jay | *so* not veg...

This weekend, I saw one of my cousins for the first time in 10 years... he has taken his engineering degree and put it to an interesting use... he owns a huge farm in rural south Georgia, in Camilla. He was trying to think of a way to make money off of culled chickens... typically 10% of chickens raised on a farm. Answer: raise alligators as well, and feed them the culled chickens. Recycling them, in effect... now he's thinking of taking the nitrate-rich alligator water runoff and raising hydroponic tomatoes, in turn.

He is a supplier to Cagle (SE US retail chicken brand) as well as selling a half-million pounds to McDonalds last year. And is on the board of the Florida Alligator Marketing council... here. He sells the alligators to seafood restaurants around the US, and the hides go to contracts with designer labels. He has done his own automation designs, conveying fallen chickens to alligator feed trays...

Otherwise, today I'm getting a runaround from various customer support lines and dealerships and car rental companies, trying to get my van serviced in Coalinga and a rental replacement up here.