August 21, 2025 • 44 mins
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We’re back with another Next Level Nerds episode, and this one’s packed with real-world farming grit and laughs. 🐓🌱
Meet Bernadine & Ray from Redmond Hills Farm in Oregon. They’ve turned retirement into full-time farming—raising pasture-raised Cornish chickens, quail for eggs & meat, and even working with Longhorn cattle. But their journey is far from simple…
🔥 In this episode:
✔️ Navigating farm-use tax laws & building permits in Oregon
✔️ Expanding from chickens to quail (and now selling chicks to farm stores)
✔️ Dealing with cougars, bears & owls raiding the flock 🦉🐾
✔️ How HOAs tried to ban their “live eggs” 🤯
✔️ The struggle (and fun) of turning a hobby into a profitable farm business
If you’ve ever thought about taking your backyard flock to the next level, or just want to hear some wild farm stories, this episode is for you!
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EggFoam.com get your egg shippers and live shipping boxes and always get free shipping!
ShowPro feed supplement for all your feathered friends! Grow them bigger and healthier with the best ingredients.
Coturnix Quail hatching eggs from Bryant's Roost, including jumbo celadons!
Quail cartons and Supplies from Double R Farms
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jennifer (00:00):
Welcome back poultry nerd.
(00:01):
So we've been sitting herechatting with our guests today
already, and it's going to be adoozy I think.
So this is the second episode inour next.
Level nerds for whatever reasonthat tongue ties me.
And so today we have Bernadineand Ray from Redmond Hills Farm
(00:23):
in Oregon.
Welcome guys.
Redmond Hills Farm (00:27):
Hey there.
Thanks for having us.
Jennifer (00:28):
Yeah.
Hello there.
Hey and Carey's here today.
He's being
Carey (00:32):
Yep.
I'm here today.
I was not able to attend aprevious recording session.
Jennifer (00:39):
Yep.
You, we told him you were busywhen we recorded yesterday on
delivering feed and stuff.
So sometimes business happens,it
Carey (00:48):
does.
Jennifer (00:49):
And that's what kind of what the purpose of our
series is taking these hobbiesthat we started with to the next
level and turning it into kindof a business.
So you guys have done that now,you've, you retired recently,
right?
Redmond Hills Farm (01:08):
We
Jennifer (01:08):
did retire from outside of the house, working
outside of the home.
Now we're
Redmond Hills Farm (01:12):
busy with our farm.
Jennifer (01:14):
Which, which took it more time?
The other job?
Or this job?
Redmond Hills Farm (01:19):
Oh, physically this job, by far.
Yeah, there was a time where Iwas doing both.
I didn't have much of a lifethen, so I was back and forth to
the farm and to work.
But so now, yeah, we'rephysically busier than ever
which is, I guess could be good.
But we're supposed to be retiredbut we're still working.
Jennifer (01:39):
So tell us what, tell us about your farm, where you
are, all that good stuff that weneed to know.
Redmond Hills Farm (01:45):
It starts with my husband Ray's family, so
I'll let him kinda explain thatpart, honey.
Go ahead.
So we're in McMinville, Oregon.
And that's about an hour or sosouth of Portland.
Salem is the capital here.
So we're between Portland andSalem on the west side of the
state.
We're about a 40 minute drive tothe coast.
(02:06):
The farm is originally it waspurchased by my grandparents,
1957.
It's right outside of town here,and it was about 600 acres at
the time.
It's been divided up over theyears.
It stayed in the family for themost part.
But we.
Got 85 acres of the property,what, two years ago now or so?
Terrific.
Two and a half years ago,something like that.
(02:28):
So it's been in the family for along time.
My grandfather, when he wasalive, raised cattle and sheep.
After he died in the eighties,my grandmother stayed on the
farm as long as she could, butthe property was leased out for
sheep and and hay and that sortof thing.
So once we got R 85 acres, we.
Have to keep this property infarm deferral as far as taxes
(02:50):
go.
Which means we have to farm itand we have to do a farming
practice that the intent is tomake a profit is basically how
it's worded.
So we dec we looked at a bunchof different things.
My parents live up on the farmstill.
They raise goats, they haveNubians and they raised Spanish
goats for years and years.
We looked at doing that.
(03:10):
We looked at all kinds ofdifferent things.
We looked at cattle and so wejust decided that we would go
with.
Pasture raised non GMO, no soychicken.
And I can't remember now at whatpoint we decided to go with
quail to go with that, butthat's how we got started with
the property.
(03:30):
We, we.
We are both now retired,Bernadine retired last year from
the county and so we're bothretired from, outside farm work.
We never really planned on beingfarmers, honestly.
Here we're, even though he wasin the family for a long time
and it has been in the familyfor a long time.
It's all good though, and that'swhat we're doing currently.
I just started reading, Istarted reading Facebook and
(03:51):
looking at I've always, I've hadchickens in the past.
And I had all kinds of chickens.
We used to live at another fiveacres away from town a few years
ago.
And at that point I hadchickens.
So I liked poultry and I wasfamiliar with poultry night, but
then I started reading aboutquail and I'm like, huh, what's
quail?
And so at the time we're tryingto farm our land, then that's.
(04:12):
When I started really digginginto what quail was.
Told Ray, I'm like, Hey maybe wecould do quail along with the
chicken.
And people seemed, and Iexplained to'em what it was,
and, for we can grow for meat,we can grow for eggs.
And so that's how that started.
Just an idea popped in my headlike, so here we are.
Jennifer (04:29):
So chicken's like the gateway drug right to farming.
And now you've added quail.
And then I see you added yetanother item, what, two weeks
ago?
Redmond Hills Farm (04:40):
We've got the Longhorn cattle up there
now.
Yeah.
Those actually, those belong toa friend of ours.
They're we had'em bring them upthere because we needed cattle
on the property to help.
With the regenerative farmingpart piece of it, but also, to
help keep the grass down andstuff up there.
Our property is pretty much alla hillside and it's a lot of
rock and it's perfect forgrazing animals.
(05:02):
And so we needed some help withthat.
And he's got a bunch oflonghorns and brought'em up
there.
So a win-win that way.
Carey (05:10):
That.
That to, I like the way thoselook.
Redmond Hills Farm (05:14):
Like
Carey (05:14):
to me, I just like the look that they have.
Yeah I don't know if they haveany other practical use.
I just like the way they look.
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (05:23):
They keep the grass down.
They keep the grass down, buttheir meat is leaner than
regular beef or told, we haven'ttried it yet, but they tell us
that it's leaner and it's abetter meat, healthier.
But they're definitely prettythey're really.
Beautiful animals, I think.
Jennifer (05:40):
So you, so based on what I just heard, you decided
just to move into the businessaspect for the farming credit,
for the land.
Redmond Hills Farm (05:50):
So in order to keep.
The land in what's called farmdeferral here for tax purposes.
You have to be, you have to farmit, so it's in what's called an
exclusive farm use zone.
There's different zones.
There's forestry zones andthere's, other zones in the
state.
(06:10):
But exclusive farm use zones,you have to farm it.
You have to do somethingbasically to make money, to make
a profit in order it's a farmingpractice in order to keep your
taxes much lower than what theywould be otherwise, property
type.
The second reason why isbecause.
There's no dwelling.
There's no house on this 85acres, and in order for us to
(06:35):
qualify to get a building permitfrom the county, we have to have
a farming operation thatproduces a certain dollar amount
gross dollar.
For at least two years in a rowor three out of five years in
order to get the county toapprove a building permit for us
to build a house on our ownproperty.
(06:57):
Yep.
It's, there's a lot of.
There's several differentavenues, if you will, for
someone that has exclusive farmuse land to get a building
permit for a dwelling.
But our property, because theway it's been divided up over
the years and there's houses onother, parcels that used to be
(07:17):
part of the big parcel.
The only option we have is thisoption.
And so that was our, really ourmain goal and our main reason
for getting started with farmingthe land.
Jennifer (07:30):
So once you have the house built, do you have to
continue farming?
Redmond Hills Farm (07:37):
It's, yeah.
It's still an exclusive farm usewe have to, yeah, we have to con
continue some kind of farmingoperation there, whatever it is
gonna be in order to keep thetax deferral status.
Yeah.
And Quail's kind of perfect forthat.
Jennifer (07:51):
Yeah, it's just interesting that there's, you
would think that people wouldstart their businesses, oh, I'm
just gonna sell some eggs, andthen it just morphed from there.
But in a lot of cases, there'sother reasons.
Redmond Hills Farm (08:06):
It's a need.
Yeah.
There's a need there to do that.
Jennifer (08:09):
Yep.
Yep.
Okay.
So now you've got, you're doingCornish out on pasture, right?
And you're doing the quail inthe barn.
So tell us the business side ofit.
How did you decide to take thebirds to the business level?
Redmond Hills Farm (08:27):
As we read more and more about quail,
they're excellent egg producers.
You get one egg from a hand eachday.
We thought let's introduce eggsto the, our community.
Tell'em, try to get the word outthat there's quail eggs.
A lot of people on our end overhere don't know what quail.
Or how we can use, you knowwhat?
(08:48):
That we can even eat quail eggs.
They think quail are the firstthing they say when we tell them
that we're raising quail.
They think it's a mountain quailthat you see outside.
Oh, they're so cute.
They run around our backyardwith a little, tough in the, on
the head.
And I'm like, no, those aremountain quail.
That's not the same, but it'ssame family, but just not, not
the same bird.
So we explained to them, whatthat is.
(09:09):
And but the more we talk topeople, the more we realize that
there, there is some interestout there for eggs.
So that's how we started gettingbirds first for eggs.
So we bought a few hatchingeggs.
We decided to hatch our own.
I started really small at home.
The NR 60 or what was that?
NR.
(09:30):
I forget what that is.
That little in the round one.
The nature, right?
Yeah.
Nature.
There you go.
And so I started with that and.
Ven, not ven pop, vanilla popand pops or something.
Those little round, smallincubators that aren't really, I
didn't get the Maddie Coops fromthat'cause I heard that one's
pretty good.
But I started small and I didpretty good actually for the
(09:51):
first few times I go, this, Ican do this.
'cause I had chicken eggsbefore, so I'm like, this is
okay.
I did pretty good.
