Looking for help brainstorming for next year

[tickens33]

Hello all. For anyone who hasn't seen my posts before, I keep chickens on a property about a half hour drive away, and have kept up with this for 15 months. This setup has drawbacks, but I can't keep chickens in my backyard, so this was my best option for gaining these skills. Our 5-10 year plan is to build our forever home(stead) on the property where the chickens currently are.

I have been feeling a little burnt out on commuting to take care of livestock, and I received a lot of wonderful thoughtful advice on my most recent post, regarding how to wind things down for a break. Sometime between now and the winter, I'll likely be sending some flock members to a friend's farm and some to freezer camp.

I'm already thinking ahead to next year, and was hoping some of you might enjoy helping me brainstorm the next phase of this project. The folks on this forum have been incredible sources of advice and perspective so far, and I'm hoping some of you might find it a fun exercise to consider how you'd go about it.

I am trying to consider the best way to go about things next year to maximize yields and fulfillment, and minimize stress.

My thoughts so far:

• We already have plans to make changes to our setup-- more cameras, more redundant food and water sources, more run space..basically just more resources all around to minimize the required maintenance and therefore the required travel.
• We've had big plans to have the chicken coop roof collect rainwater for the birds, and might try bringing that to fruition next year as well, if anyone has perspective to offer on that.
• We might also build an isolation coop and/or some kind of small tractor to make separating birds less of an ordeal, if anyone would like to share their experience with that type of setup.
• I have been considering doing exclusively meat birds next year, because it would give me a break from the commute between cycles of raising and culling, and then there would be no issue deciding what to do when winter comes. But I'm not sure how doing meat birds would work remotely. We let our current flock free-feed, but my understanding is with meat birds, we'd have to automate the feeding..? Does anyone have any breed recommendations for meat birds that might do well with such a setup? I have been looking at freedom rangers.
• Is it possible to raise runs of meat birds at the same time as laying hens, or would they require totally separate structures?
• Alternatively, is anyone familiar with a breed of laying hens that start laying much earlier than a heritage breed without being genetically unhealthy? Part of why I'm hesitant to do layers again is all the time, effort, and expense before we would actually be able to get eggs.
• Separately from the above, does anyone have experience with a laying breed that does not seem prone to broodiness? We got Buff Orpingtons without really understanding the implications of a broody-prone breed, and it has turned into a big headache to safely break broods from a distance.

Disclaimer that I have of course started researching all of the above myself, but nothing beats advice from people with experience! Hopefully folks find this fun to consider.
So..If it was you, commuting to your chickens, how would you go about it?