Hometown: Searcy, Ark.
Family: Husband Todd Lawrence, son Daylend and daughter Marleigh
In Town: Victoria Lawrence works at Books By The Pound in Searcy, Ark.
“I do a lot of customer service; that’s where they love me at. I also help with restocking the floor. I love my job; it’s books, books and books.”
Victoria has been with Books By The Pound for about two years. Her husband of two years, Todd, also works at the store.
In the Country: After moving to their 6-acre property, Victoria got her first chicken.
“People kept telling me we needed chickens, but I said we weren’t ready for that,” Victoria recalled. “Out of nowhere, a chicken shows up at my house. It obviously got run off in the middle of the night from somewhere. She is the sweetest thing; she lets me pick her up, and I have fallen in love with her. Her name is Lovie.”
She now has 11 chickens. Lovie came to their farm about three months ago, and the chicks came about a month later.
“We also have three ducks,” Veronica said. “We got them all about the same time; we couldn’t help ourselves.”
Veronica had no experience in poultry production other than being chased by a rooster as a child before Lovie made her appearance.
“I work in a bookstore, so I have gotten three chicken-related books. I obsess over things once I get started, but if you love it like I love it, it’s easy,” Veronica said.
Veronica’s goal with her small flock is to begin selling local eggs. She said there is a large open-air flea market in Searcy every Saturday, and she would like to sell her eggs there one day.
“I want to get more people on board with eating fresh eggs,” she said.
Veronica would like to eventually get more layers to add to her flock and other animals to add to their farmstead.
“Until I have a bigger pen, I won’t get anymore,” she said. “They will eventually be free range, but they will have to get bigger. I would like to add one cow. We have a whole acre we can close off and experience that journey, and I also want goats. It would be really hard to do that at once, but that is the goal. Once we get all of that down, I want some guineas.”
Veronica credited her friend Mindy Lamb for helping to “guide” her.
“She’s the one who told me not to get guineas until I figured it all out,” Veronica said. “Going slow is a little easier, and I have fewer things that might go wrong if I take it slow. I have to pace myself, learn one animal at a time, then move forward. I feel like that is the way to get my whole farmstead going.”
