Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast, the go-to podcast for do-it-yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman, and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers.
Speaker: This podcast is hosted by Barn to Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand, and sell online and in person. Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer podcast.
Speaker: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode. Barn to Door helps independent farmers get a system in place to easily manage orders, payments, deliveries, and marketing so they can skip the middleman and sell local food directly.
Speaker: Serving thousands of farmers across all 50 states, our goal is to give farmers the tools information, and opportunities to maximize profits at any stage, whether you are a hobby farmer or transitioning to full-time farming or are already a seven-figure farm.
Speaker: In today's conversation, we're digging into poultry processing. I'm happy to welcome Phil from Hopewell Farms, who is part of our Farm Advisor Network and has worked with us for a number of years. In fact, he helps teach our Grassroots Marketing Academy for farmers that are using Barns Adore.
Speaker: He hosts office hours for other farmers, helps us test various initiatives and beta projects, and gives us feedback to help guide what to build next. I'm excited to talk about how Phil scaled from on-farm processing with only a few birds to third-party processing of more birds to a fully operational on-farm facility at scale. We'll also touch on harvest aprop, looking at costs and profit margins, and his top must-haves for a smooth processing day. Welcome, Phil.
Speaker: Thank you so much. Must-haves for smooth processing day are so key because as we got the plant, I know we'll get into it. i don't want to jump ahead, but there have been days where like I really had a sense of dread going into processing day because I was afraid we were going to miss a crucial element or whatnot. And that dread is gone.
Speaker: And two weeks ago, i had to be out of town. And it was the first time that the plant ever ran completely without me there, which was really cool.
Speaker: That is a win. Yeah, that is a win. And that is not something you get day one. That's practice, failure, learning, improving, process improvements, delegation, all the things. But boy, that is such an accomplishment. It's really neat because we talk from farmers who literally are just getting started.
Speaker: Ironically, you and I were saying when you were getting started, you started with Farm to Door. So that was at the very beginning. And also farmers that are now of your size were, you're essentially at a very large scale, if that's fair for me to say. But like you have to be scrappy and learn at the beginning. You kind of can't circumvent the like go beat your head against the wall a little bit to figure it out. But just neat to be part of that process through and through, which is why we've said about today's conversation. Because at some point you had no birds.
Speaker: Yep. So what did it look like at the beginning? Yeah, well, I was just looking back at some pictures and I saw a picture of in September of 2020, I went to a workshop at White Oak Pastures, regenerating land through livestock. And at that point,
Speaker: I'd had cows for six months and that's all I had. And it really got me jazzed up about going multi-species, not even from a business standpoint, although that's the primary reason now, but just to regenerate the soil faster because nature's diverse.
Speaker: and so a diversity of species to mimic nature helps you build up soil faster so i guess it was probably in 2021 we got the first broilers i don't know i might have done 100 150 i processed them and like astoundingly long awful sessions on like a plastic folding table with family and friends helping i mean i look back now and now we do like 150 an hour And boy, it took to do 75 birds. I mean, oof, an awful, awful day. So many learnings.
Speaker: So I just processed them here. And the laws, they're more clear now. But for a while, it was like if you did a thousand or less on your farm, you could just do it with no oversight. I think that is gone. But anyway, we just did it and we sold, i don't know how many, a handful So this our third season doing up to 900 birds a day in the plant in a similar amount of time that I did like 100 before with a way better result. And there's been lots of bumps and bruises along the way. Just if you think about it, I mean, running a poultry processing plant is in no way, shape or form farming.
Speaker: It is much more akin to manufacturing I mean, it's really it's reverse manufacturing. It's taking one product and breaking it down into components. But lots of learning. But I'm so thankful we've done it. I would not go backwards. I just spoke with another farm in my state about a month ago, and they're doing a similar amount of birds.
