Farming irrigated corn and having no livestock experience, Bosle, with four other central Nebraska farmers, bought a portable processing facility on a truck trailer.

"There’s no sense in all of us having this equipment," said Bosle, who found the used trailer from an Iowa processor.

Bosle compares the processing facility to wheat threshers of the past that traveled from farm to farm in rural communities. He and his co-farmers process May through October, putting the poultry unit on the road for nearly half a year and slaughtering thousands of chickens on various farms.

The trailer contains killing cones, a scalder, a feather picker, a certified scale and an evisceration area with cooling tanks.

Slaughtering day at Bosle’s farm is frenzied, but professional and organized. He starts out early in the morning preparing equipment. After plucking birds from their Salatin pens and transporting them to the processing unit, Bosle begins by using killing cones — tin cones in the trailer and secondary plastic cones next to the trailer — to cut the chicken’s main artery, allowing the heart to completely pump out blood.

Next the birds are scalded in a tub on the right side of the trailer.

Bosle puts scalded birds in the feather plucker, a round tub with spikes on the sides that twirls chicken carcasses with cold water until they’re clean.

Evisceration is done in a small room at the front of Bosle’s trailer. Hired hands follow Salatin’s detailed directions for dressing birds. As chickens are placed in cold water to wash, the helpers discard offal for Bosle to put on a compost pile and later use on his crops.

The final step for whole chicken carcasses is a large, cold water vat, from which customers pick their poultry before 7 p.m on slaughter day. This same process occurs at each participating farm throughout the growing season.

Bosle said as few as three people are needed on slaughter day to put 200-500 birds through his unit.

Bosle also lets local 4-H clubs use his mobile facility. For 25 cents a bird, young 4-H’ers can process small flocks and sell or freeze their poultry projects.

To make the poultry processing unit a reality, Bosle and friends had a SARE producer grant, along with another cost-share from the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society.

"This project would have been more difficult without the extra money," Bosle said. "But a group could definitely do it without a grant. You could get equipment for less than $10,000. In today’s agriculture, that’s not a big investment."

Bosle and company also cooperatively buy their chicks and feed, allowing them to purchase at lower cost.

Swanson said growing and marketing pastured poultry takes a variety of skills, and Bosle’s crew illustrates that with more people involved, you have a broader pool of skills. For instance, Swanson said, while Bosle may not have previous livestock experience, he has strong sales skills.

"The competition was stiff, but we’re pleased to bring Paula Ford to our regional SARE team," said Elbert Dickey, NCR-SARE regional extension coordinator.

Ford, of Manhattan, Kan., will take the post of NCR-SARE PDP Coordinator on June 1, 1999, to coordinate the regional PDP -- a sustainable agriculture educational program for Cooperative Extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and other agricultural professionals.

Housed at Kansas State University, Ford will ensure that North Central educators are equipped with sustainable agriculture information needed by their clients. She will help network educators, facilitate educational programs or workshops, integrate SARE research results into educational programming, identify farmer and nonprofit organization leaders to teach agricultural educators, and collect and disseminate SARE educational materials.

Armed with a diverse set of skills and knowledge from more than a decade of professional experience in coordinating and implementing programs in sustainable agriculture, Ford’s past experience has included program manager of the Southern Region SARE program. She received her M.S. in Agronomy/Soils at the University of Georgia and her B.S. in Agronomy at Clemson University.

Research and Education grants will cover topics such as marketing native-raised bison meats, organic soybean production, skill training for beginning farmers, management of apple diseases, education on free-range poultry marketing and production, institutional markets for sustainable ag products, whole-farm nutrient planning, and financial indicators of sustainability, among others.

Professional Development Program project coordinators will develop training in whole-farm planning, an educational program on leafy spurge for Native American Reservations, training for entrepreneurs, a marketing education program, and training in grazing and monitoring riparian areas.

A complete list of project titles and new project coordinators will be published in September.

In mid-July, NCR-SARE will make its annual Call for Research and Education Preproposals. Researchers, educators, farmers and others in collaborative, multi-disciplinary teams are encouraged to apply for grants from approximately $10,000 to $100,000 to explore sustainable agriculture. Priority areas will be issued with the application.

"Concentration, global economics and other factors have contributed to tough times for many of our small farmers," said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. "These are some of the ways they can fight back."

The education campaign, conceived in part by the national SARE program, was one of the recommendations of the National Commission on Small Farms, which examined ways that the USDA could help ensure that small farms not only survive, but also thrive, in coming years.

The campaign will reach out to producers and USDA employees, providing ‘tip sheets’ on top resources available on major topics: soil quality, pest prevention, organic production, livestock costs, weed management, crop diversification, planning, networking, and agroforestry.

"The information is available, but it can be difficult to get and use," said SARE’s national director Jill Auburn. "Our goal is to bring practical information and resources to smaller producers."