I was getting good hatch rates.
So that's how we started ourfirst.
Little batch of birds.
And then I start reading lookingup some videos on how to build
cages.
Of course a little bit before Istarted hatching eggs, I saw
(10:12):
Terry's videos on YouTube thatgave me great ideas how to build
your own cages.
We ordered some fence, some hardhardware or hard wear cloth and
everything that we need.
Yeah, there you go.
From fence wire.com or Amazon.
And I built my own cages just bywatching videos.
And so I.
(10:34):
I bought the shelves, the wiremetal shelves that you can get
for usually people use forpantries.
And then I built my cages and Iattached shelves, and then Ray
and I built some wooden onestogether and then put cages on
those.
And so that's how we built ourlittle.
Collection of cages and birdsand it went from there.
(10:54):
And pretty soon we startedthinking, wow, we have too many
roosters.
We gotta do something withroosters.
And we start calling around andsee how we can get'em.
There's different rules for thathere in Oregon too.
We can't just process'em out ofour house and sell'em.
It's gotta go through a licensedfacility.
There's all kinds of rules andregulations with that.
(11:14):
So that's how that started withthat.
And we pretty soon wereprocessing roosters.
And selling them at, we startedgoing to the farmer's market.
With our pasture raised chicken.
So we introduced quail and nowwe take, quail to the farmer's
market.
And it grew from there just fromextra boosters.
And so that's how that startedfrom a business perspective, we
(11:36):
have, so we have a second, wehave another business too, that
we've had for 12 years.
And so we have an idea about,what it takes to get a business
started and get your.
Get your name in out there andall the licensing that's
involved and insurance andeverything else.
We just knew that in order toget to the goal that we need to
get to, to meet the gross incomerequirements in order to get a
(11:57):
building permit for our housethat we needed to get to build
this business and really put itout there, that's what that's
has been our driver from day oneis to get to that point where we
can report to the county thatwe've earned what we need to so
that we can get a buildingpermit to build a dwelling up on
our farm.
Jennifer (12:17):
Wow.
I'm in Tennessee and we just, wecan just process the quail and
sell'em out the back door,essentially, like endless
supplies of them because they'rein,
Carey (12:28):
I was gonna say, yeah, they have the USDA has
exemptions for people under Xnumber amount that you don't
have to go through.
It is crazy to me.
Yeah.
That some states require morethan what the feds do.
Redmond Hills Farm (12:45):
Yeah.
So I should have said, yeah herein Oregon, you, we could,
there's a limit.
We could process ourselves andsell up to 1000 birds from
directly from the farm.
Yeah, that means folks wouldhave to come to the farm and buy
those, directly from us.
If you wanna sell to arestaurant, if you wanna sell to
a catering company, if you wannasell to the public at a farmer's
(13:08):
market.
The birds have to be processedby a licensed processing
facility.
State licensed processingfacility, which is the place we
use is also USDA inspected.
So that's the deal there.
We can sell up to a thousandbirds directly from our
property.
Okay.
If people come up there and get'em.
Yeah.
See
Carey (13:27):
In Alabama since COVID, they made this ex exception
where you could actually makedeliveries.
So it didn't have to be fromthey didn't have to come to your
farm.
That'd be great.
During that time, they allowedfor deliveries.
And I think that was USDA, somaybe Oregon.
(13:48):
Might allow for deliveries.
Redmond Hills Farm (13:51):
Yeah.
We didn't get, I haven't foundthat at all.
We've talked to the state and tothe processors and to the the
state agricultural folks here,and that's never been even
mentioned,
Jennifer (14:01):
yeah.
Yeah.
And a thousand quail goes reallyquick too.
Redmond Hills Farm (14:05):
It does.
And plus, go ahead.
Carey (14:08):
I found the best luck reading those rules and stuff on
the website.
Because you would be surprisedat the amount of rules and
exemptions that those chargedwith enforcing have no clue they
exist.
Redmond Hills Farm (14:26):
Yeah.
I can see that happening.
Yeah.
Carey (14:28):
So
Redmond Hills Farm (14:29):
yeah, it's delivery would be a great option
actually, because, you we'reNPIP certified.
We don't, I don't want a lot ofpeople coming up to the farm.
Not a lot of traffic.
That's a risk.
Property too, is we don't havean address for our farm
property.
So in order to get people upthere, yeah, they have to go
(14:50):
across another part of theproperty.
There's three other houses upthere with three different
addresses, but our propertydoesn't have an address.
So trying to get people up thereYeah.
Would be a major, paint a wrongdirection if they follow GPS.
Yeah.
Oh my.
It gets'em lot end up at mysister's house end.
(15:10):
That's a different story.
Jennifer (15:13):
Okay, so you guys are selling the pasture chicken.
Are you using Cornish for that?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:19):
Yeah.
Jennifer (15:20):
Okay.
And then you're selling thequail meat and the eggs and all
of that's at the farmer'smarket?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:27):
Yep.
Yes.
Yes.
And we offer delivery.
Jennifer (15:30):
Are you still doing chicks too?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:32):
I
Jennifer (15:32):
know
Redmond Hills Farm (15:32):
at one point you were doing chicks.
We are doing chicks.
We recently, within what?
The last first of the year?
Last year, actually last year.
Last year, we started deliveringto our local farm stores chicks.
We have three different they'recalled Wilco here in Oregon.
There's three different onesthat have called us from
different cities that wantchicks.
(15:53):
So we've been hatching, maybe wemake deliveries every two weeks
of about 150 chicks.
50 chicks to each.
Wilco.
So that's been kinda a neatlittle, yeah, it's kinda
exciting because it's, we're gotsome business going there.
Jennifer (16:10):
Is it hard to get your foot in the door to do that?
Redmond Hills Farm (16:14):
Not too hard, not really.
We just made, I made some phonecalls out to the farm stores.
We have, there's Wilco stores,there's Coastal, there's tractor
supply, so there's several.
And so I just started calling.
And, we go into this Wilco herein McMinnville all the time.
And so we talk, we talked tothem when we went in there and
yeah, it wasn't too hard.
Actually they do require thatyou're NPIP certified, so that
(16:36):
helped.
Yeah.
In that aspect.
Yeah.
So that's why we keep ourcertification so we can do that.
And that's all they wanted ofus.
And they asked if we werecertified and they didn't even
come to our farm or anything.
They just, he came to the house?
To the house.
He came to the house, but notthe farm.
Yeah.
We spoke to'em in person.
And that's all it took.
And pretty soon and word got outto the other Wilcos in different
(16:57):
cities we drive, what is it?
Vancouver, and an hour and ahalf, about an hour and a half
to, to deliver chicks on everyother Sun Saturday.
But they word of mouth is whatreally got us a business.
They just sent an email to allWilco saying that we had chicks
and they sell.
The next day, they sell over,like we've gone there the
following day and they're allgone and they've told us that
(17:19):
they sell in one day.
50 chicks will just go likethat.
They're gone.
So far it's doing really well.
Jennifer (17:25):
Then you say, next time order 75.
Redmond Hills Farm (17:29):
I just need more birds.
I didn't wanna go over my headbecause there's only two of us
and it is a lot of work.
You know those poop trays, youknow how that goes.
So we're constantly cleaningpoop trays and wa and waterers
and so it would be nice, but atthe same time, I don't know if I
want that much more.
But yeah, we can do more.
We've talked about it before.
(17:50):
If we really wanted to ramp itup, I think we really could.
We had one of the storesactually call us recently, and
they wanted to up their order toa hundred chicks.
It's from 50, and so we starteddoing that.
But if.
My preference would be, I thinkour preference would be at some
point to hatch chicks and sellchicks and not necessarily
continue with raising Cornish,especially non GMO.
(18:13):
No soy.
It's expensive.
It's really expensive and it'sheck of a lot of work, as you
guys know.
So well, I would really like,and we're supposed to be
retired.
So at some point, I think itwould be good if we could just
hatch chicks and sell chicks.
I would love that.
We've got everything to do it.
Jennifer (18:30):
Oh yeah.
You get, but you're notprocessing, right?
You're taking them to aprocessor,
Redmond Hills Farm (18:35):
right?
That's correct.
Jennifer (18:36):
Yeah.
But you have, obviously predatorissues probably right.
Because I see you post aboutbears and stuff.
Redmond Hills Farm (18:44):
Oh, cougars and bears.
We have it all.
Coyotes.
Owls, we had a rescue owl thatgot tangled up in one of our
nets, our Cornish nets.
'cause we have to have thenetting.
We have a mountain pasture onthe, surrounded with electrical
fence.
But we have to have them insmaller areas where we can put a
large netting over it becausewhen we didn't do that, we lost
(19:05):
every night we were losing abird to an owl.
Or more than one L.
So yeah, we have cougar, we havebear, we have everything.
Our quail are inside a barnthat's made for, we made it for
that purpose.
It's got the the vents or thefans.
It, we've got the LED lighting,16 hours a day.
We on program programmedlighting, so they get 14 hours
(19:28):
of light every day.
They've got the, big man doorswhere they can get air and once
in a while we'll go there andopen the man doors so they get
the fresh air.
So that works out good for thequail and they're protected that
way'cause they're not outside.
But our Cornish, we really hadto do the extra work with the
netting and the electricalwiring, all that to make sure
they're protected.
(19:49):
And Ray usually takes, he takescare of the Cornish and I take
care of the quail.
That's how we divvy up.
We help each other, but that'sour focus.
Jennifer (19:58):
Yeah.
I'd rather do the quail over theCornish too.
Redmond Hills Farm (20:02):
Yeah.
They're messy.
They're nasty.
They're nasty.
Jennifer (20:04):
They are are you doing anything with all of that manure
to be profitable?
Or No?
No, that's a
Redmond Hills Farm (20:14):
that, no, not right now.
But that is, that's somethingyou definitely can get into if
we wanted to, yep.
Jennifer (20:19):
We have a whole style.
You can have your own mount poopmore.
That's what we call ours isMount poop more.
We have ours.
Carey (20:26):
Yeah.
People actually get that to usefor their flower beds, raised
gardens, that kind of stuff.
That's a good thing that you canuse for your old feed sacks.
Redmond Hills Farm (20:38):
And it's pretty hot.