Speaker: And they spent, I think, $60,000 this year in processing costs. Whereas I will spend a quarter of that and just a little bit more, maybe 22, 23% of that if you factor in my debt service on building the plant. So very thankful that we did it.
Speaker: Holy smokes. And learnings every step of the way. It's interesting because I'm sure you appreciate you learned how to fabricate chickens. Right. Like that will stay with you forever. And then you appreciate how far you've come. But every step of the way, like it sounds like you did some third party processing for a while, which was very costly. And then you have your own facility. Each of those endeavors for growth was also a net new experience for you to then have to relearn from scratch. Yeah. And we often talk to farmers who are like, I want to go to the next level. And you're like, okay, you have to invest upfront and then grin and bear it a little bit, right? Like you're going to have to learn. You just can't magically get to scale or growth or where you want to be. You have to figure it out and run it by the numbers, as you always love to say, and just figure each piece out. The tipping point is a little bit of what I'm curious about. And by the way, I know we didn't really go through the beginning. You have a farm in Georgia. It's not really fair for me to not point out the context you're speaking from.
Speaker: Yes. Well, I'll share the background and I'll i'll say two things first, which play into what you're saying. One, i have a shirt with a quote on it that says, anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.
Speaker: And you absolutely must embrace like, I'm going to go in and I'm going to stink at something. Like I'm going to do my best to put myself in a position to succeed, but I don't know how to run a plant. So I'm going research. I'm going to figure things out, but then I'll try to get good.
Speaker: But at first I will not be good. And that is how it is. But then something that dawned on me a couple of months ago is that succeeding is just the opportunity to take on bigger challenges. And sometimes you think, oh if I get to this or if I do this or once we get our plant built, golly, everything's gonna be great because these problems are gonna be gone.
Speaker: but It just opens up bigger problems. But that Lord willing, we're doing two things. One, we're like adding in systems and team along the way to make us in a better position to take on challenges. But two, like we should be growing as individual leaders through what we're doing to put us in a position to take on bigger and bigger and or harder.
Speaker: You know, because it's just more problems, but you get better at solving them. And I'm thankful I'm the one who gets to solve the problems on my farm. You get a lot of practice solving problems when you grow a business. So you get better at solving problems.
Speaker: And that is, you mentioned my my background. I was a business banker. So was a banker that worked with first businesses from like five to 25 million in revenue and then 25 million in revenue up.
Speaker: And I did that for like 17 years. And when I started the farm and when I was processing those first chickens and when I started building the plant, I was still working an off farm job at a bank. And then it was in April of 24 that out left. And really I spent the first couple months, I mean, a big part of my focus was getting the plant completed, not just built,
Speaker: but approved because that took a whole lot of going back and forth with EPD and all sorts of different governing bodies, many of which you know don't always have a huge sense of urgency. Whereas I did because I had birds that were going to be getting harvested. Yeah. And your friends and family probably weren't ready to ante up on that one. You had too many.
Speaker: I am glad like on poultry processing day, we have a crew of like 10 or 12 people and the majority of which, well, i'd say half work at poultry plants Monday through Friday. And then I got my farm hands and then myself and like my older kiddos. But it's nice to have like a talented labor pool.
Speaker: That's incredible. You said you were doing, what, 900 a day. How often are you doing those days? And are you doing them consecutively? Or what does that look like? Great question. I'm asking for a friend, a farmer friend. Yeah, well, it all comes down to raise a broiler.
Speaker: You know, I have several choke points. So processing was one. I solved processing. I could do a lot of birds in a day. I mean, 900 to 1,000 is plenty.
Speaker: So that's a choke point. So then to fill the plant, I had to get more chicks. So I had to build a bigger brooder. So I get more chicks at a time. And then I had to build more chicken tractors. So anyway, I like to get batches of 1,000 chicks every three weeks because that's how long I keep them in the brooder.
