Rent The Chicken - What are we really doing? Part 1

I'm not going to talk to you about how the program of Rent The Chicken works but I'm going to talk to you about how we operate Rent The Chicken. That sounds fun, right? :) It actually is very intriguing to many when they understand the dynamics of Rent The Chicken and Hatch The Chicken! Most people understand that our Rental Packages include delivery, pick-up, two - four hens, a portable chicken coop, a book, feed for the rental, a tutorial, and of course a phone number to call! A Rent The Chicken hotline number if you want to call it that! :) This is going to take more than one blog entry so stay tuned for more of parts of this "What are we really doing?" entry!

But... what are we really doing? How are we impacting people? How are we impacting our communities? Let's start here:
Our Mission is "Families helping families to bring one food source closer to their table.". The first "families" in that statement are the farmers and homesteaders who provide Rent The Chicken and Hatch The Chicken to their communities. They are adding an additional revenue stream to their farm / homestead. Farmers and homesteaders DREAM of a profitable revenue stream to impact their community in a more personal way. We are creating a connection for our Rent The Chicken Families to meet the end consumer. They can rent chickens to them and then offer them other products available from their farm. This works in reverse too! If someone is already buying pork or poultry from them, they can offer a Rent The Chicken package as well. Homestead Phil and I partner with more than 45 farmers and homesteaders impacting more than 60 major markets in the US and Canada. We provide a turnkey business model to our RTC Families to be profitable. I think most farmers and homesteaders can admit that they'd rather be working with their animals or farming their land than be promoting their business through social media, answering the phones, or responding to emails. We are OK with that because Homestead Phil & I provide that support to our RTC Families! We offer online courses for our RTC Families. We have a private Facebook Group and a private website for resources. We provide full support as "business coaches" if you will as our Affiliates are joining this new business adventure of Rent The Chicken!

Let's talk about the families who are using our Rent The Chicken service. Our renters are just not sure if they want to have chickens long term or they don't know how to get started or they just plain want to try it knowing they don't want to have chickens long term or they don't want to have chickens in the winter. No matter their reasons for participating in Rent The Chicken, they receive the same high quality service that we provide. As mentioned above, they receive 2-4 hens, a portable chicken coop, feed for the rental, a book, delivery & pick-up within our parameters, and of course a phone number to call for chicken support. Upon delivery, we spend about 30-45 minutes with them talking about their yard space, explaining the coop thoroughly, chit-chatting about life and life with chickens, answering any questions that they have, and end with a Happy Renter photo. So sure, they get to experience backyard hens for fresh eggs without the commitment but what else? Most children in an urban environment when asked where their eggs come from, will name a local grocery store. They haven't been taught any different. Children of the families or schools who Rent The Chicken, know without a doubt that eggs come from chickens. This makes a conversation continue within the family and within the community of where other foods come from as well. When we return to the renter's home, sometimes we notice a raised garden bed that wasn't there at delivery or a tomato plant on the porch. Those are just a few more steps of other local food sources. The photo below shows our first official Happy Renters! These Happy Renters became full-time chicken keepers following their rental with us!

Progress is good and living in a progressive society is a good thing in many ways! With just one topic: babies. People who have a hard time conceiving can have medical intervention to help them conceive. Years ago, if a baby was born premature, the success rate was low. Now, a baby can be born at 24 weeks (some cases earlier!) and still have a good chance at survival! All of that is incredible and could not have happen years and years ago. At the same time, we're eating foods with plastic and arsenic because the government says they are at safe levels. Maybe you didn't know that our governments allow for "safe levels" of plastic and arsenic? If you grow it yourself or know the person who grows it for you, you can avoid plastic and arsenic in your foods. As Rent The Chicken and all of our Rent The Chicken Families offering our service, we are part of a food revolution that is happening all over the country to help members of our community to make different food choices and eat a high quality of food. A food revolution!! We are proud to be part of this food revolution making an impact and being a voice to eat local and fresh foods! Who wants to join us?

Stay tuned for more entries on "Rent The Chicken - What are we really doing?"!

Rent The Chicken - We are families helping families bring one simple food source closer to their table on rental at a time!
A big thank you to the families bringing our service to the masses!

Favorite Things!

