3 coops in 3 days, with a market on the way!

whewwww, we've been scrambling these last few days to get everything completely ready for the Mile-Hi Farmers' Market which starts this SUNDAY JUNE 14!

Can't believe its already here! Since taking on this project in March I remember thinking "June will come so fast, there won't be enough time" but now with Sunday fast approaching I feel like we've been running the market as long as the business. It's insane how much I identify with being the Mile-Hi Market Manager now, when only 3 months ago it seemed an impossible feat. By carrying around my binder and going though it everyday, writing myself sticky-notes and setting constant reminders, it doesn't even feel like it was all that much work.

Now we're more concerned with getting the Renegade Rent-A-Coop booth ready. We've been so much more focused on the market as a whole that everything we envisioned for our booth this year isn't exactly there yet....but we still have 20 hours!

We've gotten several Rent-A-Coop sign-ups in the past 2 weeks from people trying 'to beat the rush' - so the small stock of coops we had ready for the market have been placed in different back yards around the city already...we've been working on a market stock since January - again, not complaining but it'd be nice to get ahead, though I'm sure as long as it's only the two of us there's always work to be done.

In a rush the past week, its been paint, paint, paint for me - I just finished the 3rd last night...will post photos once Cameron adds the finishing touches, sneak peek:

Newest coops out the paint shop:

"Chickens in Space" available to rent or buy


"The Grateful Desert Coop" - currently rented-out

We look forward to seeing/meeting you all TOMORROW at Alvarado Park 11am-2pm at the Mile-Hi Farmers' Market!

*forever grateful, no matter how exhausted!
jennifer

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How Rent-A-Coop works (the most informational post)

Every farmers market, every phone call, every email we do the spiel. I was trying to avoid being so business-minded on this blog - but who am I kidding, the very creation of this blog shows how proud of our business we really are. So for any of you unaware of what Renegade Poultry or Renegade Rent-A-Coop is, this one's for you... We are a two-person team working towards building a local, organic, hormone/antibiotic-free poultry farm here in New Mexico for the local community (a real emphasis on local ). This would be "The Renegade Poultry Project" which really only sprouted in Cameron's mind less than a year ago. In its infancy stages, we are currently looking for land hopefully in the Sandia mountains East of Albuquerque to avoid the summer heat at city-level. We have most of the vision sorted out so far, at least how we would like the farm to function. I doubt that what we plan is what will be implemented to a tee, if we...

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...the farm work began, and it hasn't stopped or slowed at all! *note the date of the last post Oh man, want to hear about the most trying 3 months of our lives, read on... The learning curve has been steep, going from 5 chicks to 350 chicks - its like a whole other animal, its a small herd. The psychology of a small group of chicks vs a larger group is nothing alike. Same goes for 4 week old chickens, and 8 week old chickens, 5 is fun - 350 is insane...at least at first. I never look forward to the holiday season, but this one was particularly complicated. Not sure if it was the planets aligned in a specific sort of way or just the culmination of several small things that resulted in an epic shit-storm! Looking back it was probably all the anticipation and fear of a HUGE life change, an opportunity we've been longing for finally about to begin. January 1st came quickly, we had the first couple of weeks planned out because Cameron really only had to...

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The last farm location not working out was really the best thing that could have happened to us... ...as we are currently living in the Rio Grande Valley, not even half a mile from the Rio Grande on the FIRST EVER certified organic poultry farm in the USA , Pollo Real. Pollo Real has been doing Pastured Poultry since 1996 (20 YEARS) and has set a standard for pastured poultry operations across the country. Looking back, we are wondering why we didn't come here first when we have such a historic farm and incredibly knowledgeable farmer, Tom, an hour away from Albuquerque?! This is the older, experienced farmer we were meant to learn from...he knows everything about poultry. We met Tom a few months ago and things really moved fast, things had to move fast - he'd been looking for a couple to come help out on the farm and we were farm-less, job-less, and not ready to give up on our dream. We met right after we closed things down at the last farm loc...

The Renegade Poultry Project

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