Speaker: So I could house. two or 3,000 chicks in my brooder, but I like to have a little excess capacity in case they bleed over and the batches have to get together because there's like a storm on the day I want to take them out to pastures. And so every three weeks I get a batch. I keep them in there ideally two and a half weeks, get the brooder ready for the next batch. So every three Saturdays we are harvesting birds.
Speaker: Every third Saturday or every three, like two off, one on? A two off, one on, just because I get birds every three weeks. So when I get a batch, eight weeks later, first harvest, and then I'll just continue. We have our last batch of 1,000 in the brooder. They're going out, hopefully on Saturday if it's not raining, and then they'll get harvested later than I would normally do it.
Speaker: But I'm going to sell out a chicken over the winter, so I had to get another batch, and they'll be harvested right before Thanksgiving. How many months off then before you buy your next batch in the spring? Since I have this brooder, as soon as these chicks go out and the last of the turkey's poults go out, then i will get a batch of 1,000 pullet chicks that will live in there over the winter until they get kicked out in March because they'll be ready to lay and I'll get my first batch of 1,000 broiler chicks in March.
Speaker: Amazing. I know there's a number of firms I've talked to recently who, like you mentioned this last batch that you got, that you do store some in freezers so that you can supply subscriptions year round. So those customers are always your customers and you never let them go and want them to come back later somehow. Like this year, I mean, i ran out of chicken basically the week I harvested chicken again, which is ideal for me. And I mean, that is tough. On one hand, like I have a lot of money tied up in freezers, but I want to serve my customers. i don't really want to be seasonal.
Speaker: One solution to that is if I... like We're trying to do more farmer's markets, more bigger. And the farmer's market seasons coincide with my pastured poultry season.
Speaker: So if it's like, I know as I have more and more and more chicken, I'm going to be selling it at markets. And I'm just going to build up a base to serve my farm store and my subscription customers. That makes perfect sense. You said you started in 2020 and now we're just in the tail end of 2026 and- You have grown exponentially over those years in a relatively short timeframe in terms of scale.
Speaker: Yeah. And I tell you, I mean, I enjoy growing. I certainly at times have grown almost too fast because like this year we really scaled up broilers and I noticed that it came at the cost of excellence. And so actually scaled down for about 45 days to change some things in our systems because we weren't optimal and it's not fun to not be optimal.
Speaker: So we shrunk it back. And then as I shrank things down, our sales hopped up even more because we were on a TV show, a Fork in the Road, which is on like PBS. So it was really great because we cut costs and we got more sales and then we were able to scale back up in a better spot.
Speaker: There's, like you said, always solving problems, always adjusting, always tweaking, and always learning, and hopefully trying to embrace that as much as possible and, you know, drink a lot of coffee. Yes, I do enjoy the coffee.
Speaker: That's great. Okay. So help us understand um from when you started and were just learning how to fabricate birds with friends and family on farm, what was the tipping point then where from a size, like number of birds perspective where, and demand customer demand perspective, where you used then a third party processor, which you referenced earlier compared to at like at scale where somebody else was paying a lot of money for third party processing, but now you have your on farm unit and it's, you know, only a quarter of the price, which is great. So we'll get into that. But like, what actually had you moved from I'm doing it myself to there's enough birds and demand for it to make sense for me to now use a third party processor. And what was that like? Well, a couple of different things. One, i was doing one or 2,000 chickens, which actually it may not quite have made sense for me to build my plant, but I thought it was going to cost a way less than it did. The initial quote I got was way less. So it's like, oh, let's do this thing. A tipping point also was that I had just ordered all my turkey paltz for the year, and I called that third-party processor to go ahead book my processing dates.
Speaker: for when they'd be ready. And they informed me they were not going to do turkeys that year. So I did not have an option if I wanted to do turkeys. I mean, the closest other place was like four or five hours away. And turkeys are big. I mean, i keep putting them in my chicken crates. I would to have like a semi truck or something. It would have been ugly.
