Horse Barn, Alpaca Barn...Chicken Barn!

Our 100+ year old barn has housed quite an array of livestock.  In an earlier blog I mention that it was set up for Oxen when we first purchased the farm. After raising up the loft and restructuring inside, I transitioned the barn to keep our horses. After several years of housing and birthing horses in the barn, Alpacas took up residence there along with a few goats.

Now the old barn is slated for an update to house our current focus, the chickens. Because our business took off so quickly and the acquisition of another chicken business, we had to quickly provide safe and clean housing for all these awesome new birds. The big horse stalls had room to make two coops in each one. Using wood from an old deck from a neighbor, I built a separate coop that houses four different breeds. We called this the “Chicken Suites”. My son and I went out into our woods and resourced some small locust trees. We used these small trees to frame out the pens for the suites.  Still needing more housing, Amy and I designed some “Chicken Cabins”. A 4’x4’ coop with 4’x8’ attached pens. These will house about 4 birds of different breeds each. In one day, I built eight of these cabins, it was a long day!

Now we are planning another big reno of the old barn. We will, of course, keep it’s old barn look on the outside, but I will be removing the stall walls and building coops on two sides with a center isle. All with attached pens. We are trying to centralize our birds to make it easier to feed and water, especially in the cold months. We may have to build a second barn that will attach to the current one. It will not be as tall but the same size footprint.

This is in addition to my plan to build a post and beam workshop fashioned after a barn at Old Sturbridge Village and our newest idea of building a greenhouse from repurposed windows. Next year we are also planning on transitioning an old alpaca paddock into a big garden.

We will be starting the Hatching and Brooder room build within the barn that I built in the next few weeks. If you’ve lost track, this was a workshop to a farm store to a yarn mill back to a farm store then back to a workshop and now will be a Hatcher/Brooder room. The attached feed room will then become my workshop. As you see, my workshop tends to bounce around, hence why I am planning a whole new barn for my new shop.

My work is never done here and for those who cannot sit still and like having an ongoing project all the time (like my son), a farm is for you.

-WF

Diversify your Farm (4)...

As with many of our ventures on the farm, we kind of stumble into things. We stumbled into the Alpaca business which led to the yarn business, etc. When our son lost his colt he expressed interest in Nigerian goats after seeing them at the Southwick Zoo. Amy did some research and purchased our first Nigerian goat. A baby female that we had to bottle feed. Her name was Delilah. Delilah led to a few more Nigerians including a few bucks. We still have about a dozen goats and still sell the baby's when we have them, but our newest farm animal is not really that new to our farm.

When we first moved to the farm I had always wanted to have chickens pecking around the yard. Nothing said farm like a few chickens. I borrowed a Styrofoam incubator from a friend and he gave be a bunch of fertile eggs. I knew very little about raising chickens from eggs, but I did it. I built a brooder box and a medium sized cage. Once the chicks were born, I kept them in the brooder box until they had their feathers and then moved them to the bigger cage. Once I felt they were big enough, I let them free range on the farm. So, we have had chickens on the farm for quite a while.

This past year, Amy decided that she wanted to focus on the chickens and start raising some to sell. We borrowed a bigger incubator and started filling it. It kind of became an obsession. We no longer would eat the eggs, we would immediately put them in the incubator. Amy was always excited to have baby chicks hatching almost every day. We would advertise on Craigslist and we would sell out of our chicks. This encouraged us to raise more and more. Amy started looking for more interesting breeds and became more serious about hatching specific breeds. The chick business took off for Amy. She was able to supplement her income nicely. We would have people calling and stopping at the farm almost daily looking for chicks.

We even tried our hand at Meat Birds. We raised 40 meat chicks and processed them ourselves once they were big enough. It took a little getting used to, but we ended up selling quite a few and the rest filled our freezer. Knowing that the chicken we were eating were cared for and live normal lives is piece of mind. Plus the meat was delicious!

