Update: Chickens, Church, and Children

Good Morning Vietnam!

(I couldn’t help myself… it’s such a good line.)

Get ready for a basket of updates coming your way. Hot off the press today we have news featuring chickens, church, and children. Hopefully the chicken update isn’t too nitty-gritty for y’all.

Alright. So some of you may have known we started a chicken project. We are a few days shy of finishing about 200 broilers (meat chickens). You might also know that our life goal isn’t to only do chickens. Rather we want to build soil, build relationships, and build a profitable business that has to do with regenerative agriculture, however that may look with different animals and crops.

So, with this first batch of pastured broilers, we have been taking all the notes and keeping all the records we can as we trial this unconventional way of growing your drumsticks and thighs that grill so nicely. Brierly has been super hard at work for 6 weeks now, sleeping either in the truck or in a tent in the bush every. single. night.

For the first two weeks, he was brooding the chickens (keeping them warm- their life depends on it!) by using fire and coals since there isn’t electricity for heat lamps (what most people use) where the chickens are. You can see the day old chicks in the brooder in the pictures above. That was intense for him, waking up every 60-90 minutes during the night to keep the fire going to keep coals coming.

Now a couple weeks old, the chickens get to go out on pasture!

Then weeks 3-6 were a bit calmer, only sleeping next to the two chicken pens to keep away the predators… baboons, jackals, mongoose, and the like. These are not just airy-fairy unlikely predators. We have seen all of these animals right on the driveway leading to where the chickens are, and it’s only a warm body that will deter them from making any attempts at snatching a poultry snack from our pens. Anyways, that’s what Brierly has been up to at night.

Each morning, he moves the pens forward one length so the chickens are on fresh grass, then he tops up their feed and water and comes back by me and the girls on the other side of the farm, about 4km away. He checks them again around lunch time. Charlie sometimes gets to go along for lunchtime chores and she plays with the girl who lives close to the chicken pens. She loves helping and seeing her friend!

Then in the evening Brierly, makes his way back over to the chickens after tucking Charlie into bed. It’s been a lot of dedicated work and we are now halfway through dressing the birds.

Since it was our trial batch, we are selling some, donating some to church ministry, and we have taken some as samples to local lodges and restaurants. It is exciting that we already have customers and orders! We will continue to request feedback since the bird is not quite your typical broiler since it’s been raised differently, and not your road runner or off layer hen either. So far the customers and samplers agree that it’s a good mix of taste, texture and leanness. But we also know that the nutrition is also higher! There is some market education that needs to happen to grow our customer base for those that a more nutrient-dense bird would appeal to.

Part of being an entrepreneur is “pivoting” as the business idea evolves and takes shape. For us, this means we are also looking strongly at egg layers as opposed to just meat birds. Brierly is drawing up plans for a Salatin-style Eggmobile this week. We believe that it will be mutually beneficial for us and the pastures that the chickens forage on. There are some beef cattle herds around that deal with insane amounts of ticks. Letting the chickens go crazy on the grass means they will ease the pressure of the ticks. Win!

Another part of entrepreneurship is jumping in the deep end. We hoped to find birds that are at point-of-lay in about a month. After we have ample time to compile the meat bird data, build an eggmobile, visit Ambuya (Grandma) in Harare, yada yada yada. BUT, we got a text that some point of lays are ready THIS WEEK! We don’t have a trailer yet to build the eggmobile on! We don’t have the chest freezer we ordered from South Africa to finish dressing the meat chickens! We haven’t taken a breath yet! Brierly hasn’t slept in a real bed in over 45 days! What to do!? Such is the small business life. Such is life in Zimbabwe. Sometimes you can’t avoid the chaos.

So current plan as of 9:30am on Monday (Subject to change!) is that we will:

-check out a friend’s trailer frame to see if we can build it up into an eggmobile,

-pay a deposit on the layer birds to reserve 150 of them (Layers are hard to come by right now so we have to snag them while we can)

-have the girl who is selling them (a former Ebenezer apprentice- cool!) hang onto them for us for an additional week,

-use freezer space in friends’ homes in town for the meat chickens (thanks Cronje’s and Coltart’s),

-and we will run up to Harare next week instead of the end of May when we originally planned. Phew. All sorted for now.

Switching topics, we are very thankful for a church camp retreat that happened in March. It was a great opportunity to grow relationships and chat with brothers and sisters in Christ that we normally just say “hi” and “bye” to on Sundays. We got to share meals, roast marshmallows, play games, and discuss how Christ’s resurrection affects us believers, and all of creation, here and now. There were even some families and individuals at the camp that are new to our church, which is really cool. A good chunk of 2022 we have been studying the gospel of John, and it’s been so nourishing. Next we dive into II Samuel.

Charlotte's first day at the rural preschool, Bright Stars

Last but not least, some updates on the girls! Charlie has been enjoying homeschool while also going to a local rural preschool one day a week. It’s a school close to Ebenezer so she gets to see her friends from that farm still, which is wonderful. And then I get to see my friend who is the director of the preschool as well and we share coffee and prayers.

Inside the Bright Stars classroom

The schools have been on break for about a month and will resume in May. Since the preschool homeschool curriculum is relaxed and we are ahead of schedule, we just carry on during the public school breaks but at a nice and easy pace.

Selma has turned 6 months and is starting to sit and starting to explore solids. She has a great sense of humor and loves when Charlie sings silly songs to her. At the same time she has the most intense stare I’ve seen from any baby ever. Selma loves to go for walks in the stroller and see all the different animals on the farm. Charlie accompanies me with her own babies in the smaller stroller.

Prayer Requests:

-We are thankful for the extremely unseasonal rain we are getting right now. I wish we could share some with our dear Nebraska friends who are fighting wildfires as we speak.

-A young man I will call “A,” has openly asked Brierly to teach him about life. We pray Brierly can be diligent to share the gospel with him.

-We ask God for swift wisdom as we push hard to get profitable projects going. We need faster progress to become viable soon. We need God-sized ideas to find our niche in the market and creative ways to be a blessing to people we employ or partner with.

-Safe travels to Harare and good rest and relaxation time with family before we start egg layers.

-We trust God to be our source of peace, joy, and strength. That we are not fooled into believing our surroundings or situation can bring us these things.

Thank you friends for following along. Thanks for being courageous with us.

Growing in Courage,

Mackenzie