Speaker: So it was like, man, if I want to do turkeys, A. And again, I thought it was going to be at a lower price point significantly to build it, but it's still fine at what it costs.
Speaker: But then also I wanted the control because, I mean, it's like two hours away, which cry me a river, some people have to drive further. but it's just very inconvenient to not be able to harvest them on an exact schedule which you don't control the schedule it's not your plant so one thing that i noticed was that i need to have like a very consistent size you know like if you can't control the timing then man you have some breasts that are three pounds some that are 0.7 pounds
Speaker: So like you really want to be scheduled with your production. You want to have chicks the exact same age on the same ration, et cetera. And with third party process, you really just can't do that. And that's no good. It was a lot of tipping points.
Speaker: But then also, like now that I have it, I can do exactly what I want with them without paying an extra charge. And I could do cool stuff. Like I have a grinder. So I make ground chicken. I got like 500 turkeys.
Speaker: If I don't pre-sell all of them, we're going to harvest them the week of Thanksgiving for people to pick up fresh, and not frozen. So before I would have been like, oh, golly, I hope I sell all the turkeys and maybe I'd have 10 left to sell for Christmas.
Speaker: But now... I don't even care if I sell them all or not. I'd like to sell, you know, three or four hundred. But anything left, I'm going to grind up and make ground turkey, which will be a poultry option for my customers when I ultimately sell out of chicken in the winter. So just gives you a lot of flexibility in whatever you think of, you can do. I mean, i take all the organs and heads and feet and I dehydrate them into dog treats. I got a grant to build a big composting facility.
Speaker: So we make all of our compost for next year's garden with the blood, feathers, and intestines mixed with wood chips. So anyway you can just do whatever the heck you want to do when it's right there in your hand.
Speaker: That is such great information. I was kind of chuckling because I literally made myself chicken chili and had it for lunch like an hour ago from one of our farmers with with brown chicken. I appreciate that you have options for your customers. You actually went from on-farm processing yourself to not using a third-party processor and you built your own instead. Well, I did use a third-party probably for like two years. I think it was two years I used them. And then might've even done a little bit of doing it myself and doing them. But i did determine like, if I really want to grow, which I did,
Speaker: I have to do something because, you know, then the like the laws changed and I was doing over a thousand also. So it's like, you know, obviously I don't want to sell things that aren't legal. So I did use them for a couple of years, which was really good because when I started looking at, I mean, I was taking notes. I was like, hey, here's what I need to do. Here's how i need to think about things. And I would say there are still some things we're trying to perfect with like vacuum sealing that they have us beat on that we're trying to figure out.
Speaker: So help me like, and I understand because you did a great job explaining like why you're like, I'm going to build my own and there's a million good reasons why. But the two years that you did use a third party processor, like you shifted pretty quickly through that stage. What was the situation just like from a cost perspective, I understand that like there's logistics issues among other things, right? I mean, that counts in that counts, but from a cost perspective, again, I'm just curious because you had mentioned some big variances. If I have a lot of birds and I have my own facility, although your facility is not free either. So you have to pay that off. Right. So what's the balance there?
Speaker: Here's all the numbers for now. So I think the last year I was using a third party was $10 or $12 a bird, something like that, to get it all cut up. Maybe it was $6 for a whole bird, but now it costs $15 to get it all cut up.
Speaker: On average, I run the per bird cost every time we process, which I just take my cost of labor, which I pay pretty good. And then the cost of lunch, because we eat burritos after we harvest all the birds before we piece them out.
Speaker: Then my cost of ice and packaging. I haven't broken down like any ancillary increase to my power bill or my propane bill. This is not going to be that much. So my all in cost per bird is like $3.50 versus So I'm i'm saving I pay all in $1,800 a month for the loan on my facility and equipment.
Speaker: And so that would add, if I did 5,000 birds, wouldn't somebody even count the turkeys, that would add $432 per bird. So I'm looking at $782. So still you're looking at right around half the cost. And of course get to depreciate that. And I do other stuff in it.
