For Immediate Release: June 16, 2011
Contact: Mimi Pickering 606 633-0108 mpickering@appalshop.org
A Feature Article by Willie Davis, WMMT/Making Connections News:
Chickens, Internet & Entrepreneurs:
The Avian Aqua Miser
Dateline: Dungannon, VA: The chickens on Mark Hamilton and Anna Hess’s farm in
Scott County, Virginia don’t fear humans. “We’ve spoiled them,” Hess says, with an
almost maternal headshake. Not long after they first bought their 58-acre farm, a
friend gave them chickens in hopes that they’d share the eggs. What followed—
thanks to innovative thinking and high-speed Internet access—is an invention that
has sold all over the world, a model for rural economic development, and a selfsustaining farm where the chickens feel spoiled.
Scott County was once a hub for big tobacco farms, and its location—nestled
between two coal rich areas—provided an opportunity for residents to work in the
mines. Once the income from the tobacco industry and the coal companies dried up,
however, the county suffered. The population has been shrinking since 1990 and
over twenty percent of the residents live below the poverty line. Filling the void
these tobacco farms left are small self-sustaining farms. With small farms come
small farm problems.
For instance, like many small farmers, Hamilton and Hess had a problem leaving out
water for their chickens. Leave too much water and it becomes dirty and
1
unsanitary, leave too little and they can practically never leave the farm because
they have to constantly replace the water.
Mark Hamilton artfully solved this dilemma with an invention he calls The Avian
Aqua Miser, a nipple on a plastic container that allows chickens to drink the water
only as they need it, a drop at a time. “At first, I didn’t know what I was doing,”
Hamilton says, referring to an aborted draft of his invention. He then noticed that
larger commercial farms had been doing something similar. “Big industrial farms
overlooked the small guys, the people who only had one, two, three chickens,” he
says. “It didn’t seem right that people had dirty chicken water. We wanted to help
them out.”
They knew they had a winning idea, but the problem was how to sell it. “People
told Mark, go down to the Farmer’s Market, sell it that way,” Hess said. “That means
you have to haul it down there, set up a booth, and stay there constantly. But the
Internet is at the booth all day.” She laughs, but she’s making a serious point. By
selling their ideas on the Internet, “We were able to pay ourselves a living wage, not
just minimum wage. That’s hard for a lot of people around here to do.”
Because the Scott County Telephone Cooperative provides high-speed Internet
access to the Hess/Hamilton farm, they have been able to sell the Avian Aqua Miser
to all fifty states and as far away as Greece, Australia, and Japan. In today’s
economy, having a marketable idea isn’t enough—you need to market it. That
means finding your customers, even if they’re on the other side of the world. “We
thought it was only going to sell to farmers,” Hess says. She was pleasantly
2
surprised to find that all sorts of people wanted to buy it, even those who live in
cities due to the urban homesteading movement.
Most everyone agrees that high-speed Internet access is advantageous to rural
areas, but getting service to rural customers is another matter. Many Internet
providers don’t think it’s profitable to cover remote areas where the houses are
spread apart and the people don’t have much money. In response, Hess tells of two
friends, a married couple from Colorado. “These were just the sort of people the
Chamber of Commerce would want to move here. Well-educated, good money. But
there’s no way they’d relocate to a place without high speed Internet…We had
Broadband, so they came.” Now, she says, her friends go out of their way to support
local businesses and the community at large. The point, she implies, is that
investing in rural communities eventually pays for itself.
Access to high speed Internet also enabled Hess and Sherman to start a business
with almost no resources. “When we started we were on a shoestring budget. Less
than a shoestring.” They had only five hundred dollars in the beginning. They hope
to act as models for Appalachian youths who have good ideas but few resources and
think they have to leave home to be successful. “Work for a summer, you can make
five hundred dollars.” Hamilton says. “If you have enough desire, that’s all the
money you need to get started.”
“We’re not looking to get rich,” Hess says, “but we wanted to make enough money
to keep body and soul together.” Their invention has offered them economic
freedom to devote their time to what they really love—their farm. Hess grew up in
the outskirts of Bristol, and she felt connected to the Appalachian land from a young
3
age. “We moved away from a farm when I was too young to do the hard work. The
farm to me was eating great tomatoes, playing in the woods. We moved to the city,
and all I could say was ‘Mom, where are the great tomatoes?’” The biological
diversity of the area kept her close. “Here we are land-rich even when we’re moneypoor.”
Mark Hamilton had a more circuitous route to Scott County. From Ohio originally,
he moved around the country, setting up camp as far away as Albuquerque and
Boston. “I was kind of a drifter.” He speaks slowly and gives the impression that he
is careful with his words. “I was looking for something, and I guess I found it.”
“We think it’s paradise here,” Hess says, waving her arm around to indicate either
the farm, Appalachia, or both. “The people who leave the mountains, they still think
it’s paradise, but they don’t think there’re any jobs or opportunities.”
With innovative ideas, and the right tools in place, maybe local residents won’t have
to separate their paradise from their daily bread.
--00-WMMT’s Making Connection News is a series highlighting individuals and
organizations exploring a variety of opportunities for building a healthy,
sustainable future for central Appalachia’s people and land.
Reprinting this content is encouraged.
Contact Mimi Pickering, mpickering@appalshop.org , 606 633-0108, for more
information on publishing and high resolution photographs.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro
Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
4