The Jasper Farm
The Jasper Farm was a very well-managed poultry farm purchased and run by Forrest Jasper from 1941 to 1973. Then, it was purchased and run by David F. Jasper from 1974 to 1985. David ran a very active vegetable stand from 1969 to 1995. Sales at the stand were $8,000 a week for 7 weeks a year.
The stand featured vegetables from farms in Hollis, NH – Brookdale and Lull farms. In Litchfield, the Charlie McQuesten Farm had the best corn in the county 90% of the time. It’s a true family farm that I’d love to see have some new customers. Also, Gove Farm in Leominster, MA had the best tomatoes by far. It is another family farm where I would buy 900 pounds of tomatoes at a time wholesale every other day at the peak of the season. I would give honorable mention to the huge Wilson Farm in Litchfield, NH.
The Lavoie Farm in Hollis, NH is the farm that gave Cindy Jasper and I our start in the vegetable stand business, located at Nartoff Road in Nashua, NH. Go there.
My average stand grossed $55,000 in 7 weeks with a profit of $15,000 a year. We worked on a small margin. There were lots of regular customers. Our busiest corn sale day was 70 bushels, which is 350 dozen. 250 dozen was very common, especially on weekends.
When I bought the farm in 1974, I made some feeder and watering improvements and exceeded our hatchery’s expectations, Hubbard Farms of Walpole, NH. Twice I dealt with Wentworth Hubbard, a dignified, reasonable person who worried a lot. Even his mother told my mother that the president of Hubbard Farms was a worry wart.
Went depended on Richard I. Starke, the production manager, to set prices for hatching eggs produced at New Hampshire area farms. When we were critical of his cheap ways with farmers, he would invariably say, “They crucified the only perfect one.” Newly recruited farms by Hubbard personnel usually lasted 1 or 2 years and quit.
I expanded our producing birds to 35,000 chickens and 3,800 roosters on sawdust floors so they could mate. Actually, Jasper Farm was an independent farm, a step above family-run contract farms. My Dad, Forrest Jasper, got birds off Hubbard growing farms. Mortality during the 10-month laying cycle was as high as 50% of the flock each year for 5 years. Hubbard Farms made some partial adjustments that gave my Dad’s 25,000-bird farm a profit of just over $5,000 one year.
In 1973, Dick Starke said, “You’re getting vaccinated birds. Leucosis in our Hubbard stock is over.” That year, my father made $44,000. In 1974, my first year, we made a profit of $25,000 because of the need to eradicate Mycoplasma synoviae and Mycoplasma gallisepticum, known as MS and MG in poultry circles.
Our total farm income for 4 consecutive years was $50,000 a year. This was for processing 4 million eggs a year, investment in Hubbard stock, equipment, trucks, 4 farm houses and farm workers whom we charged $35 a week for housing. We used approximately 45 tons of chicken feed a week. Once, I submitted all of my carefully accounted for income to Hubbard Farms. We had great, accurate books. Starke said to Diane Meyers, our Hubbard field personnel, “Can you imagine how much they are not declaring?” Even Diane, a Hubbard employee, was disgusted.
We were very accurate on our income because my grandfather, a pioneer in poultry in the 1920’s, got caught selling a tractor trailer load of poultry and pocketing the money. In 1956, after months of worry, he committed suicide.
Incidentally, the other day in the heat, someone lost 400 chickens from the heat. We solved that problem by spraying all the birds with a garden hose with full-pressure water through a nozzle directly at, and on, the birds. The litter gets a little wet, but you lose hardly any chickens.
The stand featured vegetables from farms in Hollis, NH – Brookdale and Lull farms. In Litchfield, the Charlie McQuesten Farm had the best corn in the county 90% of the time. It’s a true family farm that I’d love to see have some new customers. Also, Gove Farm in Leominster, MA had the best tomatoes by far. It is another family farm where I would buy 900 pounds of tomatoes at a time wholesale every other day at the peak of the season. I would give honorable mention to the huge Wilson Farm in Litchfield, NH.
The Lavoie Farm in Hollis, NH is the farm that gave Cindy Jasper and I our start in the vegetable stand business, located at Nartoff Road in Nashua, NH. Go there.
My average stand grossed $55,000 in 7 weeks with a profit of $15,000 a year. We worked on a small margin. There were lots of regular customers. Our busiest corn sale day was 70 bushels, which is 350 dozen. 250 dozen was very common, especially on weekends.
When I bought the farm in 1974, I made some feeder and watering improvements and exceeded our hatchery’s expectations, Hubbard Farms of Walpole, NH. Twice I dealt with Wentworth Hubbard, a dignified, reasonable person who worried a lot. Even his mother told my mother that the president of Hubbard Farms was a worry wart.
Went depended on Richard I. Starke, the production manager, to set prices for hatching eggs produced at New Hampshire area farms. When we were critical of his cheap ways with farmers, he would invariably say, “They crucified the only perfect one.” Newly recruited farms by Hubbard personnel usually lasted 1 or 2 years and quit.
I expanded our producing birds to 35,000 chickens and 3,800 roosters on sawdust floors so they could mate. Actually, Jasper Farm was an independent farm, a step above family-run contract farms. My Dad, Forrest Jasper, got birds off Hubbard growing farms. Mortality during the 10-month laying cycle was as high as 50% of the flock each year for 5 years. Hubbard Farms made some partial adjustments that gave my Dad’s 25,000-bird farm a profit of just over $5,000 one year.
In 1973, Dick Starke said, “You’re getting vaccinated birds. Leucosis in our Hubbard stock is over.” That year, my father made $44,000. In 1974, my first year, we made a profit of $25,000 because of the need to eradicate Mycoplasma synoviae and Mycoplasma gallisepticum, known as MS and MG in poultry circles.
Our total farm income for 4 consecutive years was $50,000 a year. This was for processing 4 million eggs a year, investment in Hubbard stock, equipment, trucks, 4 farm houses and farm workers whom we charged $35 a week for housing. We used approximately 45 tons of chicken feed a week. Once, I submitted all of my carefully accounted for income to Hubbard Farms. We had great, accurate books. Starke said to Diane Meyers, our Hubbard field personnel, “Can you imagine how much they are not declaring?” Even Diane, a Hubbard employee, was disgusted.
We were very accurate on our income because my grandfather, a pioneer in poultry in the 1920’s, got caught selling a tractor trailer load of poultry and pocketing the money. In 1956, after months of worry, he committed suicide.
Incidentally, the other day in the heat, someone lost 400 chickens from the heat. We solved that problem by spraying all the birds with a garden hose with full-pressure water through a nozzle directly at, and on, the birds. The litter gets a little wet, but you lose hardly any chickens.