As much as I LOVE chickens and I LOVE being part of all that is included with Rent The Chicken, I do have a few absolute favorite things. Of course I love Jesus. I love Homestead Phil. I love Givi Kitty. Yes those are all favorite things of mine. I'm talking about those can't live without items. You have those items too... I know it!

In no particular order:

Number 1 - My Camelbak. For ages, I've had just the simple one with a small cargo area big enough to hold a flip phone or keys. I bet the newer version of my favorite Camelbak now has a pocket big enough for a smart phone. I've had mine since flip phones were around though! We bought a second one for Phil when he started coming around because we couldn't share one on two separate motorcycles! We used to LOVE going on cruise vacations! We'd still love them except that no one would be here to answer the phone when you call to place your deposit to Rent The Chicken and Hatch The Chicken?!? At any rate, some how Phil left his brand new Camelbak at a port! I still had mine though. :) So of course we had to buy him another one. We settled on one with some cargo space but not a full on backpack. When it arrived, Phil handed it to me for me to enjoy my new Camelbak. Say, what? I don't need one with all of that space! Here I was compromising on the one that I wanted to accommodate what he really wanted and he was compromising on the one that he really wanted to accommodate what I was looking for. So we ended up with one that neither of us really wanted but Phil uses it as I still have my old trusted one! So what do I use it for? Why do I love it so much? I use it just about everywhere! I use it in the vehicle on road trips so I don't have to refill often and I don't have to buy drinks. I use it while on my motorcycle so I don't have to stop every time I am thirsty. I've even been known to wear it at a backyard party! Is it silly? Yes! haha BUT... I don't have to worry about losing my cup or someone else drinking out of my cup by accident! :) There are a lot of jokes about what's in my camelbak though! :) Once upon a time, I also ran frequently and even ran in a few 5k races. I used my camelbak then too. Do you have a camelbak or something similar?


Number 2 - My sun visors. I'm not particular about color or logo but I do like the ones that velcro so I can adjust it around my ponytail. I have good visors and "chicken" visors that I wear when I'm outside doing chicken work. Sometimes I even wear a sun visor under my winter hat on those cold and sunny days! One day recently, I was washing dishes and the sun was very bright coming in the kitchen window. I grabbed a sun visor and put it on to block the sun. I bet I looked peculiar in my pajamas and a sun visor. It looked like I was getting ready to sleep in the sun, I bet! I probably have 10 or so around. Most are blue though as you learned that blue is my favorite color in this blog entry. In addition to being big fans of sun visors, I'm also big fans of Jimmy Johns and Rita's. I was gifted two from visors from both places just for being passionate about their establishments! I also have this awesome visor that Homestead Phil bought for me called a Headsweats visor! Sometimes, I'm even with a famous motorcycle racer while wearing a visor or the local 2017 Dayton Fair Queen (who's almost my oldest niece!)!

Number 3 - My Givi Bag. This is Givi Kitty's name sake! My "Givi Bag" is a hard case that is water proof, locks, and clamps right on to the back of my motorcycle! I've carried some unique things in that bag! To name a few: groceries, a case of water, pasta salad & meatloaf for a pot luck wedding (you heard me right!), and a bundt cake. I learned quickly that bundt cakes don't travel well in the Givi Bag. Cupcakes do much better! :) When Phil was commuting 7 miles into Baltimore City when we lived in Maryland, he also enjoyed using my favorite Givi Bag. To give you a true scope of the size of the one I have, it holds two full-faced motorcycle helmets! Hmm.. that may not help everyone understand how big it is. Well I guess saying that it can hold a case of water already explained that? Anyhoo, I LOVE IT!

Number 4 - Cuddl Duds! I only have one kind of Cuddl Duds but I have 4-5 of them! The ones I have are an under shirt that makes me feel like I'm being hugged! They are great for those cold winter days! I can wear them under a t-shirt around the house or under a fleece vest for leaving the house. They are great for those cold Spring or Fall days when delivering or picking up Rent The Chicken rentals as well! I like the "Softwear" ones. I heart my Cuddl Duds so much that I asked for Cuddl Duds flannel sheets for Christmas last year! They are delightful!

Rent THE Chicken!

