It isn’t easy going into business for yourself.
It’s even harder entering a market that is so specialized most people don’t know the product is for sale.
But Carl & Kathleen Jenkins don’t mind the questions and the puzzled looks when they tell people they’ve opened up a Cricket Farm.
NHPR Correspondent Sean Hurley reports.
Crazy Carl at his cricket farm. (Sean Hurley, NHPR)
“Crazy Carl’s Cricket Farm” is tucked along the quiet side of an old 3 story brick building in Franklin.
Going inside is like entering an old library – the wood floors are uneven and the main room is overtaken with rows of floor to ceiling shelves.
But instead of books, the shelves are stacked with blue, 30 gallon bins – each of which is filled with softly singing insects.
The room is also filled with the vaguely sweet and unfamiliar smell of one million crickets.
Carl: Hey Sean?
Sean: Hey Carl –
Carl: Welcome to my farm…Give you a quick tour?
Sean: Yeah, that would be great.
Carl: Let’s start in here, this is the breeding room.
Even though snow covers the ground outside, Carl Jenkins works in shorts and a t-shirt
The outfit is a bit more appropriate to the 85 degree heat in the brightly lit hatchery.
He opens one of the cricket bins:
Carl: This is the typical set-up.
Sean: And what is that made of?
Carl: This is made of cocoanut husks actually, it’s ground up cocoanut husks. It’s called forest bedding. And they just started laying, you can see some of the little eggs here.
Sean: Oh I see. Yeah. Looks like very small rice.
This operation is clearly under full sway.
It’s got a processing area, an office, a hatchery, and main growing room.
While the constant murmur of crickets seems like it might fit in well with a Twilight zone episode, there is something comforting and almost home-made about Carl’s Cricket Farm.
He’s got no special instruments or wild cricket technologies at work here.
As it turns out, Carl has built his hatchery from those things closest to hand.
Carl: If you look around, everything here is from Lowes or Walmart or the Dollar Store. I go on great tours through Lowes thinking, “How can I use something different?”
Carl’s experience as a reptile owner really set the stage for the start up business:
Carl: Years ago I had a Chinese water dragon. He was about a foot and half long. And he’d eat a hundred crickets at a sitting. He ate them like popcorn.
Carl’s crickets sell for about a penny and half each. Mail order boxes of a thousand cost about $15.
And the demand for these farm raised crickets is growing all the time:
Carl: There are four and half million households caring for reptiles as pets across the country and they’re caring for over 14 million reptiles.
Carl and Kathleen have been in business for a little over two months, but they already need to expand the hatchery to keep up with the demand.
And Carl’s not the only guy in the cricket market.
He competes with 10 or 12 major cricket breeders across the country
Most of them are located in warmer climates though and Carl ran into plenty of people who doubted he could set up a viable farm in New Hampshire.
Carl: I actually had a pet store guy in Maine say “Well you know I heard you can’t grow crickets in New England” and I said “Well I have a million crickets that tells you you can.”
While the larger breeders can process about a billion crickets a year, Carl’s ambitions are a little more modest:
Carl: My goal is to grow this up to 50 to 60 million crickets a year in a state of the art hatchery, probably employing 20 people.
There’s something convincing in the sonorous and subtle ebb and flow of the cricket’s chirping that makes this goal seem possible.
It’s also obvious that Carl and Kathleen are working very hard to make their business a success.
They’re both putting in ten to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But according to Carl, there is nothing he’d rather be doing.
Carl: I spent my life trying to find that one little business, that one thing that’s different and this is it. It truly is.
If Carl has indeed found his place and purpose,maybe he isn’t so crazy after all.
For NHPR News, I’m Sean Hurley.
