Jackson Farm at Chester Town Day 2000

 

 

 

September 9, 2000.  For us it was a coming out party.  After dabbling in the farming business with some chicken and egg sales we decided to go “big time”.  What better venue to do that than your own hometown’s day of cultural celebration.  In New England Town Day festivals have taken been a staple of tradition since the Pilgrims.  I would guess that the first thanksgiving was probably an early rendition of modern day get-together in the town fields. I’m sure nothing much has changed since those times.  After being an observer of the fair for the two prior years we knew it would be a slam-dunk to be the center of attention.  The amount of effort was minimal to get the space together.  Mix a tent with some odds and ends around the barn and throw in a few bales of hay, some early pumpkins, some scarecrows from a flea market, a few chickens in cages, a couple of turkeys on a trailer, the pygmy goats, and baby chicks and you have the best booth at the fair.  The largest attraction was by far the baby chicks.  Every child wanted one as a pet.  No matter how much we explained that a chick was cute for about 2 weeks we simply failed to dissuade any 9 year old from using the timeless incantation “…but mom, pleeeeeeease”.  And it worked.  We sold about 60 chicks that day and the battle to keep the chicks from getting weary from the handling was my personal task.  Each chick got about 15 minutes of handling time max before getting some well-deserved rest in the brooder.

 Kevin’s buck-a-chick was launched.  Kevin is my oldest son and is very interested in business.  He is quite the salesman.  Kevin would attract people to our booth by standing out in front with a shoebox of three baby chicks and ask other kids if they wanted to hold one. I don’t think his offer was turned down all day.  It didn’t take long for the potential chicken buyer to think that this was his/her new personal pet and it took no effort on the part of my wife, Lynn to box the little ball of fluff up and send it on its way to a new home.  I was very pleased with the manner in which he carried himself.

This is a picture of my youngest son, Russell.  He is working with mom on filling the plastic eggs with candy to sell for a quarter.  This idea didn’t do too well as it was our very same children that ate the profits, spent the rest at the game booth and hid the bowl from time to time figuring that the less we sold of the candy meant more for them after the show.  I guess we’ll have to work on this.  But it kept the kids quiet and gave them something that resembled a job.

 

 Kids are the most amused by the living creatures.  Their innate sense of taking care of another living creature comes from their desire to be the boss.  When you own a pet you are the boss.  In this picture you can see out brooder box.  The first tier holds the newborn chicks.  The top tier has a two-bulb system and a heating element.  The heat and lights are controlled by a ether wafer thermostat.  We generally keep the heat at about 95% 5 inches from the heat source.  On this particular day it was fairly warm and not very much of a breeze.  The chicks never got cold and cold is the biggest enemy of breeding birds.  The two lower tiers are for chicks that are about 2 weeks old.  The space is bigger and at that size they can’t get out between the bars.  We supply a single heat bulb since at two weeks the chickens are not fully feathered.  At 3 to 4 weeks of age the chicks can go on the floor of the stalls in that barn.  At eight weeks they are fully feathered and can venture outside with little risk from exposure.

All it takes is a little hay, some home grown pumpkins and a crappy scarecrow bought from a yard sale and forgotten in the barn.  Hay is a big business in Chester since most people who come here are into the open spaces but don’t really know what to do from there.  So fairly soon after someone new moves in and has a field of some size, the local boys come down to pay a visit and convince the new landowner to give permission for them to hay the fields.  It’s an ok deal since the haying keeps the vegetation from taking over the field and you can feel good that you just moved here and you feel like you’re a farmer…sort of J