After Phil and I decided we would rent out chickens, the next step was determining a name for our new business. The normal progression of the business name would have been Rent A Chicken, right? Well, since you read about the history of my nickname of JTB here previously, you know that in ALL of my JTB nicknames, the middle word is THE. So to remain connected to my nickname, Rent THE Chicken was named. :)

Now that you know how we formed our name, let's talk about why everyone's Rent THE Chicken shirts are blue. For the same reason, blue was an accent color at our wedding, and my custom motorcycle racing leathers are blue. It's my favorite color! :) Hey... when you become the co-founder of your business, you can pick the color of your shirts too! For the photo of our bridal party, in true JTB fashion, I had the group show a little leg for the photo. Just yesterday, I took the cart back in to Tractor Supply, waited at the door for Homestead Phil to drive around to pick me up, and I lifted my pant leg to show some leg for a ride. Don't worry, I only do this for my husband! :)

Some people collect baseball cards. Other people collect coins. My dad collects pigs (not live ones). I collect dust. Homestead Phil collects domain names! So not only do we own RentTheChicken.com and RentTheChicken.ca for our Canadian locations but we also own HatchTheChicken.com for our hatching rentals and HatchTheChicken.ca for our Canadian hatching rentals. Who even knows what else we own?! All I know is that Google really likes our website and people keep finding us by searching on Google. One person found us recently by searching for her local Southern States' phone number!

Of all of my three main blog subjects: Family, Food, Fun!, I think Food has been getting the short end of the stick. I'll try to remedy that in the future! I hope you're enjoying my blog as much as I've been enjoying writing them!

"JTB" lives on!

This is going to be a long one! So, grab a beverage and enjoy!

JTB has been my abbreviated nickname for almost 20 years. Before that my full nickname was used - Jenn The Burkett. Come to think of it. I'm not sure why my full nickname was longer than my formal nickname of Jenn? *boggle* When I was in college, I had a roommate named Jen. Born in the 70s, I grew up knowing a lot of other Jens, Jenns, Jennys, and Jennifers. We were all called something aside from our name in school so we'd know if we were being spoken to. NO ONE wants to be "the other Jenn"! I was Jenny B for many years. I was also known as Pokey - I'll write about that another day though! My college roommate was a Baptist. There's a famous guy in the Bibled named John The Baptist so my college roommate was appropriately nicknamed Jen The Baptist. To follow suit, I became Jenn The Burkett.

A few years went by and online call signs were formed and mine of course was JennTheBurkett. In hindsight, it goes against all of the cyber security rules but times were simpler then. :) No one wanted to write out JennTheBurkett each time they wanted to draw my attention to something so JTB was birthed. At first, I thought people were just typing JTB to type but they were actually SAYING JTB when I'd see them. I liked it though. Having been with a very popular name all of my life, there was no confusion in social surroundings "which JTB" people were referring to. :)

A few years after moving to Maryland, I made the leap and took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Course and earned my M-Class endorsement on my driver's license. I'm sure you can see where this is going? JTB now stood for Jenn The Biker! That was a time of AOL instant messenger, Yahoo messenger, and web forums. Cyber security was definitely making an impact by then so Jenn The Biker as a call sign was certainly safer than Jenn The Burkett. At one point, I even had custom racing leathers with my made up racing team name on the back - JTB Racing. They had JTB Racing blue accents of course as blue is my favorite color! (Ever wonder why all of the Rent The Chicken apparel is blue? Well... now you know! haha)

This one time I went to a party where everyone knew me as JTB - Jenn The Biker. One could say it was a biker party but I don't recall many bikes at the party? Safer that way, I suppose!) Most people bring alcoholic beverages to a biker party. Not *this* girl! I baked cookiebars and brought those to share :) It was then that Jenn The Baker was born! No confusion though as the bikers called me JTB so some called me Jenn The Biker and others adapted to Jenn The Biker.

This was status quo for a number of years until Phil came along. That's when I was called JTB - Jenn The Bride! Although of course I was still known as Jenn The Biker and Jenn The Baker. At my bridal shower, there was actually a game for people to name appropriate long forms for JTB. A favorite I recall was Jenn The Broccoli-hater! For those not in the know, I make it a point to not eat anything green. Yes. I know greens are good for me and I know I should eat them. Once we married, I joined new web forums for our new adventures to grow our family and promptly rebranded JTB with Jenn The Babymaker!