So how long does it, is it likechicken manure or how long do
you, does it need to cool off?
Jennifer (20:43):
So we we put ours out and then I get the free tree
trimmings from the tree cuttersand they dump in a pile off to
the side and our field.
And then every time we putscoops of.
The quail poop out, we just adda scoop of the tree, trimmings
the brown, and that makes thebrowns right.
And then anything else, from thebrooders or whatnot goes in that
(21:06):
pile too.
And then we just turn it over.
But we, we generate a lot here.
We have a literal mountain of itand it sit for about 10 months
and then I'll run out of last,the last cycle.
From the garden and then I'llstart using this one and we'll,
so we always have two going, onewe're using in the garden and
one that's more fresh, if thatmakes sense.
Redmond Hills Farm (21:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's good.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
We definitely could use that.
We have a manure too on theother side of our property where
my in-laws live.
'cause they're right adjacent toours.
So it's, they're like living onthe property the way it's
divided.
They're actually on.
Outside on their own area, butshe has goats, so we have a lot
of compost from.
(21:49):
So there's a pile over there,and then there's a pile over
here of our quail manure.
But we definitely could, wedefinitely use it that for
compost.
Jennifer (21:57):
Yeah.
You can sell it hot to somebodywho's going to compost it, but
yeah, if you just let it sit.
'Cause I've been, it'sspringtime working on my garden
and stuff, and we're bringing itover and putting it in my beds
and gosh, it's just full ofworms and it's just so soft and
fluffy.
That's good stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I have people ask me,they're like, do you sell it?
(22:19):
And I'm like, oh no, I'm justgrowing my potatoes right now.
Just use it.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (22:25):
We've had one or.
Maybe two people ask if we wereselling it too.
But yeah, now we have, with thecattle up there, we they're
stomping it down like they'regoing through the middle of it.
Yeah, we don't just about everyday, yeah.
Jennifer (22:39):
Yeah.
You might consider piling thatup and that would be an easy
source of just a money pileright there, that's a good
Redmond Hills Farm (22:47):
idea.
Yeah.
Jennifer (22:48):
Definitely
Redmond Hills Farm (22:49):
put in a little like fish worms.
Yeah.
Good fishing worms.
Exactly.
Mine, maybe some pellets aroundor something so the cows don't
get to
Jennifer (22:57):
it.
And we have black soldierly thatcome naturally here.
So they they work it for uspretty good too.
Oh yeah.
Do you have those there?
I don't
Redmond Hills Farm (23:10):
know.
I don't think we do.
I haven't seen'em.
Oh, okay.
No.
Oh yeah, those, I'm not
Jennifer (23:16):
you.
You're golden Black soldier fry.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:18):
I don't think, I'll have to look.
I don't think we have.
Yeah, just a regular houseflies.
Yeah,
Carey (23:24):
you can use, you can get some of those off of eBay.
And go ahead and start.
You amount poop more.
Yeah.
And then dump'em in it, and theywill go through it and do
everything you need them to doand they will greatly multiply.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:43):
Wow.
And they're good snacks for thebirds too, right?
The Oh yeah.
Jennifer (23:47):
I, my ducks, my duck's free range, and they're always
over there digging through mountpoop more looking for stuff, and
I know that's what they'refinding over there.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:56):
That's definitely another money source
for sure.
If
Jennifer (23:58):
you wanna get into that.
And then I hear you got a newcontract too, so you're moving
into restaurant food too now.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:07):
Oh
Jennifer (24:08):
yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:09):
Ray got that with the catering company.
Yeah, we got a catering company.
Yeah.
So tell him them, Ray, how youhe's the one, they reached out
to him.
You don't have to tell us allyour secrets,
Jennifer (24:18):
but we just wanna give people ideas.
No secrets.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:23):
They.
They reached out to us,actually.
Yeah.
And so that was, that's part ofthe whole getting your name out
there and doing social medialeft and right.
Word of mouth.
Word of mouth.
And maybe at the farmer'smarket, maybe that I, that might
have helped.
I can't remember.
How did they find our name?
Do you remember how they saidthat?
Or website.
We have a website too, so that'shelpful.
(24:43):
And I think that's how theyfound us.
But yeah, word of mouth.
So he's using our chicken rightnow.
He, at one point he wants somequail, but he said for now he
is, he wants some Cornish hens.
And so we're gonna try raisingsome Cornish hens for him to the
smaller size.
So he can have it in his, he hismenu, he has a real large
(25:03):
catering.
Business that he does for thewineries here.
We have a lot of wineries herein our county.
And so that's what he does.
And so that's kinda exciting.
Hopefully it all goes through.
Sometimes you know, you don'tknow, people say they, they want
to work with you and then youdon't hear from them.
But he's been a pretty, he tooksome of our birds, so hopefully
he continues, it's some, it'ssometimes you just gotta, like
(25:24):
you said, roll with it.
It doesn't always work just likeyou think it's going to, but
you, it, you gotta do it or elseyou gotta try.
Jennifer (25:33):
You gotta try and then you gotta try.
Adapt a little bit.
Redmond Hills Farm (25:36):
Yep.
Jennifer (25:37):
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (25:38):
adapt.
Jennifer (25:40):
Adapt.
Yeah.
That's like the foam for me, orthe feed for Carrie.
We didn't wake up one day andsay, Hey, I think I'm gonna make
foam today.
It was, I need foam and I can'tfind it anywhere.
So I adapted.
Redmond Hills Farm (25:53):
Yeah.
Yep.
And that's, you gotta do that'show we, that's how you learn
too.
You just improvise and you adaptand, and overcome.
Okay.
Jennifer (26:03):
So now I'm gonna let Carrie go, but I, on his rabbit
hole stuff, he's, I've beenteasing him for 30 minutes now.
So tell us about drilling yourwell and capturing rainwater in
Oregon.
Because we are just like besideourselves here about it.
Redmond Hills Farm (26:21):
So is it that where you guys are or you
can just, if you need a you canjust have a well drilled and
yeah, we
Jennifer (26:27):
had a well drilled over at the greenhouse a couple
years ago and hooked it up.
Nobody cared.
Carey (26:31):
So like where we live and I'm like a mile from the city
limits.
If you want to capture rainwateror drill a well or anything like
that, there's literally nobodythat governs that they could
care less.
Now, if you wanna build a housethey're gonna wanna look at your
(26:54):
plans and you'll need to pullsome permits for that.
Unless you are building ityourself, and if you yourself
are doing your own constructionand have permits or have
blueprints, then they'll let youpull your own.
But yeah, it's and there'snobody riding around looking to
(27:15):
see how many birds you process.
Nope.
When I asked my USDA person,hey.
Alabama, do we go by the federalguidelines for the farm
exemption or do y'all havesomething else?
And she was like, no, that's, Imean that we don't have anything
specific.
(27:35):
I said, okay, so how does thatreally work?
And she looks at me straight inthe face and says that really
depends on your bookkeeping.
Redmond Hills Farm (27:48):
Wow.
Carey (27:49):
And I said, yes, ma'am.
I appreciate your time.
You have a wonderful day.
Yeah.
Thanks for coming.
Yep.
Redmond Hills Farm (27:56):
Not Oregon.
Oregon's a beautiful greenstate, but yeah, it's got,
they've got some funny rules.
Everything here's regulatedpermits and approvals and
inspections, literallyeverything.
So there's actually, they wanttheir money.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
There's actually a database thatyou can find online.
(28:17):
It's open public informationabout wells, water wells drilled
in Oregon.
It'll tell you how many gallonsper minute they, they pump.
So they keep track of all ofthis information.
And to get a well drilled, youhave to get a permit first, and
then once you get a permit, youget somebody to come out and
(28:37):
actually drill the well.
The casing, all that stuff hasgotta be inspected.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So everything is and if you're,even if you're building a house
yourself out here, especially ifit's on farmland, you have to
pull all the same permits that acontractor would have to pull
and inspections and all thatstuff too.
(28:58):
So you asked about, yeah, it'sexpensive too.
Oh my gosh.
You asked about rainwater, wewere talking about this earlier,
but essentially the way thestate of Oregon looks at
rainwater is that when it hitsthe ground, it belongs to the
every person in the state ofOregon, essentially.
We have.
A large barn we have two now,but they, the large barn has big
(29:23):
water tanks on at one end, andso the water, hits the metal
roof, comes down to the gutters,and it goes into the water
tanks.
You can store water that way.
Okay.
You don't have to have anyspecial permit or anything like
that.
But.
We were looking at digging out apond up there because we have a,
there's a stream that flows onone side of the property, and we
(29:45):
could dig out a nice pond overthere for, for agricultural use,
for the, for livestock whatever.
But in order to do that, you'resupposed to get ahold of the
water master.
There's actually a water master.
There is a water master for eacharea.
Yep.
Yes.
It's
Carey (30:04):
So this is my biggest question.
So in the state of Oregon, ifyou capture it before it hits
the ground, then it's yours.
But once it hits the ground, itbelongs to everybody in the
state.
Yes.
Is that right?
Okay.
That is correct.
So every month when they sendyou a water bill, do they also
(30:26):
send you a check?
Because you would think if youknow the water belongs to each
of y'all as well as everyoneelse in Oregon.
They should take how manygallons were used through their
system and calculate the mathout and send you your residuals,
I would think.
(30:46):
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
Alaska does that with the oil.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (30:50):
Yeah.
Jennifer (30:51):
Okay.
So what does this Water Masterdo?
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (30:54):
so the water masters, there's one for this.
I don't know, he's probably, Ithink he's the only water master
for the whole western side ofthe state.
So there's not very many ofthem.
But he actually told me too, onetime, you're supposed to submit
an application for, if you'regonna dig out a pond, you have
to include in that where thepond is gonna be, how the
(31:16):
water's gonna get to it, whereit's gonna come from.
Running down the hill orwhatever.
And you have to pay like a$700fee for this application.
Just to dig a hole on yourproperty to capture water.
And technically if you don't doit and they find out that you've
got this pond, they can come outthere and, make you fill it in
or whatever.
(31:37):
But he did tell me himself, he'sthere's there are people out
there that dig their own pondsand I don't have the time or the
resources to get to everyproperty.
So
Carey (31:47):
that should be, yeah, so do they just have people that
ride around and, oh, there's apond.
