Kristen’s Chickens and Farming Ventures

[Kris5902]

Pretty specialized skills I would think, I would love to learn that.
Where is he applying to....grocery store, factory farm...??? Have no clue.

He’s applying to a small abbatoir that also does cut and wrap on a nearby island. Actual butcher shops are slowly going extinct here, with a lot of the meat cutting being done in big plants where each employee will learn one or two cuts and do that all day long in an assembly line type of setting. He can literally take a cow from the field to the freezer and dinner plate professionally with very little waste.

He’s spent the last 12 years working in grocery stores. A small independent store with a full service meat counter, then WholeFoods (where we met), which was great but declined severely during our time there, then he moved to a small local chain, Choices, as a manager. In 2017 we sold our house, gave up good careers, and moved to his Family Farm... because farming in our middle aged years seems like a good idea?

There’s fairly limited jobs available on our little island, and the three days he puts in at our abbatoir are unpaid. I only do part days in it, because I just wrap and bone out things for ground, and someone needs to feed all the beasties. It’s our version of “paying rent” to the farm, but almost two years of building delays on our house have gotten costly. As we start taking over the farming and abbatoir duties I’m going to focus on the animal husbandry and pasture management and his skills will handle the processing side of things.

 

[Kris5902]

Hi again! Sorry I’ve been neglecting this post, but I was trapped in the big city for most of last week. Boy, there’s nothing like revisiting big city life to make you appreciate farming! I need new glasses and figured it was easier just to go visit my family and see my old optometrist, rather than having to find and break in a new one (optometrist, that is). So I up and left my poor husband with ALL the animals and braved the 4.5 hour trip on 3 different ferries to reach the “real” mainland. Two additional hours of public transit busses (even though it’s only a 20 minute highway drive!) and I arrived at my cousin’s to spend some quality time with the family.

I did use the time on the ferry to start an in-depth post on my Chicken tractor build. Here’s the link:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chicken-tractor-build-3.1298893/
I plan on adding many more pictures and all the boring details.

So, after 5 days of my cousin’s two surly teenagers, city people, and those stinging eye drops that ruin your vision for the rest of the day... I finally returned home to find things have gone to hell in a handbasket. The chicken tractors stayed put so there’s two significant bare patches, then when they finally did move it was in the wrong directions... and the trailer looks like a bomb went off. Not one clean dish and 3 loads of laundry (not in the basket of course) a potato chip spill all over the floor.

Yesterday was mostly damage control. Today looks to be more of the same. And I need to Hustle my butt to get everything ready before my 40 chicks come in on Sunday! That’s my brooder set up, two tractor builds, and a solar system re-wire for my heating plates. Oh my! And no help Thursday/Friday as DH is in town picking up some work. He also looks to have the job at the other Abbatoir, which he will be at Wed/Thurs/Friday next week too.

 

[Ribh]

Argh! Sounds like here when I left 4 blokes home alone for a week! Little by little. It will all get done. Sorry for the stress but glad I'm not the only one.. You should see the rain here this morning! We will be hustling like anything if we get a break.

 

[BY Bob]

Old and needs 'to be paid more' along with 'can't be trained to our specifications'...that's what I ran into when looking for a job at age 50 with 20 years experience. Was tortuously frustrating. Ageism is rampant an unprovable as discrimination. Oops, sorry, old scab picked off and bleeding again. Best of Luck that Andrew(your DH?) gets a fair deal.

A friend of mine just went through this as well. He simply dropped a few jobs off his resume and somehow got younger. All of a sudden he has a job. It's terrible how easy it is to do.

Of course it is worse for chickens. Retirement homes for old hens are hard to find.

 

[aart]

A friend of mine just went through this as well. He simply dropped a few jobs off his resume and somehow got younger. All of a sudden he has a job. It's terrible how easy it is to do.

Oh, that cracked me up!

 

[BY Bob]

Oh, that cracked me up!

I need to remember that next time I'm looking. Take that graduation date off, eliminate a couple of jobs and wack 10 years off, lol

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Old and needs 'to be paid more' along with 'can't be trained to our specifications'...that's what I ran into when looking for a job at age 50 with 20 years experience. Was tortuously frustrating. Ageism is rampant an unprovable as discrimination. Oops, sorry, old scab picked off and bleeding again. Best of Luck that Andrew(your DH?) gets a fair deal.