Remember reading about my home baking business venture? It was actually appropriately called JTB's Kitchen! Ironically it mainly featured a variety of Cookiebars that debuted at the biker party years prior! Once we moved to Pennsylvania and Rent The Chicken was hatched and Homestead Jenn became my new name, JTB kind of went off of the radar to the new people in my life. I took a poll though to try to figure out a JTB related nickname to be associated with Rent The Chicken. There were a few good ones like Jenn The BroodyHen among others. My favorite that I still refer to is Jenn The Boss! haha Not everyone (particular Homestead Phil) prefers Jenn The Boss. Homestead Phil and I truly are a team and our Affiliates are part of the Rent The Chicken Family. There's no Boss in Team or Family! I think I misquoted that? :)

So now we have this blog. Jenn The Blogger some may say? (My friend Deanna actually DID say it!) I thoroughly enjoyed that people who knew me from many walks of life all knew me as JTB. Still do! So... JTB lives on!

"Do you want to rent out some chickens?"

As you know from my previous entry here, my contract position was due to come to an end and I have a Bachelor's degree in Business Management concentrating in Small Business / Entrepreneurship. We learned in the six months of both of us working from home, we really like to be together a lot! When we told my mom that we were both going to work from home. She really didn't think that was a good idea as we would likely get sick of being together so much! She is right a lot of the time but we just passed the five year threshold of both working from home. Add to that, we've been working TOGETHER for more of those years. We really like it! :)

Since before ever meeting, both Phil and I have wanted children and want to be home with them - at least one of us anyway. Typically one adult in the house works outside of the home, right? We had been praying and brain storming about what I could do from home for work. I'm not passionate enough about any particular MLM business so that option was out. Homestead Phil likes to say "She can sell reading glasses to a blind man!" :) But if I'm not sold on it, I'd prefer not to sell it to someone else. We live in a rural area. Gone are the days of $30 per hour part-time gigs like I became accustomed to! I really didn't want to be gone from Phil or the homestead for 40 hours a week. Plus, for a sales job, I'd likely have to travel 45-55 minutes to Pittsburgh each way. Didn't I already leave a job with that length of a commute once?

One night while we were both on our devices while lying in bed, Phil was searching for crazy business ideas online. I was probably scrolling through Facebook or playing Canasta or FreeCell on my phone while having no idea what he was looking at. He said told me a few random crazy business ideas. We chuckled. I went back to my phone. Then he said that there are companies that are renting chickens. Say what? Why in the world? *blank stare* Remember that Homestead Phil is the visionary! He went on to say that it made complete sense. We had already made our transition from city life to one of a homesteading nature. "We can help others do the same!" He exclaimed probably with more excitement than I would have imagined. We chatted about it for not very long. Much shorter than one would expect before Phil said "Do you want to rent out some chickens?" Without hesitation, I said "Sure! We have some chickens and I can work the power tools to build coops."

Rent The Chicken was hatched!

Maybe one day I'll tell you how we came up with Rent The Chicken over any other names that we considered. Despite recommendations, Pimp My Chicken was off the table very quickly!

Before "Rent The Chicken".

Back in the day when we first made the move (back) to Western Pennsylvania, Phil was working on his 20th year of being in the IT industry by providing level II tech support part time from home for a friend's company. I was working part time also from home for a motorcycle related research program. We also were working on transferring our Motorcycle Safety Foundation Instructor certification from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Knowing that the research program was due to come to an end, we had to decide what the next step in our journey would be.

Rewinding a bit to a few years before and during my college years, I truly thought I would study to be a math teacher. Well, that was until I was enrolled in Calculus III, and Linear Algebra. Those were tough classes for me! From there, I felt as though I should change my major to Business Management. I had three concentrations to choose from: International, Industrial, and Entrepreneurship/Small Business. Bet you'll never guess which one I selected?! (Hint: Entrepreneurship/Small Business!) If you would have told me in those years that I would be the co-founder of a chicken rental business, I would have belly laughed for quite awhile! LOL

When Phil and I met and married, I was in retail sales and management working straight commission in the kitchen and laundry appliance industry. In my first six months, my manager at the time started calling me the "Million Dollar Baby" because I was on track to sell a million dollars of appliances that year! Aside from working a retail schedule of holidays, evenings, and weekends, I really enjoyed retail sales. The more profitable the sale, the larger the payout. The more add-ons sold, the higher the pay. It was strategic sales with price negotiation which was good for my brain power but it was helping the customers to meet their needs and wants with some spectacular technology in appliances. I learned A LOT about A LOT!

