Eight years after egg producers, Derek and Fiona Smith, first hatched the idea to start Working With Nature – they couldn’t have known just how far it would grow.
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“We’ve been doing the mobile chook sheds now for eight years but we only both gave our jobs away three years ago,” Mr Smith said.
Before the Guyra couple cracked into the business, Mr Smith taught horticulture and organic farming at TAFE while Mrs Smith worked at First National Real Estate in Armidale.
Fast forward and the pair have 3,000 chickens, three mobile sheds and a client base covering two states.
“It’s a bit exciting,” Mr Smith said.
“We hope to have four or five mobile sheds on the property here and then at some stage we’ll build sheds for other people.”
The sheds, which can be moved onto fresh grass, are becoming popular across the country as an ethical way to produce.
“We’ve had a few people interested in having sheds and having the fertility value of the chooks on their farm … but they didn’t want to do all the marketing and packaging,” Mr Smith said.
“So we can do that part – as long as we can have some kind of arrangement with quality control because that is paramount to what we do.”
But while the next stage of the Smith’s enterprise is still in the planning phase, original business is booming.
“About half of the eggs we produce go to Armidale and Guyra to coffee shops and butchers while the other half go to organic shops on the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney,” he said.
“We also had a guy move from Armidale down to Kings Cross [in Sydney] who opened up a cafe and he insisted that we give him our eggs.”
As for the long-term future, Mr and Mrs Smith are focused on building more sheds and fine-tuning nutrition.
“We’ve just put in a sprouting shed to grow barley grain,” he said.
“That has already improved the quality of the eggs.
“Looking right ahead if we could have 10 outside sheds on other farms and five on our farm – that would be good.”
Mr Smith is currently building a 12 x 11 metre packing shed on the property which will house a commercial kitchen, bathroom and a workshop to build sheds.
“It looks much bigger than it needs to be but we wanted to build something we could grow into,” he said.
If you haven’t tried their eggs, Mrs Smith said they will have a stall at this year’s Trout Festival.
“The Guyra Foodies will be showcasing our local produce with tasting plates, produce for sale from the local farmers plus, quality artisan and craft stalls,” she said.
She also said to look out for the Farm Bus Tours at the Guyra Lamb and Potato Festival next January.