Market Farming

[Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>]

We use a chicken tractor of sorts  (actually a chicken house on 
wheels, houses built on old trailers) in conjunction with electric 
bird netting and we sell an egg share as an add on to our CSA 
vegetable share.  It comes out to $3 a dozen and the demand was so 
great that we had to turn people away.  We stopped at 70 dozen a 
week.  At that price the profit is marginal.  I consider the egg 
share a loss leader type of undertaking.  Next year the price goes up 
to at least $3.50 a dozen.

To us, the pastured chicken/ chicken tractor part is important. 
Since May the chickens haven't moved  (we have crops in all the 
usable fields) but during the winter our 170 birds move from one 
place to another every couple of weeks.  The idea was originally to 
reduce weeds but I have observed something I consider more important: 
the fields where the chickens' pastured have far fewer insect pests 
(including flea beetles) than the fields where the chickens didn't 
winter.  Imagine the joy of putting out your eggplant without the 
danger of losing them to flea beetles?