When Phil and I met (who wants to hear about that story someday?!), I was working about 25 minutes from home. Shortly after and when we married, I was traveling about an hour each way to manage a store for the appliance company. Add to the long hours and long weeks, two hours a day were spent en route. The market was also changing. When I started selling appliances in 2005, the market was accelerating upwards! People were buying a whole suite of kitchen appliances or remodeling their kitchen when just their dishwasher was on its last leg. My highest dollar single invoice was for the kitchen of a new house, main laundry room, poolside kitchen, poolside laundry room, and bar kitchenette. It was ticketed somewhere around $35k. We married in 2009 and trends were changing. We also had big goals of starting a family! Working 8-9 hour days at 5-6 days a week with 2 hours of travel time was not what we wanted for me to be doing when it was time to grow our family. Between those changing trends and wanting to spend more time together, I left my appliance gig to start an at home baking business. I made a whole lot less money but had way more freedoms than I had in my almost five years of selling appliances and managing stores.

As the years continued, in addition to the baking business, I wore a few hats AND don't mind having others wear hats too! I'd say that my appliance gig, things I learned way back in the day when earning my degree, and God's faithfulness are what I attribute to the experience level that I brought into the start of Rent The Chicken!

Why "Homestead Jenn"?

I may have jumped the gun on this whole "I'm a blogger now" thing! Apparently there are new phrases like "pinterest photo" and "blog hops". There's a way to make a posted photo be "pinnable" - another word I just learned! haha I'll have to save the learning of those buzzwords for another day! I did learn how to add the social media icons to my blog and to Rent The Chicken.com! If you need to learn how, be sure to read Christina's igottacreate! blog!

Before I describe to you how I became "Homestead Jenn", it's best to back up to tell of how "Homestead Phil" came about. Good ol' Homestead Phil has always been a dreamer and a visionary. When we were planning to transition from life in the city to life in the country, he had big dreams of a large garden, raising meat rabbits for food, and having backyard hens for eggs. For as much as he is a visionary and a dreamer, he doesn't always envision the steps it takes to get to the dream. That's where I come in! I'm the planner, the list maker, and the "what do we have to do to get to the dream?" of the team. Before we even moved, I put my foot down to say "You can pick two things of the three!". Needless to say, my foot didn't stay down very long! Phil was listening to pod casts and watching youtube videos on homesteading preparing for the next stage of our lives.

Once we moved from outside of Baltimore, Maryland to the country in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Phil started to convert into Homestead Phil! He studied the seeds to buy for his garden. He researched the best meat rabbits to buy and breed. One random day when I thought it was far too cold to buy baby chicks, he said "I'm going to buy baby chicks. I'll be back after bit." (Notice: I didn't say he researched! haha) I think he said it when he was going out the door so I couldn't give a rebuttal! We had ZERO supplies for chick raising. We did EXACTLY we don't recommend for people to do when getting into backyard chickens. Phil started calling himself Homestead Phil. He created a Homestead Phil email address and even posted to a YouTube channel for awhile until we shifted social media to focus on Rent The Chicken. I ultimately did not get crowned with the Homestead Jenn title until we hatched Rent The Chicken.com! So apparently, I'm "Homestead Jenn" by association. :) Each of the families that offer Rent The Chicken from their farm/homestead are also called Homestead So-and-so! You can read about all of them on my favorite section of Rent The Chicken.com: The About Us Page.

So here are some flashback photos of the start of Homestead Phil! The chicks that started the vision for Rent The Chicken are being inspected by Givi Kitty! There were no chicks harmed in the snapping of this photo. haha The baby rabbit was our first ever breeder rabbit, Fiona. The sprouts are cucumbers growing inside. Eventually when the weather broke, they were transplanted into the garden. Rabbits love to snack on cucumbers! As much as Givi Kitty loves having me around, she is truly Phil's kitty. She will pick his lap over mine almost every time. She likes to sleep on me at night though so it all evens out! :)

About Homestead Jenn - Family. Food. Fun!