Let me look and see if theiraddress is in our database.
Right?
Nope.
Nope.
We're gonna send them a fine.
Lemme keep riding down.
They'd never find ours
Redmond Hills Farm (31:59):
if we had one because they, they have to
find it by helicopter.
That's the only way they'd findit.
But,
Carey (32:04):
geez, I'd like to know how you get this job as a water
master.
Redmond Hills Farm (32:08):
I don't
Carey (32:09):
even want to know, honestly.
That, that seems that has to bea very lucrative position.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (32:17):
Powerful position.
I dunno, man.
Carey (32:19):
Both direct deposit and.
In envelopes.
Jennifer (32:25):
So once you have the can you use it for whatever you
want?
Or are there restrictions onthat too?
Redmond Hills Farm (32:31):
There are wells for agriculture and there
are wells for personal use, likeyour home, your home, your barns
or whatever.
So the well that we had drilled,we're planning on building a
house right there, and plus wejust put up a new barn and we
needed water to the barn.
Once you've drilled the if wewanted to tap off of that well
and run irrigation we could.
(32:52):
But it's not something thatwe're gonna be doing up there.
You can't really grow anythingon our property except oak
trees, fir trees, and poison oakeverywhere.
You need goats.
Yeah.
That's blackberry bushes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We used to have about 400, 500goats roaming the property, but
not so much anymore.
And the, we lost a lot too withthe cougars out there.
(33:15):
Okay.
Yeah, that's another story, but,
Jennifer (33:19):
You guys are navigating a lot of issues.
I think that majority of us justdon't even comprehend because we
had the well dug a couple yearsago and we have a pond that was
dug when we built the house and.
It just ne never occurred toanybody here that anybody would
(33:39):
care what we were doing.
Redmond Hills Farm (33:40):
Yeah.
It's actually called waterrights out here.
So you'll sometimes you'll see aproperty for sale out here and
the listing will say that it haswater rights included.
So those water rights come fromthat application to the water
master.
Once you're in, once you'reapproved and you've got a pond
or what have you, then you getwater rights.
(34:01):
To the right to capture thatwater from a stream or or down
the hill into a pond.
And at any rate, yeah.
Yeah.
They, oh, wow.
Gotta, there's, yeah.
It's not as simple as, oh, youhave property, go build a house.
And some people still don'trealize, they think that we, all
they gotta do is go buy a pieceof property and.
Homesteaded and away they go andit doesn't, it's not that easy.
(34:24):
They see how come you guys don'tlive on your farm?
Yeah, we get that ass spot.
We want to, but, okay.
Jennifer (34:30):
We have a few minutes, so tell us you told us already,
but tell the listeners your hoaslash incubator story.
Redmond Hills Farm (34:39):
Okay.
We are having our barn built, soin the meantime, we.
Put our hatchers, our cabinethatchers in the garage and our
brooder in the garage.
We have a three stacked GFQBrooders, just three of'em
stacked up.
And the two hatching timecabinet ha incubators and
hatchers.
(34:59):
So we put those in the garage sowe can hatch our birds.
And then when they're at three,three weeks or so, two and a
half, three weeks, we weremoving them over to the garage.
Garage or to the.
To the farm, once they hatchedand they were able to go out, we
put'em out there, out intoAviaries at the time where we
had a few aviaries at the farm.
And so that's how we're movingthe birds out there.
(35:22):
While we had our farm built.
When, I don't know how maybe ourgarage or door was open when a
day or some, I don't know howthis happened, but somebody got
wind in the neighborhood that wewere hatching birds.
That we are breeding birds inour garage.
And they, I don't know if thebird flew.
They got scared.
They called the county.
We heard from the county, wereceived a letter stating that
(35:44):
there's been a complaint.
There were breeding birds in ourgarage.
No one ever talked to us.
We would've, we would've, hadthey come up to us and asked us,
we would've told'em, our birdsare probably safer.
Because they're NPIP certified,we have'em tested every six
months.
They're probably safer than thebirds out in your backyard.
So if you're that scared or thatafraid you shouldn't go outside,
(36:06):
you know those birdies are gonnahurt you out there.
But had they talked to us andthey didn't, so we, we had a,
take all our birds, ourincubators up to the farm.
What happened though?
It was timing.
Good timing, because at thatpoint our barn was already
getting finished, so we're ableto stall it like a month and
then move them out there.
They also told us, and then theychanged their rules on their.
(36:30):
HOA, what do you call it again?
The rules and regulations.
Rules and regulations.
Where specifically now, theyupdated it and sent everybody an
updated copy.
Now it says, no quail or livebirds allowed live eggs.
Live eggs.
No quail or live eggs of anykind.
So I'm thinking no live eggs.
Does that mean we can't eateggs?
(36:50):
We can't have eggs in ourrefrigerator?
Because I know there are groupsout there that hatch'em.
Carey (36:55):
I wouldn't buy any free range ones.
They might get you for that.
Yeah.
It's
Redmond Hills Farm (36:58):
A, it's a joke with us now.
We'll come home from the farmwith a basket of eggs in the
truck.
And we're walking across ourfront yard.
We live in a neighborhood andthere's nosy neighbors over
here.
Started this.
So we're like, oh, here we are.
We're back at it with our liveeggs going in the house.
We came back from processing onetime with our basket, with the
(37:19):
what do you call'em again,honey?
The, where we carry our thebirds up to processing the
cages.
Oh, the,
Carey (37:24):
The transport cages.
Redmond Hills Farm (37:25):
The transport cages we had on the
back of our trailer and weparked, we stopped at the house
first before we headed.
To the farm and the birds hadalready been processed.
They were just empty cages,empty crates, crates.
So we got a call from the citysaying that someone's
complaining that we're back atit again.
We raising live birds.
And that's what she said.
(37:45):
We're back at it again.
Back at it.
And so now that's a joke betweenus.
We're back at it.
We're just outta curiosity
Jennifer (37:51):
or like you in a condo or a house.
We're a house.
Redmond Hills Farm (37:55):
A house.
Yeah.
They, we this whole neighborhoodwas built about a couple years
ago, two or three years ago.
So there's people out therewatching every little thing we
do.
So now when we get home, we'relike, oh, we're back out there
together.
Jennifer (38:07):
I think I'd bring all those transport cages out to the
front yard and pressure wash'emout there if it was me.
Carey (38:13):
Yeah, I think I would do something like that and next
time I got a call, I would say,will you please come to my
house?
I would like for you to come tomy house so you can see what's
going on and let them see theempty transport baskets.
Then I would say, okay, now thisperson over here, I would like
(38:36):
to file harassing communicationcharges against them because
they are harassing me by doingthis.
Bra
Redmond Hills Farm (38:45):
we walked over, we actually, I got
complaints that they made.
And along with that was thispicture that this neighbor took
of our truck and trailer in thedriveway with the empty crates
on the trailer.
So after I got that, we wentdown to her house and confronted
her outside and she said thatfriendly, not in a bad way, she
(39:06):
was friendlier than I was.
But I walked over and I said,she was outside.
I said, I heard that you were.
Con you had some concerns.
I said, I wish you would've cometalk to us.
'cause we would've explained toyou that there's no fear.
You're safe.
There's no breeding.
There's no breeding, there's nobad birds.
Here.
You are not gonna get anything,blowing your way.
(39:27):
I said, I wish you would'vetalked to us first, and then we
could've, settled your concernsand she's oh, okay.
I said, next time I would'vegave you a dozen
Carey (39:33):
eggs.
Eggs that weren't live.
Redmond Hills Farm (39:35):
Free.
Free unlive eggs.
Jennifer (39:38):
Yeah.
Maybe they want you to eatthose.
What is it?
Just egg out of the vegansection in the dairy.
Is it a carton of the powder?
Redmond Hills Farm (39:46):
The, oh, The milk.
The liquid form?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe that's what they wanted toeat.
We can have powdered eggs, Idunno.
Carey (39:55):
But that was freeze dried from what could have been a free
range egg at some point in timeand.
There's a whole group, there's awhole, you never know Facebook
group about hatching free rangeeggs that you get from the
store.
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (40:09):
I
Carey (40:09):
see.
I would wanna know what kind ofeggs she has in her
refrigerator.
They may be live too.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:15):
And how can she prove that they're not?
That's
Carey (40:17):
right.
That's a HOA sign waiting tohappen.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:21):
The thing is too, it's, there's a lot of kids
in this neighborhood.
Young kids.
And when I was in school, whichwas a long time ago, but I know
kids still do this, theyincubate and hatch eggs at
school or at home as a schoolproject.
Carey (40:35):
We did it in my classroom this year and last year.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:39):
And kids do it at home all the time.
So one of my arguments to themwas, so are you saying the kids
at school can't hatch an egg, alittle chick at their house?
They'll take it on a case bycase basis.
Okay, so we gotta watch those.
All of you out there, watchthose HOAs.
Carey (40:55):
I'd be like, I'm just hatching some out for everybody
in the neighborhood.
Redmond Hills Farm (41:00):
Yeah, there you go.
I should just go on and hanghand out.
Free eggs to everybody.
There you
Jennifer (41:04):
go.
So well, back to the businessthing.
I told one of my kids justyesterday, it's if being
self-employed and running yourown business was easy, everybody
would be doing it.
Redmond Hills Farm (41:15):
That's right.
Yeah, it's a lot of hard work, alot of work, a lot of challenges
sometimes with people, sometimesjust in business general.
Yeah.
Jennifer (41:23):
And add adaptations.
I think that was a good word forthe day.
I appreciate you guys joining usand explaining your journey.
Making
Redmond Hills Farm (41:34):
a well.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, it's been fun though.
It's not all bad.
It's a lot of fun and I'm gladwe're doing it.
It's good work.
We're retired, but it's alsogood physical work.
It feels good.
We're happy at the end of theday.
We're tired, but it's a goodwork.
So it's not a, it's not all bad.
No.
Rabbit hole thing.
Carey (41:53):
If you enjoy what you do, it makes a thing.
It's, it's a thing.
Yeah.
Jennifer (41:58):
Yeah.
What'd you say, Ray?
Carey (42:00):
Carrie didn't get to his rabbit hole.
Jennifer (42:02):
Oh did with the,
Carey (42:04):
I just.
