Young Couple Turns To Crowdfunding For Farm Expansion

STARKVILLE, Miss. - May 30, 2014 - PRLog -- STARKVILLE - By all outside measures, young farmers Dustin Pinion and Ali Fratesi are the picture of success. They’ve grown their Beaverdam Fresh Farm operation from nothing to now having about 350 laying hens and 800 meat birds a few miles from here in Clay County.

But the couple, in their 20s, are now what some might say are “victims of their own success.”

Dustin, 27, worked hard to get where he is, apprenticing under now-famous author, speaker and Virginia farmer Joel Salatin, to learn the ways of pastured poultry.

He has been managing a combined pastured poultry, swine and grass-fed beef farm to try to save enough money to someday buy his own farm.

Fratesi, 26, his partner, works from before first light to well after dark, doing farm chores and tending to their buying club - which has more than 700 members - and carrying their dressed, all natural, chemical-free chickens 140 miles to sell at the Jackson Farmers Market on High Street. These are “better than organic!” they proclaim.

Every day, they monitor or move the netted and open bottom enclosures they have built from scrap tin and old cotton trailers so that the chickens are allowed to free range over the pasture. They follow the cattle that Pinion constantly herds using temporary electric fencing. They follow the swine that have been turned loose into scrub wood land that they are rooting and clearing for food, again herded by temporary electric wire to do the job a bulldozer would otherwise do. But is now done in a natural and sustainable way. It’s a 7-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day job. And, yes, Ali admitted recently over her farmers market stall with fresh grown vegetables from their garden, it’s a hard life. But it’s one they relish - as countless other young couples have done in building a farm business from a few eggs and a lot of hard work.

Now, though, they’ve met a barrier to their dreams. They have reached the “1,000-bird limit” for small direct market poultry farmers and must build an on-site processing facility.The good part: it will allow them to process up to 20,000 birds a year. The hard part: they have to raise $30,000 to help them meet that goal.

Like a lot of young couples, Dustin and Ali don’t have a lot of money, certainly not $30,000 - and being young people with few tangible assets, they don’t qualify for much in the way of loans. So, they have turned to the public in trying to reach their goal. Called “crowdfunding,” they have turned to friends to help them launch a “kickstarter” campaign to raise the funds. (See: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1682257709/growing-the-farm-feeding-mississippi)

At this writing, they are about $12,000 toward their goal.

To entice donors, Kickstarter requires pledge rewards and, Beaverdam is offering a lot of gifts that people might find attractive: from a mention on their website ($15), to naming a pig ($50), to really cool-looking T-shirts ($75), all the way up to $1,200 for a three-day farm stay weekend.

“The biggest problem we are facing is we are charting unknown waters,” they say. “Regulations and recommendations are in place for large scale chicken processing plants in Mississippi, but not for small farms like us.” While the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce and the state Health Department are helping guide them in designing an on-site facility that should pass inspection, they don’t know what further fees and expenses they may face.

They believe that small, direct market growers like themselves are the future of agriculture in Mississippi and the nation.

It would be a shame if the ability to help make that dream a reality fell short because of state regulations.