So as you can probably guess from my blog title and the front page of my blog, I am "Homestead Jenn". I've been branded this because my husband is known as "Homestead Phil". One day I'll explain why. :)

I've been thinking lately that I might just be interesting enough to be a blogger. Maybe? I'm definitely not interesting enough to be a vlogger though! Maybe I am but I don't want to make the time and don't have the abilities to make it be awesome. At this point, I'm not sure I want to make the time nor have the abilities to be a blogger! A number of people have recommended that I start blogging. I know this needs to be personal but not too personal. Not everyone wants to know every detail of my life but It can't be vague-ogging. (See what I did there?) I absolutely know that I want to write about Family, Food, and Fun!

Family to me is all encompassing. I have my loving hubs, Homestead Phil who has been my hubs since 2009! He's my biggest fan, partner in life, business visionary, and most recently pots & pans washer! We have our ever loving Givi Kitty who we've had since June of 2011! We have a boat load (probably not as big as Noah's boat but still a fairly large boat) of family members. We have mothers, fathers, step-fathers, step-mothers, sisters, brothers, step-siblings, sister-n-laws, brother-n-laws, grandparents, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins' kids, and more! Homestead Phil and I are co-founders of Rent The Chicken. We help members of our community to get started with backyard hens for fresh eggs. We also help farmers and homesteaders (our Affiliates) to add an additional revenue stream offering Rent The Chicken and Hatch The Chicken. Every time we add on a new Rent The Chicken Affiliate to grow our mission of "families helping families to bring one single food source closer to the table", we say "Welcome to the Rent The Chicken Family!". We also use the same phrase when someone commits to participating in either our Rent The Chicken or Hatch The Chicken programs! Both "families" in our mission are part of our Rent The Chicken Family. Homestead Phil is also sometimes just known as Phil. Odd, right? Phil and I also have our church family. Our Pastor actually calls me "Famous Jenn" instead of "Homestead Jenn" because of the number of times I was on the news and in the newspaper shortly after we started attending our church. As if that's not enough family, we'd like to continue growing our family. We are foster parents. Our current situation is that we are in the midst of changing foster care agencies and we are almost re-certified.

Food - When I order something delicious sounding or I'm cramming a delightful sweet pile of goodness into my mouth, I like to put my hands on my hips and say "I didn't get all these curves for no reason!". Ideally I should cram less into my mouth and have less curves but alas, my will for yummy food outweighs my desire to have less curves. I love to bake and I used to be known as Jenn The Baker! I also love to cook. Often Phil says "I'm getting a little hungry.". Sometimes I make quick sandwiches and other times an hour later I've come up with a new creation and hope it's not awful! By then he's almost starving! haha We of course always have fresh eggs on hand from our flock of backyard hens. We try to consume as many local foods as we can between raising meat rabbits, Phil's deer hunting skills, the generosity of my aunt & uncle who include us on their pork processing, and Phil's large garden. We also buy a quarter cow about every other year as well. I love deer steak but there's something incredible about a porterhouse steak off of a locally raised pasture raised cow! We try to keep balance in our food habits so we still eat Pringles too! :)

Fun! We are fun and funny! (Although when asked who's the funny one, I will say that I am .. every. single. time.!) We do these Facebook Live videos on our Rent The Chicken Facebook Page every month or two and I've been calling them "Fun with Rent The Chicken". A number of people get the humor as Sheldon and Amy from Big Bang Theory have their "Fun with Flags" show! We love to make each other laugh and we love to make others laugh too. We enjoy adventures whether it be via motorcycle, canoe, car, foot, or our little RV! Homestead Phil is always coming up with adventurous ideas! One day I'll tell you ALL ABOUT "chicken races". Maybe one day I'll even reproduce a certain video of me chasing a chicken. Good times. Good times.

I'm sure this is the part of the blog where I post a photo or two and say that I'll write again soon! Looking forward to sharing about my Family, Food, and Fun!