Y I, if it's everybody's water,then why are they charging me
for it?
I, I would, if I had a water Godin my state like that, I, that
would come and look in my pond.
I don't know.
I would have a field day withit.
Jennifer (42:22):
It's water master, not water.
God.
Carey (42:25):
They act like they're, they act like the other though.
Hope I didn't offend anybodywith that.
If so, carry@poultrynerds.com.
Jennifer (42:33):
All right.
All right.
We'll talk to you guys later.
Carey (42:35):
Alright, thanks.
Welcome back poultry nerd.
(00:01):
So we've been sitting herechatting with our guests today
already, and it's going to be adoozy I think.
So this is the second episode inour next.
Level nerds for whatever reasonthat tongue ties me.
And so today we have Bernadineand Ray from Redmond Hills Farm
(00:23):
in Oregon.
Welcome guys.
Redmond Hills Farm (00:27):
Hey there.
Thanks for having us.
Jennifer (00:28):
Yeah.
Hello there.
Hey and Carey's here today.
He's being
Carey (00:32):
Yep.
I'm here today.
I was not able to attend aprevious recording session.
Jennifer (00:39):
Yep.
You, we told him you were busywhen we recorded yesterday on
delivering feed and stuff.
So sometimes business happens,it
Carey (00:48):
does.
Jennifer (00:49):
And that's what kind of what the purpose of our
series is taking these hobbiesthat we started with to the next
level and turning it into kindof a business.
So you guys have done that now,you've, you retired recently,
right?
Redmond Hills Farm (01:08):
We
Jennifer (01:08):
did retire from outside of the house, working
outside of the home.
Now we're
Redmond Hills Farm (01:12):
busy with our farm.
Jennifer (01:14):
Which, which took it more time?
The other job?
Or this job?
Redmond Hills Farm (01:19):
Oh, physically this job, by far.
Yeah, there was a time where Iwas doing both.
I didn't have much of a lifethen, so I was back and forth to
the farm and to work.
But so now, yeah, we'rephysically busier than ever
which is, I guess could be good.
But we're supposed to be retiredbut we're still working.
Jennifer (01:39):
So tell us what, tell us about your farm, where you
are, all that good stuff that weneed to know.
Redmond Hills Farm (01:45):
It starts with my husband Ray's family, so
I'll let him kinda explain thatpart, honey.
Go ahead.
So we're in McMinville, Oregon.
And that's about an hour or sosouth of Portland.
Salem is the capital here.
So we're between Portland andSalem on the west side of the
state.
We're about a 40 minute drive tothe coast.
(02:06):
The farm is originally it waspurchased by my grandparents,
1957.
It's right outside of town here,and it was about 600 acres at
the time.
It's been divided up over theyears.
It stayed in the family for themost part.
But we.
Got 85 acres of the property,what, two years ago now or so?
Terrific.
Two and a half years ago,something like that.
(02:28):
So it's been in the family for along time.
My grandfather, when he wasalive, raised cattle and sheep.
After he died in the eighties,my grandmother stayed on the
farm as long as she could, butthe property was leased out for
sheep and and hay and that sortof thing.
So once we got R 85 acres, we.
Have to keep this property infarm deferral as far as taxes
(02:50):
go.
Which means we have to farm itand we have to do a farming
practice that the intent is tomake a profit is basically how
it's worded.
So we dec we looked at a bunchof different things.
My parents live up on the farmstill.
They raise goats, they haveNubians and they raised Spanish
goats for years and years.
We looked at doing that.
(03:10):
We looked at all kinds ofdifferent things.
We looked at cattle and so wejust decided that we would go
with.
Pasture raised non GMO, no soychicken.
And I can't remember now at whatpoint we decided to go with
quail to go with that, butthat's how we got started with
the property.
(03:30):
We, we.
We are both now retired,Bernadine retired last year from
the county and so we're bothretired from, outside farm work.
We never really planned on beingfarmers, honestly.
Here we're, even though he wasin the family for a long time
and it has been in the familyfor a long time.
It's all good though, and that'swhat we're doing currently.
I just started reading, Istarted reading Facebook and
(03:51):
looking at I've always, I've hadchickens in the past.
And I had all kinds of chickens.
We used to live at another fiveacres away from town a few years
ago.
And at that point I hadchickens.
So I liked poultry and I wasfamiliar with poultry night, but
then I started reading aboutquail and I'm like, huh, what's
quail?
And so at the time we're tryingto farm our land, then that's.
(04:12):
When I started really digginginto what quail was.
Told Ray, I'm like, Hey maybe wecould do quail along with the
chicken.
And people seemed, and Iexplained to'em what it was,
and, for we can grow for meat,we can grow for eggs.
And so that's how that started.
Just an idea popped in my headlike, so here we are.
Jennifer (04:29):
So chicken's like the gateway drug right to farming.
And now you've added quail.
And then I see you added yetanother item, what, two weeks
ago?
Redmond Hills Farm (04:40):
We've got the Longhorn cattle up there
now.
Yeah.
Those actually, those belong toa friend of ours.
They're we had'em bring them upthere because we needed cattle
on the property to help.
With the regenerative farmingpart piece of it, but also, to
help keep the grass down andstuff up there.
Our property is pretty much alla hillside and it's a lot of
rock and it's perfect forgrazing animals.
(05:02):
And so we needed some help withthat.
And he's got a bunch oflonghorns and brought'em up
there.
So a win-win that way.
Carey (05:10):
That.
That to, I like the way thoselook.
Redmond Hills Farm (05:14):
Like
Carey (05:14):
to me, I just like the look that they have.
Yeah I don't know if they haveany other practical use.
I just like the way they look.
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (05:23):
They keep the grass down.
They keep the grass down, buttheir meat is leaner than
regular beef or told, we haven'ttried it yet, but they tell us
that it's leaner and it's abetter meat, healthier.
But they're definitely prettythey're really.
Beautiful animals, I think.
Jennifer (05:40):
So you, so based on what I just heard, you decided
just to move into the businessaspect for the farming credit,
for the land.
Redmond Hills Farm (05:50):
So in order to keep.
The land in what's called farmdeferral here for tax purposes.
You have to be, you have to farmit, so it's in what's called an
exclusive farm use zone.
There's different zones.
There's forestry zones andthere's, other zones in the
state.
(06:10):
But exclusive farm use zones,you have to farm it.
You have to do somethingbasically to make money, to make
a profit in order it's a farmingpractice in order to keep your
taxes much lower than what theywould be otherwise, property
type.
The second reason why isbecause.
There's no dwelling.
There's no house on this 85acres, and in order for us to
(06:35):
qualify to get a building permitfrom the county, we have to have
a farming operation thatproduces a certain dollar amount
gross dollar.
For at least two years in a rowor three out of five years in
order to get the county toapprove a building permit for us
to build a house on our ownproperty.
(06:57):
Yep.
It's, there's a lot of.
There's several differentavenues, if you will, for
someone that has exclusive farmuse land to get a building
permit for a dwelling.
But our property, because theway it's been divided up over
the years and there's houses onother, parcels that used to be
(07:17):
part of the big parcel.
The only option we have is thisoption.
And so that was our, really ourmain goal and our main reason
for getting started with farmingthe land.
Jennifer (07:30):
So once you have the house built, do you have to
continue farming?
Redmond Hills Farm (07:37):
It's, yeah.
It's still an exclusive farm usewe have to, yeah, we have to con
continue some kind of farmingoperation there, whatever it is
gonna be in order to keep thetax deferral status.
Yeah.
And Quail's kind of perfect forthat.
Jennifer (07:51):
Yeah, it's just interesting that there's, you
would think that people wouldstart their businesses, oh, I'm
just gonna sell some eggs, andthen it just morphed from there.
But in a lot of cases, there'sother reasons.
Redmond Hills Farm (08:06):
It's a need.
Yeah.
There's a need there to do that.
Jennifer (08:09):
Yep.
Yep.
Okay.
So now you've got, you're doingCornish out on pasture, right?
And you're doing the quail inthe barn.
So tell us the business side ofit.
How did you decide to take thebirds to the business level?
Redmond Hills Farm (08:27):
As we read more and more about quail,
they're excellent egg producers.
You get one egg from a hand eachday.
We thought let's introduce eggsto the, our community.
Tell'em, try to get the word outthat there's quail eggs.
A lot of people on our end overhere don't know what quail.
Or how we can use, you knowwhat?
(08:48):
That we can even eat quail eggs.
They think quail are the firstthing they say when we tell them
that we're raising quail.
They think it's a mountain quailthat you see outside.
Oh, they're so cute.
They run around our backyardwith a little, tough in the, on
the head.
And I'm like, no, those aremountain quail.
That's not the same, but it'ssame family, but just not, not
the same bird.
So we explained to them, whatthat is.
(09:09):
And but the more we talk topeople, the more we realize that
there, there is some interestout there for eggs.
So that's how we started gettingbirds first for eggs.
So we bought a few hatchingeggs.
We decided to hatch our own.
I started really small at home.
The NR 60 or what was that?
NR.
(09:30):
I forget what that is.
That little in the round one.
The nature, right?
Yeah.
Nature.
There you go.
And so I started with that and.
Ven, not ven pop, vanilla popand pops or something.
Those little round, smallincubators that aren't really, I
didn't get the Maddie Coops fromthat'cause I heard that one's
pretty good.
But I started small and I didpretty good actually for the
(09:51):
first few times I go, this, Ican do this.
'cause I had chicken eggsbefore, so I'm like, this is
okay.
I did pretty good.
I was getting good hatch rates.
So that's how we started ourfirst.
Little batch of birds.
And then I start reading lookingup some videos on how to build
cages.
Of course a little bit before Istarted hatching eggs, I saw
(10:12):
Terry's videos on YouTube thatgave me great ideas how to build
your own cages.
We ordered some fence, some hardhardware or hard wear cloth and
everything that we need.
Yeah, there you go.
From fence wire.com or Amazon.
And I built my own cages just bywatching videos.
And so I.
(10:34):
I bought the shelves, the wiremetal shelves that you can get
for usually people use forpantries.
And then I built my cages and Iattached shelves, and then Ray
and I built some wooden onestogether and then put cages on
those.
And so that's how we built ourlittle.