Amy started sourcing her birds from other farms in order for her to keep up with the demand. We connected with a farm in Brooklyn CT. Recognizing that there was a market for quality chickens of specific breeds, we formed a "Micro Hatchery". After some hemming and hawing, we all sat down and conjured up The Hatching House. We decided that our hatchery would be better than the large hatcheries in the sense that we would focus more on quality and not quantity. We would only produce so many of our chicks per month and then close the month out. We also did not like the practice by most hatcheries to grind up the male chicks. We discussed different ways to utilize our male chicks in order to not waste a life.

We also offer our rooster chicks at 15 for $25. These are chicks you can raise for meat for about $1.60 each. Once our business grows and we start getting higher numbers of roosters, we plan on donating the processed chicken to local food banks and food kitchens. We will have several outlets for our male chicks in order not to waste a life.

Our stock birds are well taken care of. They are provided generous outside pens and fed Non-GMO feed that is locally sourced. We will make sure that our micro hatchery will develop to meet the needs of our customers. Check out our website www.TheHatchingHouse.com.

My next blog I will talk about how we transitioned our horse/alpaca/goat farm into a chicken breeding farm!

-WF

Why a Chicken Tractor...

I have been keeping chickens at my small farm for about 16 years. When I first began, they were mostly free range because I liked seeing them peck around the yard. The drawback was that collecting eggs was a daily Easter egg hunt. Some birds would go broody in some obscure bush and I would assume they were eaten. Other issues when you free range, you take the chance that something will take your chickens. Everything eats chicken. I mean EVERYTHING. I remember coming home in the morning after working a long Midnight shift to find the Helter Skelter of chicken massacres in my front yard. There were 13 of my chickens strewn all over the yard. Some were headless and some were perfectly intact, just no longer breathing. Only one of my birds survived the attack and she was never the same again. I kept them in a coop that I had built to look like and old corn crib. Sometimes someone would remember to shut the door at night, mostly not. I lost birds that I had had for nearly ten years.

Fast forward a few years later and I started purchasing birds that were a tad more expensive than the $2 feed store birds. Not only did I want a safe place for my chickens to live, but I also wanted more consistency in collecting eggs without the hunt. Keeping your birds in a stationary coop is a lot of work trying to keep the coop and the run clean and trying to keep the birds from having to walk around in their own poop.

I had seen Chicken Tractors before and really liked the idea that I could move it around the yard and provide my birds with fresh grass. Not only does it cut down on their feed, but it provided my birds with a clean new patch of grass and no messy build-up of chicken poop.

Upon further research, I learned that once you move the Chicken Tractor, the chewed up patch left behind will eventually grow back greener and thicker than before, Bonus! Another cool use is in the early Spring, you can put the Chicken Tractor in your weedy garden beds before planting season and the chickens will not only eat all the weeds, but they will mix up and fertilize your garden beds too!

After months of research, I found a really nice design that provided shelter and a grazing area for my chickens and it could easily be moved around the yard by the smallest person.

I now build custom Chicken Tractors and coops for the chicken enthusiast. Go to my Wicked Koops FaceBook page to see the different designs I have that can meet your needs and don’t forget to “Like” my page for updates. You can also contact me at WickedKoops@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for new related products like: roll away nesting boxes, rat proof feeders, dusting boxes and perching ladders.

- WF

Part 2 - As Time Goes By...

We moved our three horses onto the property. My wife was in negotiation with a farm in Georgia to purchase and young Colt by the name of Two-Tone Chek. A "Medicine Hat" Paint horse to be our stallion that we would offer breeding to.

At one point during our time as a horse farm, we had four stallions on property that we offered for breeding. Amy at the time was also buying and selling horses with another farm in Scotland, CT.  The horse business paid the bills for a while but like any business, there are ups and downs.  It got to a point where people were giving away horses because they could not afford to feed them. We were constantly offered free horses.  At one point, we had around 20 horses on property between the stallions, mares and babies.  We boarded a couple Paso Fino's for a friend of ours. As the horse market began to tumble, we looked at other livestock in order to diversify. 

