Meet Amy and Jonathan Reid | Poultry Farmer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy and Jonathan Reid and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy and Jonathan, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
We started our own farm to raise healthy food for our family. It quickly grew to us deciding to offer items to the public as well. We started as a small cottage food business offering jams, pickles, baked goods and eggs. We are now licensed as an egg dealer, full service mobile retail, state licensed manufacturer with an fda registered facility, custom exempt processing facility. This allows us to bring so much more to the public and sell in stores. We recently added freeze dried meals, fruits, vegetables, desserts and candy to our list of items. We make our own specialty poultry sausages and raise turkeys for Thanksgiving. Our eggs, poulty, canned and freeze dried goods are featured in local stores. We also sell at 2 summer farmers markets, Telluride and Durango. During the winter we attend various festivals and events throughout Colorado and New Mexico.

What should our readers know about your business?
We are a small farm, my husband Jonathan and I run it. We have a few part time helpers in the summer. We grew from 6 chickens to around 600 egg layers, we process around 1000 chickens and 100 turkeys per year. I am very proud of the fact that we are able to raise food to share with our local community. We believe that everyone deserves healthy food, regardless of the income status. We work with local food banks and sell wholesale to help the less fortunate in our community. The hardest part was learning the food laws and what licenses were required to do each products. We worked closely with our local health department to get the answers and licenses we needed. Lessons we’ve learned along the way is when you are introducing a new product, start small and grow as you are financially able, We are proud to say our farm has been built from the ground up by us. We are debt free which allows us to offer our food at a more affordable price point.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Durango Co is a very small town, however we have some amazing restaurants. Primus is definately my go to favorite restaurant, along with Michel Crepes. We are known for the local train, hot springs, we have an amazing Farmers Market. To be honest i would probably put them to work on the farm. 🙂

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My farm is named Jakes Farm after my son Jake. He helped me start the business when he was 15.

Website: https://www.jakesfarmhesperus.com/ https://www.jakesfarmfreezedried.com/

Instagram: jakesfarm2015 jakesfarmfreezedriedgoods

Facebook: jakesfarm2015 jakesfarmfreezedriedgoods