Collection of cages and birdsand it went from there.
(10:54):
And pretty soon we startedthinking, wow, we have too many
roosters.
We gotta do something withroosters.
And we start calling around andsee how we can get'em.
There's different rules for thathere in Oregon too.
We can't just process'em out ofour house and sell'em.
It's gotta go through a licensedfacility.
There's all kinds of rules andregulations with that.
(11:14):
So that's how that started withthat.
And we pretty soon wereprocessing roosters.
And selling them at, we startedgoing to the farmer's market.
With our pasture raised chicken.
So we introduced quail and nowwe take, quail to the farmer's
market.
And it grew from there just fromextra boosters.
And so that's how that startedfrom a business perspective, we
(11:36):
have, so we have a second, wehave another business too, that
we've had for 12 years.
And so we have an idea about,what it takes to get a business
started and get your.
Get your name in out there andall the licensing that's
involved and insurance andeverything else.
We just knew that in order toget to the goal that we need to
get to, to meet the gross incomerequirements in order to get a
(11:57):
building permit for our housethat we needed to get to build
this business and really put itout there, that's what that's
has been our driver from day oneis to get to that point where we
can report to the county thatwe've earned what we need to so
that we can get a buildingpermit to build a dwelling up on
our farm.
Jennifer (12:17):
Wow.
I'm in Tennessee and we just, wecan just process the quail and
sell'em out the back door,essentially, like endless
supplies of them because they'rein,
Carey (12:28):
I was gonna say, yeah, they have the USDA has
exemptions for people under Xnumber amount that you don't
have to go through.
It is crazy to me.
Yeah.
That some states require morethan what the feds do.
Redmond Hills Farm (12:45):
Yeah.
So I should have said, yeah herein Oregon, you, we could,
there's a limit.
We could process ourselves andsell up to 1000 birds from
directly from the farm.
Yeah, that means folks wouldhave to come to the farm and buy
those, directly from us.
If you wanna sell to arestaurant, if you wanna sell to
a catering company, if you wannasell to the public at a farmer's
(13:08):
market.
The birds have to be processedby a licensed processing
facility.
State licensed processingfacility, which is the place we
use is also USDA inspected.
So that's the deal there.
We can sell up to a thousandbirds directly from our
property.
Okay.
If people come up there and get'em.
Yeah.
See
Carey (13:27):
In Alabama since COVID, they made this ex exception
where you could actually makedeliveries.
So it didn't have to be fromthey didn't have to come to your
farm.
That'd be great.
During that time, they allowedfor deliveries.
And I think that was USDA, somaybe Oregon.
(13:48):
Might allow for deliveries.
Redmond Hills Farm (13:51):
Yeah.
We didn't get, I haven't foundthat at all.
We've talked to the state and tothe processors and to the the
state agricultural folks here,and that's never been even
mentioned,
Jennifer (14:01):
yeah.
Yeah.
And a thousand quail goes reallyquick too.
Redmond Hills Farm (14:05):
It does.
And plus, go ahead.
Carey (14:08):
I found the best luck reading those rules and stuff on
the website.
Because you would be surprisedat the amount of rules and
exemptions that those chargedwith enforcing have no clue they
exist.
Redmond Hills Farm (14:26):
Yeah.
I can see that happening.
Yeah.
Carey (14:28):
So
Redmond Hills Farm (14:29):
yeah, it's delivery would be a great option
actually, because, you we'reNPIP certified.
We don't, I don't want a lot ofpeople coming up to the farm.
Not a lot of traffic.
That's a risk.
Property too, is we don't havean address for our farm
property.
So in order to get people upthere, yeah, they have to go
(14:50):
across another part of theproperty.
There's three other houses upthere with three different
addresses, but our propertydoesn't have an address.
So trying to get people up thereYeah.
Would be a major, paint a wrongdirection if they follow GPS.
Yeah.
Oh my.
It gets'em lot end up at mysister's house end.
(15:10):
That's a different story.
Jennifer (15:13):
Okay, so you guys are selling the pasture chicken.
Are you using Cornish for that?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:19):
Yeah.
Jennifer (15:20):
Okay.
And then you're selling thequail meat and the eggs and all
of that's at the farmer'smarket?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:27):
Yep.
Yes.
Yes.
And we offer delivery.
Jennifer (15:30):
Are you still doing chicks too?
Redmond Hills Farm (15:32):
I
Jennifer (15:32):
know
Redmond Hills Farm (15:32):
at one point you were doing chicks.
We are doing chicks.
We recently, within what?
The last first of the year?
Last year, actually last year.
Last year, we started deliveringto our local farm stores chicks.
We have three different they'recalled Wilco here in Oregon.
There's three different onesthat have called us from
different cities that wantchicks.
(15:53):
So we've been hatching, maybe wemake deliveries every two weeks
of about 150 chicks.
50 chicks to each.
Wilco.
So that's been kinda a neatlittle, yeah, it's kinda
exciting because it's, we're gotsome business going there.
Jennifer (16:10):
Is it hard to get your foot in the door to do that?
Redmond Hills Farm (16:14):
Not too hard, not really.
We just made, I made some phonecalls out to the farm stores.
We have, there's Wilco stores,there's Coastal, there's tractor
supply, so there's several.
And so I just started calling.
And, we go into this Wilco herein McMinnville all the time.
And so we talk, we talked tothem when we went in there and
yeah, it wasn't too hard.
Actually they do require thatyou're NPIP certified, so that
(16:36):
helped.
Yeah.
In that aspect.
Yeah.
So that's why we keep ourcertification so we can do that.
And that's all they wanted ofus.
And they asked if we werecertified and they didn't even
come to our farm or anything.
They just, he came to the house?
To the house.
He came to the house, but notthe farm.
Yeah.
We spoke to'em in person.
And that's all it took.
And pretty soon and word got outto the other Wilcos in different
(16:57):
cities we drive, what is it?
Vancouver, and an hour and ahalf, about an hour and a half
to, to deliver chicks on everyother Sun Saturday.
But they word of mouth is whatreally got us a business.
They just sent an email to allWilco saying that we had chicks
and they sell.
The next day, they sell over,like we've gone there the
following day and they're allgone and they've told us that
(17:19):
they sell in one day.
50 chicks will just go likethat.
They're gone.
So far it's doing really well.
Jennifer (17:25):
Then you say, next time order 75.
Redmond Hills Farm (17:29):
I just need more birds.
I didn't wanna go over my headbecause there's only two of us
and it is a lot of work.
You know those poop trays, youknow how that goes.
So we're constantly cleaningpoop trays and wa and waterers
and so it would be nice, but atthe same time, I don't know if I
want that much more.
But yeah, we can do more.
We've talked about it before.
(17:50):
If we really wanted to ramp itup, I think we really could.
We had one of the storesactually call us recently, and
they wanted to up their order toa hundred chicks.
It's from 50, and so we starteddoing that.
But if.
My preference would be, I thinkour preference would be at some
point to hatch chicks and sellchicks and not necessarily
continue with raising Cornish,especially non GMO.
(18:13):
No soy.
It's expensive.
It's really expensive and it'sheck of a lot of work, as you
guys know.
So well, I would really like,and we're supposed to be
retired.
So at some point, I think itwould be good if we could just
hatch chicks and sell chicks.
I would love that.
We've got everything to do it.
Jennifer (18:30):
Oh yeah.
You get, but you're notprocessing, right?
You're taking them to aprocessor,
Redmond Hills Farm (18:35):
right?
That's correct.
Jennifer (18:36):
Yeah.
But you have, obviously predatorissues probably right.
Because I see you post aboutbears and stuff.
Redmond Hills Farm (18:44):
Oh, cougars and bears.
We have it all.
Coyotes.
Owls, we had a rescue owl thatgot tangled up in one of our
nets, our Cornish nets.
'cause we have to have thenetting.
We have a mountain pasture onthe, surrounded with electrical
fence.
But we have to have them insmaller areas where we can put a
large netting over it becausewhen we didn't do that, we lost
(19:05):
every night we were losing abird to an owl.
Or more than one L.
So yeah, we have cougar, we havebear, we have everything.
Our quail are inside a barnthat's made for, we made it for
that purpose.
It's got the the vents or thefans.
It, we've got the LED lighting,16 hours a day.
We on program programmedlighting, so they get 14 hours
(19:28):
of light every day.
They've got the, big man doorswhere they can get air and once
in a while we'll go there andopen the man doors so they get
the fresh air.
So that works out good for thequail and they're protected that
way'cause they're not outside.
But our Cornish, we really hadto do the extra work with the
netting and the electricalwiring, all that to make sure
they're protected.
(19:49):
And Ray usually takes, he takescare of the Cornish and I take
care of the quail.
That's how we divvy up.
We help each other, but that'sour focus.
Jennifer (19:58):
Yeah.
I'd rather do the quail over theCornish too.
Redmond Hills Farm (20:02):
Yeah.
They're messy.
They're nasty.
They're nasty.
Jennifer (20:04):
They are are you doing anything with all of that manure
to be profitable?
Or No?
No, that's a
Redmond Hills Farm (20:14):
that, no, not right now.
But that is, that's somethingyou definitely can get into if
we wanted to, yep.
Jennifer (20:19):
We have a whole style.
You can have your own mount poopmore.
That's what we call ours isMount poop more.
We have ours.
Carey (20:26):
Yeah.
People actually get that to usefor their flower beds, raised
gardens, that kind of stuff.
That's a good thing that you canuse for your old feed sacks.
Redmond Hills Farm (20:38):
And it's pretty hot.
So how long does it, is it likechicken manure or how long do
you, does it need to cool off?
Jennifer (20:43):
So we we put ours out and then I get the free tree
trimmings from the tree cuttersand they dump in a pile off to
the side and our field.
And then every time we putscoops of.
The quail poop out, we just adda scoop of the tree, trimmings
the brown, and that makes thebrowns right.
And then anything else, from thebrooders or whatnot goes in that
(21:06):
pile too.
And then we just turn it over.
But we, we generate a lot here.
We have a literal mountain of itand it sit for about 10 months
and then I'll run out of last,the last cycle.
From the garden and then I'llstart using this one and we'll,
so we always have two going, onewe're using in the garden and
one that's more fresh, if thatmakes sense.