At that time, Alpacas began to become more affordable to the small farm.  In their early years, Alpacas were only affordable by the very wealthy.  A big plus to these animals were the tax advantages.  Somehow the powers that be were able to get a dollar for dollar write off on your taxes for Alpacas since they were new to the market and this was a way to promote them. 

We dove head first into the alpaca business and did very well. After a few years into raising and selling alpacas. Once a year we would have our animals sheered (shaved) and the good quality "fiber" would be sent out to make yarn.  There was also a small market for rug yarn where you would use your lesser quality fiber. We noticed that there was always a long wait from when you send out your raw fiber to when you actually got your finished yarn back.  Most Alpaca farms would have a small shop on their farm where they would sell their products.

I asked Amy how the mills do that process the fiber and if it might be a good business to look into. Less than a year later, we got the opportunity to purchase a used carding mill along with a picker and a rug yarn maker.  There are several other mill machines that you would have to add to this list in order to make regular yarn for clothing.  Since we only had enough money to buy those three machines, we decided to go into the Alpaca rug yarn business.  This turned out to be a good business.  Most mill owners did not want to produce rug yarn over clothing yarn.  At the time, a mill would charge around $26 a pound to process fiber for clothing yarn.  Rug yarn was only going for around $14 a pound.  So, to a mill owner that invested in the whole lot of machines to produce clothing yarn, it did not make sense to process much of the cheaper yarn.  For Amy and I, we only had the three machines that were paid for. Most mill owners had loans on their equipment. 

Once we started promoting our rug yarn mill, it took off. Every day we would get orders in.  The UPS and FedEx truck would be at our house constantly. This proved to be a pretty lucrative business to run out of our barn. Especially when Amy got sick and would not have been able to work. We had three employees with 2 shifts running the mill. Upcoming Post…Spinning Yarn.

-wf

Part 1 - The Early Years...

Welcome to the Wicked Farmer Blog.  I'm wicked in the New England sense, which means really awesome!

Through this blog I will document my experiences as a gentleman farmer in Connecticut and everything that it entails.  I bought my farm back in 1999 in a small town in Eastern CT.  I originally purchased 10 acres with a small Cape style house and an old barn.  The small house dated back to the 1890's and originally was a bunk house for the giant farm that once encompassed the property. The barn on the property dates back to around the same time. 

When I moved in, the barn had been set up for Oxen.  The half loft was low, about 6 feet from the floor.  I was going to use it for horses so I had to raise the loft up.  I also added a large three stall lean-to off the back and one on the right side. I more than doubled the size of the barn  to accommodate my 4 horses at the time.

There was also a smaller outbuilding, we called the "red shed".  Sections of it had a concrete floor but the main section had a dirt floor, which the previous owners had laid down a bunch of carpet remnants. When I was re-doing the barn, I had pulled up some heavy duty pallets that were used for the oxen to stand on. These pallets were bigger than normal and did not have gaps.  I arranged them on the floor of the red shed as a base for the floor. I was able to cover the entire dirt floor section with these pallets.  I then bought 4x8 sheathing and screwed them to the pallets which locked them all together. It gave me a pretty decent floor. This became my workshop. Of course this quickly became too small and I proposed to my wife to built a larger barn on an existing concrete foundation. There are three existing foundations on the property. There is a fourth one but it was so broken up from time, it can no longer be used.

After some hemming and hawing, my wife agreed to my new barn idea. I had never built a post and beam barn in my life. But, I wanted to show my parents and myself that I could build something by myself with little help.

Once I catch you up on the progression my farm took, I will talk about recent activities here and my plans for the future. I will also look at interesting new ideas for small farms. My goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible. - wf -

Part 3 - Spinning Yarn...

