Carlena Brown

And I mean, I love my shrimp, but I don't even know if I would drive 12 hours to go get it.

The shipping cost really is the hardest part of this whole business right now because it has almost quadrupled within just the last couple of years.

And what I'm talking about shipping, it's not me shipping.

It's when we get our baby shrimp in, they either come from Florida or Texas.

They come from hatcheries down there and they ship them up here.

I mean, I'm spending less than maybe $700 to get 60,000 shrimp, but it costs me $2,000 to get them shipped here.

As much as I would love to do my own hatchery, we've done the cost analysis.

It's just not cost effective for us to do it.

So we're at the mercy, basically, of the UPS and FedEx companies right now.

We're fortunate that I think that we've been in it long enough that we really do have a cush on our price.

I don't need to raise the price of my shrimp in order to meet that market yet.

But you got to kind of start thinking about it if these prices keep going like they are.

Even though I've been doing this for 16 years, I always talk about I would have never, ever in a million years ever thought this is what I would be doing with my life.

And I mean, my closest thing to aquaculture I ever did, my son won two goldfish at the county fair and I kept him alive for two weeks.

I always talk about you don't have to be a farmer.

I have no farming inkling.

I have known as that, but I love what I do.

I love working with the water and I actually love working with the shrimp.