Redmond Hills Farm (21:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's good.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
We definitely could use that.
We have a manure too on theother side of our property where
my in-laws live.
'cause they're right adjacent toours.
So it's, they're like living onthe property the way it's
divided.
They're actually on.
Outside on their own area, butshe has goats, so we have a lot
of compost from.
(21:49):
So there's a pile over there,and then there's a pile over
here of our quail manure.
But we definitely could, wedefinitely use it that for
compost.
Jennifer (21:57):
Yeah.
You can sell it hot to somebodywho's going to compost it, but
yeah, if you just let it sit.
'Cause I've been, it'sspringtime working on my garden
and stuff, and we're bringing itover and putting it in my beds
and gosh, it's just full ofworms and it's just so soft and
fluffy.
That's good stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I have people ask me,they're like, do you sell it?
(22:19):
And I'm like, oh no, I'm justgrowing my potatoes right now.
Just use it.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (22:25):
We've had one or.
Maybe two people ask if we wereselling it too.
But yeah, now we have, with thecattle up there, we they're
stomping it down like they'regoing through the middle of it.
Yeah, we don't just about everyday, yeah.
Jennifer (22:39):
Yeah.
You might consider piling thatup and that would be an easy
source of just a money pileright there, that's a good
Redmond Hills Farm (22:47):
idea.
Yeah.
Jennifer (22:48):
Definitely
Redmond Hills Farm (22:49):
put in a little like fish worms.
Yeah.
Good fishing worms.
Exactly.
Mine, maybe some pellets aroundor something so the cows don't
get to
Jennifer (22:57):
it.
And we have black soldierly thatcome naturally here.
So they they work it for uspretty good too.
Oh yeah.
Do you have those there?
I don't
Redmond Hills Farm (23:10):
know.
I don't think we do.
I haven't seen'em.
Oh, okay.
No.
Oh yeah, those, I'm not
Jennifer (23:16):
you.
You're golden Black soldier fry.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:18):
I don't think, I'll have to look.
I don't think we have.
Yeah, just a regular houseflies.
Yeah,
Carey (23:24):
you can use, you can get some of those off of eBay.
And go ahead and start.
You amount poop more.
Yeah.
And then dump'em in it, and theywill go through it and do
everything you need them to doand they will greatly multiply.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:43):
Wow.
And they're good snacks for thebirds too, right?
The Oh yeah.
Jennifer (23:47):
I, my ducks, my duck's free range, and they're always
over there digging through mountpoop more looking for stuff, and
I know that's what they'refinding over there.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (23:56):
That's definitely another money source
for sure.
If
Jennifer (23:58):
you wanna get into that.
And then I hear you got a newcontract too, so you're moving
into restaurant food too now.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:07):
Oh
Jennifer (24:08):
yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:09):
Ray got that with the catering company.
Yeah, we got a catering company.
Yeah.
So tell him them, Ray, how youhe's the one, they reached out
to him.
You don't have to tell us allyour secrets,
Jennifer (24:18):
but we just wanna give people ideas.
No secrets.
Redmond Hills Farm (24:23):
They.
They reached out to us,actually.
Yeah.
And so that was, that's part ofthe whole getting your name out
there and doing social medialeft and right.
Word of mouth.
Word of mouth.
And maybe at the farmer'smarket, maybe that I, that might
have helped.
I can't remember.
How did they find our name?
Do you remember how they saidthat?
Or website.
We have a website too, so that'shelpful.
(24:43):
And I think that's how theyfound us.
But yeah, word of mouth.
So he's using our chicken rightnow.
He, at one point he wants somequail, but he said for now he
is, he wants some Cornish hens.
And so we're gonna try raisingsome Cornish hens for him to the
smaller size.
So he can have it in his, he hismenu, he has a real large
(25:03):
catering.
Business that he does for thewineries here.
We have a lot of wineries herein our county.
And so that's what he does.
And so that's kinda exciting.
Hopefully it all goes through.
Sometimes you know, you don'tknow, people say they, they want
to work with you and then youdon't hear from them.
But he's been a pretty, he tooksome of our birds, so hopefully
he continues, it's some, it'ssometimes you just gotta, like
(25:24):
you said, roll with it.
It doesn't always work just likeyou think it's going to, but
you, it, you gotta do it or elseyou gotta try.
Jennifer (25:33):
You gotta try and then you gotta try.
Adapt a little bit.
Redmond Hills Farm (25:36):
Yep.
Jennifer (25:37):
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (25:38):
adapt.
Jennifer (25:40):
Adapt.
Yeah.
That's like the foam for me, orthe feed for Carrie.
We didn't wake up one day andsay, Hey, I think I'm gonna make
foam today.
It was, I need foam and I can'tfind it anywhere.
So I adapted.
Redmond Hills Farm (25:53):
Yeah.
Yep.
And that's, you gotta do that'show we, that's how you learn
too.
You just improvise and you adaptand, and overcome.
Okay.
Jennifer (26:03):
So now I'm gonna let Carrie go, but I, on his rabbit
hole stuff, he's, I've beenteasing him for 30 minutes now.
So tell us about drilling yourwell and capturing rainwater in
Oregon.
Because we are just like besideourselves here about it.
Redmond Hills Farm (26:21):
So is it that where you guys are or you
can just, if you need a you canjust have a well drilled and
yeah, we
Jennifer (26:27):
had a well drilled over at the greenhouse a couple
years ago and hooked it up.
Nobody cared.
Carey (26:31):
So like where we live and I'm like a mile from the city
limits.
If you want to capture rainwateror drill a well or anything like
that, there's literally nobodythat governs that they could
care less.
Now, if you wanna build a housethey're gonna wanna look at your
(26:54):
plans and you'll need to pullsome permits for that.
Unless you are building ityourself, and if you yourself
are doing your own constructionand have permits or have
blueprints, then they'll let youpull your own.
But yeah, it's and there'snobody riding around looking to
(27:15):
see how many birds you process.
Nope.
When I asked my USDA person,hey.
Alabama, do we go by the federalguidelines for the farm
exemption or do y'all havesomething else?
And she was like, no, that's, Imean that we don't have anything
specific.
(27:35):
I said, okay, so how does thatreally work?
And she looks at me straight inthe face and says that really
depends on your bookkeeping.
Redmond Hills Farm (27:48):
Wow.
Carey (27:49):
And I said, yes, ma'am.
I appreciate your time.
You have a wonderful day.
Yeah.
Thanks for coming.
Yep.
Redmond Hills Farm (27:56):
Not Oregon.
Oregon's a beautiful greenstate, but yeah, it's got,
they've got some funny rules.
Everything here's regulatedpermits and approvals and
inspections, literallyeverything.
So there's actually, they wanttheir money.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
There's actually a database thatyou can find online.
(28:17):
It's open public informationabout wells, water wells drilled
in Oregon.
It'll tell you how many gallonsper minute they, they pump.
So they keep track of all ofthis information.
And to get a well drilled, youhave to get a permit first, and
then once you get a permit, youget somebody to come out and
(28:37):
actually drill the well.
The casing, all that stuff hasgotta be inspected.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So everything is and if you're,even if you're building a house
yourself out here, especially ifit's on farmland, you have to
pull all the same permits that acontractor would have to pull
and inspections and all thatstuff too.
(28:58):
So you asked about, yeah, it'sexpensive too.
Oh my gosh.
You asked about rainwater, wewere talking about this earlier,
but essentially the way thestate of Oregon looks at
rainwater is that when it hitsthe ground, it belongs to the
every person in the state ofOregon, essentially.
We have.
A large barn we have two now,but they, the large barn has big
(29:23):
water tanks on at one end, andso the water, hits the metal
roof, comes down to the gutters,and it goes into the water
tanks.
You can store water that way.
Okay.
You don't have to have anyspecial permit or anything like
that.
But.
We were looking at digging out apond up there because we have a,
there's a stream that flows onone side of the property, and we
(29:45):
could dig out a nice pond overthere for, for agricultural use,
for the, for livestock whatever.
But in order to do that, you'resupposed to get ahold of the
water master.
There's actually a water master.
There is a water master for eacharea.
Yep.
Yes.
It's
Carey (30:04):
So this is my biggest question.
So in the state of Oregon, ifyou capture it before it hits
the ground, then it's yours.
But once it hits the ground, itbelongs to everybody in the
state.
Yes.
Is that right?
Okay.
That is correct.
So every month when they sendyou a water bill, do they also
(30:26):
send you a check?
Because you would think if youknow the water belongs to each
of y'all as well as everyoneelse in Oregon.
They should take how manygallons were used through their
system and calculate the mathout and send you your residuals,
I would think.
(30:46):
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
Alaska does that with the oil.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (30:50):
Yeah.
Jennifer (30:51):
Okay.
So what does this Water Masterdo?
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (30:54):
so the water masters, there's one for this.
I don't know, he's probably, Ithink he's the only water master
for the whole western side ofthe state.
So there's not very many ofthem.
But he actually told me too, onetime, you're supposed to submit
an application for, if you'regonna dig out a pond, you have
to include in that where thepond is gonna be, how the
(31:16):
water's gonna get to it, whereit's gonna come from.
Running down the hill orwhatever.
And you have to pay like a$700fee for this application.
Just to dig a hole on yourproperty to capture water.
And technically if you don't doit and they find out that you've
got this pond, they can come outthere and, make you fill it in
or whatever.
(31:37):
But he did tell me himself, he'sthere's there are people out
there that dig their own pondsand I don't have the time or the
resources to get to everyproperty.
So
Carey (31:47):
that should be, yeah, so do they just have people that
ride around and, oh, there's apond.
Let me look and see if theiraddress is in our database.
Right?
Nope.
Nope.
We're gonna send them a fine.
Lemme keep riding down.
They'd never find ours
Redmond Hills Farm (31:59):
if we had one because they, they have to
find it by helicopter.
That's the only way they'd findit.
But,
Carey (32:04):
geez, I'd like to know how you get this job as a water
master.
Redmond Hills Farm (32:08):
I don't
Carey (32:09):
even want to know, honestly.
That, that seems that has to bea very lucrative position.
Yeah.
Redmond Hills Farm (32:17):
Powerful position.
I dunno, man.