The rug yarn business proved to be somewhat profitable and interesting. Every year the "mini mill" group would hold a conference. Owners of mini mills would all get together and discuss new products and what works and what doesn't.  Amy and I had a chance to go to our first conference. It was held in Ohio at another mini mill. This was a very busy mill and they have3 times as many machines as Amy and I did. We found the other mill owners to be good people and very welcoming. Although we were all competition for each other, there is so much work out there that it was not much of an issue.  Amy and I had a very simple business plan just producing rug yarn.  We could also do roving and batting but 99% of our work was rug yarn. While at the conference, the owner of the hosting mill took us aside and offered us an account.  It was a small boutique in New York City that sold yarn and was looking for around 30 bumps of rug yarn a month. Being new to the business, we were thankful for the account.  The owner of the hosting mill explained that the two ladies that run the boutique are looking for a very specific and high quality rug yarn that he himself can produce, but he had so much other work, he really did not have the time to devote to this small account that is needed.

Amy and I drove back from the conference excited to have a real account for our mill. After a lot of back and forth and samples, we finally agreed on a particular rug yarn that we could produce. The usual order of 30 bumps grew quickly as the demand for this new "chunky yarn" grew in NYC. The 30 bumps became 100 bumps then 300 bumps and one month, an order of 500 bumps was requested. At first, we were producing Alpaca rug yarn, but a demand for Merino, which is a high quality sheep wool, became our focus. Our one carding machine could process about 5 pounds of rug yarn in an hour. We had to constantly monitor the output to ensure it met the quality standards agreed upon with the boutique. When the mill was running it made us approximately $75 to $80 per hour. Amy and I would constantly be running the machine in order to keep up with the big orders from the boutique. We also had to squeeze in the orders from alpaca farms that were coming in from all over the country. We ended up hiring a couple of friends to help us out. At one point, we had 3 employees and had 2 shifts a few days a week.

I grew concerned that we were focusing too much on the boutique and not so much on the individual farms. Although the boutique would cut us a nice check each week for the previous week's delivery, they were very consistent and reliable. Realistically, at that point we should have expanded. Purchased a second carding machine and moved the operation to a bigger building and possibly hire more employees.  This would have allowed us to continue servicing the small farms along with the high demands of the New York boutique. Instead, the boutique approached us and wanted us to produce exclusively for them. They had started wholesaling the yarn to other yarn stores in several other states and a couple countries. This was guaranteed work for our mill and because the demand was growing, we thought it might be a good move for us. I still was concerned that we were putting all our eggs in one basket, we had to trust the boutique would keep working with us. We did find out accidentally that the boutique had the original mill (the host mill for the conference) doing some side work for them. We were a little concerned, but were thankful for the work that we really did not make an issue of it.

We would get a 600lbs bale of Merino delivered to our mill from the boutique. It would take us just over a month to use up the entire bale.  After months of making yarn for the boutique, we noticed that the orders for yarn started to slow down. The boutique assured us that there was no problem. They told us that we had produced so much yarn that they were starting to build up an inventory and needed to lessen the numbers of bumps they ordered. The writing was on the wall.

One day, one of the owners of the boutique showed up at our mill with a truck and took what was left of one of the big bales of merino.  They told us that they had purchased their own mini mill and were going to produce the white yarn bumps, but would still keep us for the colored bumps. This was a big blow to our business. We immediately did email blasts to announce that we had room to process for alpaca farms. We started to look into the untapped Llama market. We started to run into issues with employees, Amy was recovering from multiple surgeries related to breast cancer and our carding mill was beat. I had to replace both motors and other major parts to keep it going. I had to be the maintenance guy since the mini mill company that normally serviced our machine was always on the other side of the country. I could only do so much. With the lack of work and mechanical problems, our money machine was not producing much. It appeared that we had seen the peak in the alpaca rug yarn market and less and less work was coming our way. The boutique purchased a second machine and we were no longer producing yarn for them.

As with any business, mistakes were made and in hindsight we would have done things differently in order to keep the mill solvent. Although we sold our equipment back to the manufacturer, we would still consider opening another small mill.  There is still a demand out there. We also might consider different machines. We would definitely do it in a climate controlled building and not be as tempted by "big" accounts that would tie up our machines.

Well, we did take a break from the farm (as far as it being a source of income) and purchased a restaurant in Nashville Tennessee in February 2014. After a year running the restaurant, we moved back to CT and got back into farming....next we diversify again, this time with a different farm animal...