30 Apr 2005
Interesting Times

The title of this post certainly describes the happenings at Hammerstead Farms of late. I seem to have stumbled into a serious opportunity, and like all such adventures, there's a element of excitement in the air.

I've not blogged a lot about the farm because, well, I've been busy blogging about other things, and too busy with the farm to really collect my thoughts. But the time has come to set down some of the events of the past few months on (digital) paper, and take stock of what's been a wild ride.

I've mentioned the egg route briefly - we've since added another 50 hens, and will be adding another 25 or so by the end of this week. And I'm still selling every egg those girls are laying. We have a batch of meat chicks in the barn, trying to stay warm in this unseasonably cool weather, and I've secured a source for organic milk - the real deal, pasteurized but not homogenized, and with a real cream plug in the top of it's glass bottle - for home delivery to go along with my eggs. The milkman is making a comeback.

The business has doubled every month since January.

We've purchased a portable commercial milk cooler, and are in the process of getting it rigged up to be mounted in the back of my little S-10 pickup. I'm ordering blank egg cartons in lots of 800, and the new bulk tank will cut the feed costs for my girls considerably.

The downside? All of this takes money, and we're being stressed to the breaking point. It's become a real treat to eat a sandwich out, and Kris purchased the first book either of us have bought in months tonight.

Further growth is going to take advertising, and that's not a cheap proposition. Additionally, I have to be real careful not to overdo it - once all the new hens get up to speed, we'll only be getting about 50 dozen eggs a week, and if I get the same kind of response to new ads that I got to the first one, we'll be sold out again in a couple of days.

I'd like to get a another batch of meat chicks in the brooder - but that takes cash, too. If I can't find the money, I run the risk of running out of birds for the summer barbecue season, which would not do at all. But if I spend the money getting meat birds, I won't be able to ramp up egg production as fast or possibly even buy enough advertising to sell them. And after nearly two years of unemployment my savings (and credit) are nearly exhausted. It seems like an impossible situation ...

And, in reality, there's only one way out. I need to take on a partner - to sell a portion of this business I'm growing. It really does take money to make money, and the search for cash has been eating up most of my time. So if anybody out there's sitting on a little extra investment capital, and has ever thought about owning a piece of a farm, well, my email address is the left-most column of this page ...

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