B

Old and needs 'to be paid more' along with 'can't be trained to our specifications'...that's what I ran into when looking for a job at age 50 with 20 years experience. Was tortuously frustrating. Ageism is rampant an unprovable as discrimination. Oops, sorry, old scab picked off and bleeding again. Best of Luck that Andrew(your DH?) gets a fair deal.

Been there, done that. That's why I settled for a boring job. However, it paid better and gave me a retirement pension. Glad I'm done with all that and get to spend my time gardening, raising chickens and following the great people on BYC!

 

[Kris5902]

B


Been there, done that. That's why I settled for a boring job. However, it paid better and gave me a retirement pension. Glad I'm done with all that and get to spend my time gardening, raising chickens and following the great people on BYC!

It looks like he did get the job! 2/3days a week as the season ramps up... he starts next week, they are still working out their schedule and will want to see how well he performs, which won’t be a problem. His availability is the big thing as starting in late August he works in our Abbatoir Friday, Tuesday, and sometimes Monday. Looks like I’m going to have to start mealplanning to include a packed lunch again.

I’m digging my heels in as best I can and trying to avoid having to leave the farm for a city job. Retail qualifies you for yay! more retail... and I also much prefer gardening, chickens, and cattle. Now I just have to get the farm profitable and making money year round.

I’m hoping introducing chicken as a new product will help, I also plan on actually doing a little “advertising”, what a crazy thought there! I’m hoping when I start advertising our chicken it will also drum up some interest in our beef and lamb sales. We need to stop only selling whole lambs and sides of beef. Not everyone is able to drop $500-$1000 on meat in one go. We have some smaller beef freezer packs now, husband’s idea, but no one really knows they are available (we’ve still sold two so far though to random customers, without any advertising!)

My thought is if random people are going to trespass, we might as well try to sell them some product on the way out!

 

[BY Bob]

It looks like he did get the job! 2/3days a week as the season ramps up... he starts next week, they are still working out their schedule and will want to see how well he performs, which won’t be a problem. His availability is the big thing as starting in late August he works in our Abbatoir Friday, Tuesday, and sometimes Monday. Looks like I’m going to have to start mealplanning to include a packed lunch again.

I’m digging my heels in as best I can and trying to avoid having to leave the farm for a city job. Retail qualifies you for yay! more retail... and I also much prefer gardening, chickens, and cattle. Now I just have to get the farm profitable and making money year round.

I’m hoping introducing chicken as a new product will help, I also plan on actually doing a little “advertising”, what a crazy thought there! I’m hoping when I start advertising our chicken it will also drum up some interest in our beef and lamb sales. We need to stop only selling whole lambs and sides of beef. Not everyone is able to drop $500-$1000 on meat in one go. We have some smaller beef freezer packs now, husband’s idea, but no one really knows they are available (we’ve still sold two so far though to random customers, without any advertising!)

My thought is if random people are going to trespass, we might as well try to sell them some product on the way out!

I would agree a little advertising would go a long way. People have to know you offer something in order to buy it. I would think that the chicken products would help bring people in for smaller buys and then you can hit them with your smaller Fresh packages. Hopefully word of mouth takes off and you go "Viral".

 

[Ribh]

It looks like he did get the job! 2/3days a week as the season ramps up... he starts next week, they are still working out their schedule and will want to see how well he performs, which won’t be a problem. His availability is the big thing as starting in late August he works in our Abbatoir Friday, Tuesday, and sometimes Monday. Looks like I’m going to have to start mealplanning to include a packed lunch again.

I’m digging my heels in as best I can and trying to avoid having to leave the farm for a city job. Retail qualifies you for yay! more retail... and I also much prefer gardening, chickens, and cattle. Now I just have to get the farm profitable and making money year round.

I’m hoping introducing chicken as a new product will help, I also plan on actually doing a little “advertising”, what a crazy thought there! I’m hoping when I start advertising our chicken it will also drum up some interest in our beef and lamb sales. We need to stop only selling whole lambs and sides of beef. Not everyone is able to drop $500-$1000 on meat in one go. We have some smaller beef freezer packs now, husband’s idea, but no one really knows they are available (we’ve still sold two so far though to random customers, without any advertising!)

My thought is if random people are going to trespass, we might as well try to sell them some product on the way out!

Where do you sell? If it's local can you hit up your store? Local paper? Community notice boards? the ferry? Or is your ferry civilized & doesn't do advertising? I know how hard it is here. Limited in all sorts of ways. Do you have an outlet on the other islands that would be interested? I'm with you. Avoid the retail @ all costs.