Speaker: I was going to say, for how long are you paying the $432? Yeah, that's for 10 years. Actually, part of it is five years, part of it's 10 years. But then I use it for other stuff. I mean, golly, I cure bacon in there. Man, Lord willing, I'll shoot a couple deer this year. You can bet going to make some deer sausage and jerky in that thing. I mean, it's an awesome it's an awesome plant. It's like fun to use, really.
Speaker: That's great. I grew up my father would bow and arrow deer and my mother would can it. So we had a lot of venison meatballs growing up a ton of them. I appreciate that. That's great. It's neat that it's dual purpose. That's like a whole separate conversation.
Speaker: I will share something for anyone out there. i mean, I would think a primary interested party is somebody who is like, should I build my own plant or not? Number one, let's say you have some resources where you could do that, but you're really just getting started. You should 100% not build a plant because you need to see, do you like raising and selling chickens? I don't just love processing chickens. I want to raise chickens and sell them and they have to be processed. And this is the best way. So you need to go a season or two and see if you have the market to do it. See if you like doing it. Number one.
Speaker: Then if you do and you want to continue to scale, I would factor in two things. one like if there is a great poultry processor near you,
Speaker: and they might cost less than $15 a bird. I mean, I think some certainly do. You need to fully run the numbers. Like, look at what can you do. You could build your own plant and you could do a better job of getting quotes than I did.
Speaker: You could get a plant in the box, which is a sister company of Featherman. And that is a tremendous option, a plant in the box. Check it out. It just comes, everything you need in like a, you know, a shipping container, basically. So look at all those things and then run the numbers.
Speaker: and decide. But as I know, like there's a couple other people in my state that have a plant that, again, you can just use for yourself. But it sounds like the numbers they're doing are so small. i don't know if they used a pencil.
Speaker: Because like, I mean, you have to be doing a certain scale for it to make sense. And then it'd probably be great. I know APPA, A-P-P-P-A, American Pasture Poultry Presenter Association, They have sometimes like field days where you can go to a small poultry plant and see how it is because you need to decide, would I at all care for processing chickens? I mean, again, it's totally different than farming.
Speaker: It is a totally different thing. So like I looked early on at going to other guys and building a beef plant. And I determined it would not be worth it because I would rather be the best customer of my local beef and pork plants and have some clout so I get slots when I want them.
Speaker: And that would be way better for me. So like look at all your options and run the numbers and decide what's best. So yeah, just look. But you're going to need to want to do a heck of a lot of birds and be on the path to doing a lot of birds for it to all make sense.
Speaker: Is it fair to ask what's the minimum number of birds to consider a plant? Yeah, I mean, several thousand. I would, again, I just, I would really look at, like, get a really dig deep and make sure you factor in all the costs and run that against what would cost to you to do it elsewhere.
Speaker: Like, if you're driving three hours, and you want to do any meaningful amount, you should really consider it because, I mean, you have to go there with live birds and crates. Then you got to come back. You got to pick up those manure covered crates and your clean finished product. I mean, you'd need like a big, huge van pulling a trailer. If you're going to scale up, there's going to be costs.
Speaker: And then also, like, what are your business goals? Because my plant only allows me to sell chickens within my state. If I go above 20,000 birds a year or if I want to sell in another state, I'd have to have a USDA plant.
Speaker: But I don't want to sell outside of my state. And I'm quite a ways from 20,000. And if I'm doing over 20,000 birds a year, that's a problem I'll happily take on. Yeah, I appreciate that. Some very good points. I think it doesn't get said often enough. Make sure you like what you're growing. I have talked to numerous farms where it's like, I kept growing this thing and I don't even like to eat it. I don't like to grow it.
