HAPPY BIRD POULTRY FARM, LLC.
​568 Main Street, Isle La Motte, Vermont 05463
​OUR STORY

I (Ember) have had a "thing" for chickens, more specifically roosters, but...anyway, I've had chickens of some sort since I was a little girl. Several years ago a friend asked me where she could buy some Guinea Keet locally and would I be willing to babysit them when she and her husband were away. After hearing their plan, I kindly discouraged it! She said, she was a little disappointed because she was looking forward to having fresh eggs. So, I told her if she wanted eggs we would buy some young hens in partnership and keep them at my house. They could "chicken sit" when we went away since we travel WAY less than they do. They agreed and we purchased six laying hens. We had fresh eggs right away, but we continued to talk about chickens and different breeds and purposes etc. By mid summer, we had a flock of 50 broilers, with plans to have a second flock of 50 to be harvested in late fall. This plan gave us each 50 chickens in our freezer. At first she thought 50 chickens each was a lot, but I did my "harvest math"  52 weeks in a year = chicken once a week almost every week. (remember this harvest math when reviewing your CSA choices.) So we did that for a couple of years, then one Christmas I was not coming up with any "prizewinning" family  and client gift ideas and Stacey (my husband) suggested we give them all a frozen chicken.  I screened the idea with a couple of friends and they were VERY enthusiastic about the idea! So, I got on my computer and made a fun/silly label for our gift chickens. Everyone LOVED them and wanted to know if they could buy some! We raised two flocks of 75 that year and sold some of my 50 and still ran out of chicken before the first flock was ready the following summer. In the Fall of 2014 the guy who we had always hired for sending the chickens off to "freezer camp" said he was getting out of it! We had to find someone else and I'm kind of, well ok, very picky about how they are processed. This is food for my family and yours. So Stacey and I discussed it and decided to build our own processing room and increase our production. Me being picky and a dreamer decided to have the meat inspector come for a visit to see what it would take to become an inspected processing plant. He came out and spent several hours here with us and there was so little that needed to be done to pass inspection that we decided to make the changes immediately. This gave us the option if we ever did get big enough to need the inspection, we wouldn't have to "re-learn" how to process them correctly. Then, Stacey received a pellet smoker/grill for his birthday in May and I got the brilliant idea to Maple Brine and Maple Smoke one of our chickens and WOW! We both agreed that was the best chicken we had ever eaten and we made another and had friends over and well "rinse and repeat"! We were having friends over just to have an excuse to smoke a chicken. EVERYONE loved the chicken as much as we did and they wanted to buy them!  As soon as the paper work was completed and the final inspection walk-through of the processing room  done we became a Vermont State Inspected  Processing Plant which in turn, allowed us to sell our smoked chickens,  smoked pork ribs,  smoked cheese and other items, too.  We are working on working to expand the smokehouse kitchen and farm market. The majority of the funding for these will come from our pre-buy option sales. Your support by purchasing our pre-buy options, in store purchases as well as purchases at the Milton Farmer's Market made it possible for us to build the smokehouse kitchen and farm market last year and we are confident your continued support by purchasing our products will make our expansion happen this year! 
​We take pride in bringing our farm to your table!

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