bring their natural sweetness, delicate floral notes and just the right amount of acidity. Strawberries give you that unmistakable fresh berry brightness, while blueberries add a deeper, almost jammy richness.

And when those fruits are cooked into fillings and folded or infused into buttercream, you begin building layers of flavor rather than simply adding sweetness.

That’s the culinary difference I want you to taste when you cut into one of my cakes.

I love creating a cake that is beautiful enough to be the centerpiece of your reception—but I care just as much about what happens when your guests take that first bite. A wedding cake shouldn’t just photograph beautifully.

It should be remembered because it tasted incredible, too. 🫶🏽

So, yes… this little farm bakery with the chickens and ducks absolutely makes elegant wedding cakes. 😂🐓🦆🎂 And I would be honored to create something beautiful—and delicious—for your wedding day.

Now booking weddings and celebrations through the end of 2026. 💍

Thank you all for your patience while I recovered this week. I’m rested, I’m back, and the ovens are ready! ❤️

Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery
Farm-fresh ingredients. Local flavors. Cakes worth celebrating.

Wedding photography done by:by.gracie
Gracie Morgan
.photographyby.moments
Olive Branch Photography

08/16/2026

🐔 A LITTLE BAKERY R&R — DOCTOR’S ORDERS! 🧁

Just a quick heads-up from Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery: I’ll be CLOSED until next Thursday while I take a few days to tend to the baker behind the buttercream. ❤️

I’m having outpatient surgery Monday morning, and while I’ve been known to believe that buttercream, farm-fresh eggs, and sheer stubbornness can fix almost anything, apparently my doctor thinks actual recovery time is important. 😂

During my little medical hiatus, messages, emails, and texts will still be answered as I am able, so please don’t think I’ve flown the coop if you don’t hear back from me right away. 🐓

📅 I AM STILL BOOKING THROUGH THE END OF THE YEAR!

A little scheduling note for anyone planning fall celebrations: both the FIRST and SECOND weekends of October are already FULLY BOOKED with weddings. 💍🎂 October is always a busy month in the bakery, so if you have a fall or holiday celebration on the horizon, please don’t wait too long to get on my calendar.

Thank you all for continuing to support this little one-woman farm bakery of mine. Every cake, cookie, referral, share, and kind word means more than you know.

For the next few days, though, the chickens can handle egg production while their baker takes a turn sitting on the nest. 😂🐔❤️

See y’all next Thursday!
Xoxo, Birdie
— Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery 🐓🧁

08/13/2026

A Bakery First: Gluten-Free + Dairy-Free + Sugar-Free Spice Cake!

This week brought me a brand-new baking challenge—and a little lesson in just how much chemistry and science really goes into creating a cake! 👩🏻‍🔬🧁

A client originally ordered a dairy-free and sugar-free Spice Cake, so the day before baking, I went shopping and purchased all of the specialty ingredients I would need. Later that evening, I learned that the cake also needed to be gluten-free.

And this is where the science of baking comes in.

You can’t simply take a traditional cake recipe, remove the flour, dairy and sugar, substitute three different ingredients and expect everything to behave the same way. Each one plays a role in the structure, moisture, tenderness, browning and stability of a cake.

The unbleached flour I had purchased could no longer be used, so I needed a gluten-free flour blend incorporating ingredients such as rice, almond and oat flours. The recipe also required additional adjustments to the leavening, along with xanthan gum for binding and tapioca starch to help achieve the proper structure and texture.

Specialty baking also comes with a specialty price tag. In this case, the ingredients required to make this cake gluten-, dairy- and sugar-free cost approximately $26 more than the ingredients for a comparable traditional cake.

There is another very important consideration with gluten-free baking: cross-contact. For customers who must strictly avoid gluten, including those with celiac disease, simply using gluten-free ingredients isn’t enough. Work surfaces, pans, utensils, mixers and other equipment require careful cleaning and handling, and a kitchen that also processes wheat cannot automatically be considered a dedicated gluten-free environment. That’s something I believe in being completely transparent about with my clients.

I’ll admit—I had some baker anxiety over this one! 😂

Gluten-free cake has a very different chemistry, and texture is incredibly important to me. Since this was my very first cake that was simultaneously gluten-free, dairy-free AND sugar-free, I didn’t want my client’s cake to merely meet her dietary requirements.

I wanted it to actually taste GOOD.

So I made a second, smaller cake for my beloved friend Ali as a belated birthday gift—and recruited her as my official taste tester before my client’s cake left my kitchen. 😂

Ali gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up. 👍🏻👍🏻

Okay. THEN I could breathe. 😂

Traditionally, Spice Cake is beautifully paired with cream cheese frosting, which presented one more challenge: how do I create that familiar tangy, creamy complement without dairy or sugar?