Speaker: And that's just, that's kind of miserable. Like don't do that to yourself. If you're an independent farmer, you can choose. This is the beauty of it. And we're all here to help and support, but like make sure you really love the beef operation or the pork or the poultry operation. or apiary or produce or dairy. Like, you know, we've had dairy farmers that we've worked with that turned into beef farmers over time. Like choose something you enjoy the most, right? Versus something that you like the least in terms of the various, hopefully variety of categories of what you're selling.
Speaker: I loved your point at the beginning that you diversified for the soil. And I love that that's also really good for business. So just a little separate plug there, but really good point again, to make sure that you really enjoy it and those challenges that come along with it. Well, two things. I want to mention make sure that we talk about law and you're like, we got to talk about law.
Speaker: So let's just do that really quick and then I'll move on to my next set of questions. So the current law, as I understand it, is any animals that are going to be harvested for human consumption, they've got to be done under USDA oversight at a USDA plant with a USDA inspector there unless the USDA has given their authority over to the state, in which case a state inspector would need to be there at the USDA plant.
Speaker: But if you do less than 20,000 birds a year from your own farm to be sold in your own state, you're USDA exempt. And your state's Department of Ag, you fall under their guidelines.
Speaker: So the Georgia Department of Ag, they have guidelines. And i mean, they're basically, I have to meet all the requirements a USDA plant would do as far as my facility. I basically have like metal roofing as my walls so that everything can be sprayed down, concrete floors with drains.
Speaker: Special ways to handle the water, you know, three base sink plus this and that all this stuff. And so you work with them and you get your license renewed every year.
Speaker: So you get kind of like re checked out. So different states are different and some might be easier. i don't picture any being harder. My state is a big poultry state and my town is the like poultry capital of the world. So I would think my state would actually be harder because they're talking like industrial poultry guys. None of the like the boards who are making the state rules, none of them, interestingly, are like talking to people like me. they're They're not talking to small farmers. So you work with your department of ag and you really have to like...
Speaker: get after it because it might not be very clear and apparent what the rules in your state are. I mean, sometimes you're wading through this morass to figure it out.
Speaker: Yeah. I feel like every time you and I do a podcast together, we always do a plug for the Farmer to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, like almost every time. But that is a great resource for farmers to just ask a bunch of questions for little to no money of like legal brains in terms of federal versus state laws around everything from raw milk to poultry to pet food versus treats, et cetera, et cetera. So a really great resource, Farmer to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. We've actually done some prior podcasts with them and will again, but they're just, again, a fabulous resource. But dig in. And things do keep changing in the states, too. So you do have to keep your thumb on that pulse. Great stories from folks who have also helped improve the situation in their states.
Speaker: I had a fun experience where when I built my plant, I was, I think, the second guy in Georgia to do it. So I knew the regulations better than them because they didn't really deal with them very much. So, you know, I had this three page PDF. I highlighted things. I walked through things with them.
Speaker: And then apparently they changed the regulations like while I was in that process. But the inspectors didn't know. So I got my license. So then like a couple months in then they were like, oh, hey, we change things. You need to make this change, which was a major structural change to the building. Like it was really not cool. Like, I mean, the building wasn't built to do what I then had to do.
Speaker: And there was no option of grandfathering the building. They just did not give a hoot. And my license is up every year. So I had to do it. And it was quite unpleasant, but is what is. And you have to walk a fine line of like, hey, I'm going to appropriately push back.
Speaker: But obviously you want to be polite and you don't want to be a jerkwad for any reason. But it's not gonna help your business if you were a jerkwad. That's for sure. Yeah, but politely pushing back, not always a bad i idea either, because if you don't, that might not be good for business. there's ah There is a fine line. I appreciate that.
Speaker: In addition to Farmer Consumer Legal Defense Fund, interestingly, we have at Brontador, essentially fill one of about a dozen farms currently that host office hours for other farmers to literally show up and ask questions. We're talking about at the very beginning, like you can talk, am I hobby farmer trying to become a whole time farmer? Am I like hitting my stride or am I really pushing to scale?