Carey (32:19):
Both direct deposit and.
In envelopes.
Jennifer (32:25):
So once you have the can you use it for whatever you
want?
Or are there restrictions onthat too?
Redmond Hills Farm (32:31):
There are wells for agriculture and there
are wells for personal use, likeyour home, your home, your barns
or whatever.
So the well that we had drilled,we're planning on building a
house right there, and plus wejust put up a new barn and we
needed water to the barn.
Once you've drilled the if wewanted to tap off of that well
and run irrigation we could.
(32:52):
But it's not something thatwe're gonna be doing up there.
You can't really grow anythingon our property except oak
trees, fir trees, and poison oakeverywhere.
You need goats.
Yeah.
That's blackberry bushes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We used to have about 400, 500goats roaming the property, but
not so much anymore.
And the, we lost a lot too withthe cougars out there.
(33:15):
Okay.
Yeah, that's another story, but,
Jennifer (33:19):
You guys are navigating a lot of issues.
I think that majority of us justdon't even comprehend because we
had the well dug a couple yearsago and we have a pond that was
dug when we built the house and.
It just ne never occurred toanybody here that anybody would
(33:39):
care what we were doing.
Redmond Hills Farm (33:40):
Yeah.
It's actually called waterrights out here.
So you'll sometimes you'll see aproperty for sale out here and
the listing will say that it haswater rights included.
So those water rights come fromthat application to the water
master.
Once you're in, once you'reapproved and you've got a pond
or what have you, then you getwater rights.
(34:01):
To the right to capture thatwater from a stream or or down
the hill into a pond.
And at any rate, yeah.
Yeah.
They, oh, wow.
Gotta, there's, yeah.
It's not as simple as, oh, youhave property, go build a house.
And some people still don'trealize, they think that we, all
they gotta do is go buy a pieceof property and.
Homesteaded and away they go andit doesn't, it's not that easy.
(34:24):
They see how come you guys don'tlive on your farm?
Yeah, we get that ass spot.
We want to, but, okay.
Jennifer (34:30):
We have a few minutes, so tell us you told us already,
but tell the listeners your hoaslash incubator story.
Redmond Hills Farm (34:39):
Okay.
We are having our barn built, soin the meantime, we.
Put our hatchers, our cabinethatchers in the garage and our
brooder in the garage.
We have a three stacked GFQBrooders, just three of'em
stacked up.
And the two hatching timecabinet ha incubators and
hatchers.
(34:59):
So we put those in the garage sowe can hatch our birds.
And then when they're at three,three weeks or so, two and a
half, three weeks, we weremoving them over to the garage.
Garage or to the.
To the farm, once they hatchedand they were able to go out, we
put'em out there, out intoAviaries at the time where we
had a few aviaries at the farm.
And so that's how we're movingthe birds out there.
(35:22):
While we had our farm built.
When, I don't know how maybe ourgarage or door was open when a
day or some, I don't know howthis happened, but somebody got
wind in the neighborhood that wewere hatching birds.
That we are breeding birds inour garage.
And they, I don't know if thebird flew.
They got scared.
They called the county.
We heard from the county, wereceived a letter stating that
(35:44):
there's been a complaint.
There were breeding birds in ourgarage.
No one ever talked to us.
We would've, we would've, hadthey come up to us and asked us,
we would've told'em, our birdsare probably safer.
Because they're NPIP certified,we have'em tested every six
months.
They're probably safer than thebirds out in your backyard.
So if you're that scared or thatafraid you shouldn't go outside,
(36:06):
you know those birdies are gonnahurt you out there.
But had they talked to us andthey didn't, so we, we had a,
take all our birds, ourincubators up to the farm.
What happened though?
It was timing.
Good timing, because at thatpoint our barn was already
getting finished, so we're ableto stall it like a month and
then move them out there.
They also told us, and then theychanged their rules on their.
(36:30):
HOA, what do you call it again?
The rules and regulations.
Rules and regulations.
Where specifically now, theyupdated it and sent everybody an
updated copy.
Now it says, no quail or livebirds allowed live eggs.
Live eggs.
No quail or live eggs of anykind.
So I'm thinking no live eggs.
Does that mean we can't eateggs?
(36:50):
We can't have eggs in ourrefrigerator?
Because I know there are groupsout there that hatch'em.
Carey (36:55):
I wouldn't buy any free range ones.
They might get you for that.
Yeah.
It's
Redmond Hills Farm (36:58):
A, it's a joke with us now.
We'll come home from the farmwith a basket of eggs in the
truck.
And we're walking across ourfront yard.
We live in a neighborhood andthere's nosy neighbors over
here.
Started this.
So we're like, oh, here we are.
We're back at it with our liveeggs going in the house.
We came back from processing onetime with our basket, with the
(37:19):
what do you call'em again,honey?
The, where we carry our thebirds up to processing the
cages.
Oh, the,
Carey (37:24):
The transport cages.
Redmond Hills Farm (37:25):
The transport cages we had on the
back of our trailer and weparked, we stopped at the house
first before we headed.
To the farm and the birds hadalready been processed.
They were just empty cages,empty crates, crates.
So we got a call from the citysaying that someone's
complaining that we're back atit again.
We raising live birds.
And that's what she said.
(37:45):
We're back at it again.
Back at it.
And so now that's a joke betweenus.
We're back at it.
We're just outta curiosity
Jennifer (37:51):
or like you in a condo or a house.
We're a house.
Redmond Hills Farm (37:55):
A house.
Yeah.
They, we this whole neighborhoodwas built about a couple years
ago, two or three years ago.
So there's people out therewatching every little thing we
do.
So now when we get home, we'relike, oh, we're back out there
together.
Jennifer (38:07):
I think I'd bring all those transport cages out to the
front yard and pressure wash'emout there if it was me.
Carey (38:13):
Yeah, I think I would do something like that and next
time I got a call, I would say,will you please come to my
house?
I would like for you to come tomy house so you can see what's
going on and let them see theempty transport baskets.
Then I would say, okay, now thisperson over here, I would like
(38:36):
to file harassing communicationcharges against them because
they are harassing me by doingthis.
Bra
Redmond Hills Farm (38:45):
we walked over, we actually, I got
complaints that they made.
And along with that was thispicture that this neighbor took
of our truck and trailer in thedriveway with the empty crates
on the trailer.
So after I got that, we wentdown to her house and confronted
her outside and she said thatfriendly, not in a bad way, she
(39:06):
was friendlier than I was.
But I walked over and I said,she was outside.
I said, I heard that you were.
Con you had some concerns.
I said, I wish you would've cometalk to us.
'cause we would've explained toyou that there's no fear.
You're safe.
There's no breeding.
There's no breeding, there's nobad birds.
Here.
You are not gonna get anything,blowing your way.
(39:27):
I said, I wish you would'vetalked to us first, and then we
could've, settled your concernsand she's oh, okay.
I said, next time I would'vegave you a dozen
Carey (39:33):
eggs.
Eggs that weren't live.
Redmond Hills Farm (39:35):
Free.
Free unlive eggs.
Jennifer (39:38):
Yeah.
Maybe they want you to eatthose.
What is it?
Just egg out of the vegansection in the dairy.
Is it a carton of the powder?
Redmond Hills Farm (39:46):
The, oh, The milk.
The liquid form?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe that's what they wanted toeat.
We can have powdered eggs, Idunno.
Carey (39:55):
But that was freeze dried from what could have been a free
range egg at some point in timeand.
There's a whole group, there's awhole, you never know Facebook
group about hatching free rangeeggs that you get from the
store.
Yeah,
Redmond Hills Farm (40:09):
I
Carey (40:09):
see.
I would wanna know what kind ofeggs she has in her
refrigerator.
They may be live too.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:15):
And how can she prove that they're not?
That's
Carey (40:17):
right.
That's a HOA sign waiting tohappen.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:21):
The thing is too, it's, there's a lot of kids
in this neighborhood.
Young kids.
And when I was in school, whichwas a long time ago, but I know
kids still do this, theyincubate and hatch eggs at
school or at home as a schoolproject.
Carey (40:35):
We did it in my classroom this year and last year.
Redmond Hills Farm (40:39):
And kids do it at home all the time.
So one of my arguments to themwas, so are you saying the kids
at school can't hatch an egg, alittle chick at their house?
They'll take it on a case bycase basis.
Okay, so we gotta watch those.
All of you out there, watchthose HOAs.
Carey (40:55):
I'd be like, I'm just hatching some out for everybody
in the neighborhood.
Redmond Hills Farm (41:00):
Yeah, there you go.
I should just go on and hanghand out.
Free eggs to everybody.
There you
Jennifer (41:04):
go.
So well, back to the businessthing.
I told one of my kids justyesterday, it's if being
self-employed and running yourown business was easy, everybody
would be doing it.
Redmond Hills Farm (41:15):
That's right.
Yeah, it's a lot of hard work, alot of work, a lot of challenges
sometimes with people, sometimesjust in business general.
Yeah.
Jennifer (41:23):
And add adaptations.
I think that was a good word forthe day.
I appreciate you guys joining usand explaining your journey.
Making
Redmond Hills Farm (41:34):
a well.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, it's been fun though.
It's not all bad.
It's a lot of fun and I'm gladwe're doing it.
It's good work.
We're retired, but it's alsogood physical work.
It feels good.
We're happy at the end of theday.
We're tired, but it's a goodwork.
So it's not a, it's not all bad.
No.
Rabbit hole thing.
Carey (41:53):
If you enjoy what you do, it makes a thing.
It's, it's a thing.
Yeah.
Jennifer (41:58):
Yeah.
What'd you say, Ray?
Carey (42:00):
Carrie didn't get to his rabbit hole.
Jennifer (42:02):
Oh did with the,
Carey (42:04):
I just.
Y I, if it's everybody's water,then why are they charging me
for it?
I, I would, if I had a water Godin my state like that, I, that
would come and look in my pond.
I don't know.
I would have a field day withit.
Jennifer (42:22):
It's water master, not water.
God.
Carey (42:25):
They act like they're, they act like the other though.
Hope I didn't offend anybodywith that.
If so, carry@poultrynerds.com.
Jennifer (42:33):
All right.
All right.
We'll talk to you guys later.
Carey (42:35):
Alright, thanks.
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