Farming Is A Passion MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT FINDS JOY PRODUCING BROWN FARM FRESH EGGS

By Manny Pinol

Klamath Falls, Oregon – Jon Hobbs is a management consultant who spent many years designing programs on how to make people more productive, a work which I believe paid him a lot.

But Jon and his wife, Lauren, spend most of their time in a 20-acre farm just in the outskirts of the city of Klamath Falls, a few miles north of the California-Oregon border.

With almost 3,000 hens laying eggs daily and about 100 meat goats grazing in their beautiful property, Jon and Lauren seemed to have found happiness in doing farming, perhaps more than the lucrative job of being a highly-paid management consultant.

“I have been doing this seriously for the last five years and before that as a hobby for about three years,” Jon told me yesterday.

When I visited the Hobbs farm yesterday with my friend, Jim Clem, most of the laying hens that the Hobbs couple own were inside two big sheds were they laid brown eggs for the local market.

It is still winter and in the northern part of California and perhaps most of Oregon, there has been continuous downpour over the last few days making it necessary to keep the chicken inside the sheds.

During dry days, the hens are allowed to forage in the wide farm situated near a small creek where fresh and clean water flowed.

The hens live with the goats which also serve as the Hobbs’ family’s “lawnmower” grazing on the green grass but leaving just enough leaves for the hens.

“We plan to increase our population by another thousand because the demand of the market is so great,” said Jon.

Marketed as natural farm fresh brown eggs, the Hobbs family’s egg produce is gobbled up by the local market where the going price is around $3-$4 per dozen.

The Hobbs hens produce eggs at an average of 70 to 80 per cent, meaning of the almost 2,000 hens they have, between 1,400 to 1,600 eggs are gathered daily.

Looking at the state of the hens yesterday, I made the conclusion that the Hobbs couple including their children Ben and Austin, who were not around when we came yesterday, really loved what they were doing.

The hens looked well-cared and healthy and the facilities were very clean.

While I was having a conversation with the couple, one of their workers in the farm brought out two baskets full of fresh farm eggs.

The sight of the eggs gave me so much joy.

It must also be a source of pride and joy for Jon Hobbs to make him choose farming over the high-paying job of being management consultant.

This is something which many people will not and could not understand: Farming is not just a work neither is it just a profession.

Farming is passion.