Speaker: Each of those are such a different series of questions and problems and ideas and things to do and not do and everything else. So talking about directly to someone like Phil or many of the other successful firms that we have. Talking to those people is just super helpful because there's also so many things to consider and no farm business is exactly the same. You're all in different states. There's just different things, you know, to think through, et cetera. But there are some common best practices. There are truly things to keep in mind for all farms everywhere as well. So there's some comfort in that and things that absolutely work for all farms and can be great resources. So just wanted to throw that out there. When I'm talking to you too, Phil, I'm thinking about some of the other conversations that I have with farmers, even around pricing and packaging. And do you putting wings together and drums together and selling the breasts separately? Or do you do whole birds? And when do you decide what? And et cetera. There's just a lot to think through. You know, we get really passionate at Varn Tador because our goal is to help every farmer that is independent, selling direct to have the tools and resources and opportunity at every stage. And so we have farms, to your point, Phil, like if they are using a third party processor and they have birds that are three pounds and birds that are six and a half pounds, you can sell by weight, right? Or and you can price that out exactly, you know, using the barn to door, or you can literally sell everything by weight if you want.
Speaker: But there's also a time where you decide, you know what, I'm going to sell every bird for X dollars at set price. or I'm going to do subscription, which is a whole nother level. There's a lot of really neat options. And we've been talking about this more and more at Barn to Door. How do you maximize your profit, right? And how do you keep doing things that you love and make good decisions and try different things, but at a small scale before you go big and different things like that. So not trying to jump all around here. i It's just really neat to hear the options and the opportunities and, you know, giving farmers the information to make good choices. all along the way to just make sure you've got a viable, lovely business with recurring revenue and profits that are livable and lovely and can grow, right?
Speaker: Okay, I promised to ask about Processing Day. You're talking and I can just picture farmers in the background going, ask him this, ask him this. So I want to make sure to ask Processing Day, how did you get to the point where you weren't there this last time and it went smooth as butter?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I guess three years, the same crew has helped. So the keys to processing day start the day before. So I have like a ah week before, day before and day of list in my head.
Speaker: So the week of, I do need to tell the Georgia department mag that I'm going harvest birds because they could show up whenever they want. So i tell them that, and then I do, you know, a confirmation that I have the packaging that I need and the labels. There's some very specific rules of labels, which do not make any sense. And so I got to have the right labels.
Speaker: I got to have the right packaging because thighs and whole birds do not go in the same packaging. And i need to confirm with my labor. I'm like, Hey, you guys going to, you know, just confirm. And we're going to be here this morning on Saturday.
Speaker: Then the day before, really a couple days before, I start filling up these food safe drums with ice because I have a 400 pound ice maker. That is not enough ice for processing day. So I start filling things up with ice and covering it ahead of time to build up ice.
Speaker: Then the day before, so Friday morning, we don't feed the birds. And then Friday afternoon, we put all the birds in crates. They got to be in the shade. They got to be under a fan.
Speaker: And we stack them up at the plant that afternoon. Saturday morning, we get down there at like five, light up the scalders. Number one, your critical things are really at the front in the in the end.
Speaker: It's, is my scalder the perfect temp? Because if it is too hot, it's going to tear up your birds. And if it's not hot enough, you're going to be hand plucking. And we have a saying to live by, which is hand plucking is for losers, Janelle. Which If you're hand plucking, you have failed.
Speaker: That's a huge waste. So you got to have your scholar just right. So your pluckers are just right. And then you got to have some Mac Daddy vacuum sealers and a scale that you can just set a bird on or set an item on.
Speaker: and it knows the price per pound or price per unit, and it is like slinging out. You put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off, it's slinging out labels. So every single point from killing a bird, scalling it, plucking it, eviscerating it, cutting it up,
Speaker: putting it in packages it packaging, vacuum sealing the packaging, putting a label on, putting it in the freezer. All of these are choke points, and you could be world-class NASCAR speed at 10 out of 11, but if you're slow at 11, then you're slow at all of them.