I found Kite Hill dairy-free cream cheese and used it to create my own dairy-free, sugar-free cream cheese-style buttercream. The result was surprisingly light, fluffy, creamy and absolutely delicious.

And just like that, another first is officially in the Hayward Hens books. 🫶🏽

This is also why specialty-diet cakes may cost more than their traditional counterparts. You’re not simply paying for a different bag of flour. You’re paying for specialty ingredients, additional preparation and sanitation, recipe reformulation, testing—and the knowledge required to understand how changing one ingredient affects everything else in the cake.

Baking is art, absolutely.

But underneath all that buttercream?

It’s chemistry. 👩🏻‍🔬🎂

And this little Spice Cake taught me a whole lot of it!

08/09/2026

There’s something I wish everyone understood about supporting a small business:

It is never “just” an order. 🫶🏽

When you order a cake or a dozen cookies from Hayward Hens Bakery, your money isn’t disappearing into some giant corporation where a board of executives discusses quarterly profits over catered lunch.

There is no boardroom here.

There is, however, a kitchen covered in powdered sugar, at least one sink full of dishes, butter softening somewhere, a printer making noises that concern me, and approximately 67 farm animals outside who are absolutely convinced THEY are upper management. 😂🐓🦆🐐

And then there’s me.

I’m the baker, decorator, designer, photographer, purchasing department, customer service representative, accountant, dishwasher, delivery driver, social media manager, chicken tender, duck wrangler, goat negotiator and occasional finder of things I literally just had in my hand five seconds ago.

So when that little order notification comes through on my phone, I promise you—I notice.

Sometimes it means I can order the ingredients and supplies I need for the next week.

Sometimes it helps pay the electric bill that keeps my ovens, refrigerators and freezers humming.

Sometimes it buys feed for the chickens and ducks who contribute those gorgeous farm-fresh eggs to your desserts… although I have explained repeatedly that laying eggs does NOT make them equal partners in the business. Their attorneys have yet to respond. 🐓😂

Sometimes an order simply arrives on a day when I’m exhausted, discouraged or wondering whether all the ridiculously long hours are worth it.

And in those moments, there is often a quiet:

“Thank You, Lord. I needed that today.”

Because when you own a small business, an order represents so much more than a dollar amount.

It says:

I see what you create.

I trust you with something important to me.

I believe what you do has value.

And THAT means more than most people realize.

But here’s the beautiful part: supporting a small business doesn’t always require spending money.

When you share one of my posts, recommend me to a bride, tag Hayward Hens when someone asks for a baker, leave a review, comment on my work, send someone my website, or tell your friend about that Strawberry Cheesecake cookie you’re still thinking about six months later…

you are helping my business grow.

You are helping keep the ovens on.

You are helping me purchase supplies.

You are helping support this little farm.

You are helping me continue doing something I genuinely love—creating beautiful, delicious things that become part of birthdays, weddings, baby showers, anniversaries and celebrations that families will remember for years.

And somewhere along the way, you probably helped buy a bag of goat feed and granola. —Duke and Dolly would like me to emphasize that particular contribution. 🐐😂

So to every person who has ever ordered from me, referred someone, shared a post, left a review, encouraged me or trusted me with something meant for one of the biggest days of your life:

Thank you. Truly.

You aren’t supporting some faceless company.

You’re supporting a woman standing in her kitchen at an unreasonable hour with flour on her apron, buttercream in her hair, a cup of coffee she has reheated three times, chickens hollering outside the window and a dream she is still stubbornly building one cake, one cookie and one celebration at a time.

And every once in a while, when that order notification comes through…

I still smile and whisper,

“Thank You, Lord.” ❤️

From my little farm to your family, thank you for letting Hayward Hens be a small, sweet part of your lives.

It means more than you know.

Xoxo,
Birdie
Hayward Hens Bakery
Made from scratch. Made on the farm. Made with heart.

HTTPS://www.HaywardHens.com

08/04/2026

And the winner of the July Giveaway is…
Congratulations Leslye Souza Weikel!!
Thank you all for sharing your personal pictures of the cakes and cookies I have created for your loved ones. It has been my absolute pleasure serving y’all!!
www.haywardhens.com

Hayward Hens Homestead & Bakery

09/02/2026

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Tuesday	10am - 7pm
Wednesday	4pm - 7pm
Thursday	10am - 7pm
Friday	10am - 7pm
Saturday	10am - 2pm