Speaker: So you always have to attack your slowest point. Every day you process, you have to get better and you got to take notes and say, oh, last time, boy, we were we were harvesting birds so fast, but then a bunch of them built up because we were scalding and plucking slow.
Speaker: You just always, what is the bottleneck? Attack the bottleneck relentlessly. That's beautiful. That's a drop of Mike. I will say one more critical thing you're going to harvest your own birds is that you cannot just take it from farmer Phil and experience. You need to have organized freezers, but I do not have a walk in. I really need to get a walk in, but I have a ton of chest freezers, which is not efficient. If you build a plant, build a walk in freezer with it.
Speaker: But you cannot just stack boxes full of packages of chicken breasts or they will not freeze. Only the outside will freeze. So you can't go more than three layers deep.
Speaker: So we got to just spread out these thin layers of chicken across all of our freezers and organize it the next day. You can't just stack them deep. They're not going to freeze. That sounds like a lesson to learn the hard way otherwise.
Speaker: Yes, for sure. i appreciate that. And then any tips on packaging? Definitely. Like invest in a vacuum sealer. Invest in a vacuum sealer.
Speaker: You need one that is fast. You need one that works because like on process and if you harvest a lot of birds and you need redundant things. I mean, i have like three total vacuum sealers and if one goes down, I'll be okay. But if you have one vacuum sealer and it goes down,
Speaker: You are up the creek. You're in big trouble. So have redundancies, get great vacuum sealers. And then I would definitely say invest in solid labels.
Speaker: The difference between a world-class label and a just ho-hum label is probably $15 a chicken. Wow. So you get, you know, like a very beautiful label. Like, why not?
Speaker: It's your plant. Make it look great. It sounds like you're doing whole birds and you're also doing cuts. Yes, I generally do cuts because I just sell more of that.
Speaker: But I did do whole birds when I went out of town because it's so much easier and faster because there's less to package. So like it just removes some variables. Yeah, I appreciate that. Do you have a percent of birds pre-sold at any given time?
Speaker: I don't have anything pre-sold. That's really cool and everything. But since I am in the business of building repeat customers all year, all during the poultry season, I'm like amassing inventory so that I can go as long as possible after the season. oh We just found some thighs. We were out of thighs for like a week.
Speaker: So, i mean, again, I'm going to sell out I love that. What I love about that is it's a good cliffhanger for another podcast on building repeat customers, honestly, which can be done through subscriptions and everything else, but there is an art and a science to it. So I really appreciate that.
Speaker: Do you have one or two final tips before we peel off? People love the chicken, baby. And if you want to do it in a meaningful amount, and unless you have a poultry processor, a USDA processor within 30 minutes of your farm that you get it for $7 cut up or less, I would seriously explore the option of building your own plant if you're going to scale. Now, there's guys out there, they've scaled to the point they have to have a USDA processor because over 20,000 birds a year.
Speaker: But it's going to take you a long way to get there. Again, if I got to where I was doing 25,000 birds a year and I either had to convert my plant to USDA or just shutter it and go use a USDA plant, that's fine.
Speaker: You know, I'm getting a margin on 25,000 birds a year. So it's a good problem to have. Thank you for your time today. I want to say thank you to Phil for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more and follow Hopewell Farms on his Instagram. at Hope L Farms GA. He shows on Instagram recently. I saw this, Phil. It was so cool. but You showed your whole pet treat operation.
Speaker: Great margin product. We have a whole other podcast on pet treats, which is amazing. It's a wonderful way to extend your profit margin, which we're all big fans of. Go look on his reel and on his Instagram to get more tips from Phil.
Speaker: Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Phil. See you next time.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn to Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
Speaker: For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodore.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.
