‘Nutty’ Lee County business is for the birds

LEESBURG — With every idea that eventually takes root, there is that moment of clarity when things kind of fall into place. Call it an “a-ha moment.”

For Patrick Collins, that moment came when he was in his backyard with his then-3-year-old daughter, Becka.

“We enjoyed watching wildlife, and we were sitting out in the yard when a bluebird landed nearby,” Collins said. “Becka just lit up, you could see the joy on her face.

“I’d been thinking about a possible side business, and in that moment it hit me. I said, ‘That’s it!’”

A short while later Collins and his wife, Lauren, started talking more seriously about a business that would become Nutty By Nature, a garage start-up that offers packaged feed for bird and nature lovers.

“I knew I wanted to do something that involved nature, and I work in the peanut business (as a broker with Mazur and Hockman), so it was pretty easy to put the two together,” Patrick Collins said. “The business that would become Nutty By Nature was born in that moment outside with my daughter.”

The Collinses’ a-ha moment took root in May of 2020 but didn’t officially bloom until February of 2021. Collins said the reason for the delay is a simple one: He just wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger on starting up a business.

“There was a great deal of self-doubt, I’ll admit,” the businessman said. “I just wasn’t going to go out there and jump off a bridge without thinking and talking everything through.

“I’m a huge believer in having no debt, and I wasn’t going to go into debt to start this business. Between the time I started talking about the business and the time we officially launched, I had people approach me who said they were interested in investing. But that’s not where I wanted to be.”

Nutty By Nature offers products primarily for bird enthusiasts. Raw peanut hearts (for smaller birds like finches, Eastern bluebirds, chickadees and titmice) and raw peanut splits (for cardinals, blue jays, wrens and — not necessarily on purpose — squirrels) are sold in packaging that includes 5-pound bags, 50-pound bulk bags and 25-pound buckets.

Additional products may be added to the mix soon.

“I hope to bring in more seeds and seed mixes to add with the peanuts,” Collins said. “There’s a lot of room to explore; we could even maybe put together bird feeder kits.

“The idea is to offer an inexpensive product that adds to the fun of outdoor experiences.”

Lauren Collins came up with the name for the nascent company — and before you ask either of the Collinses, know going in that the name of the company has nothing to do with the 1990s hip-hop group Naughty By Nature, which recorded the mega-hit “OPP.”

“People have asked me about that,” Patrick Collins said. “But, no, neither one of us had heard of that group. We were just kicking around ideas for a company name, and she put the nature aspect together with the nuts — said it was a little nutty — and came up with the name. We just thought it sounded cool.”

To get their company off the ground without incurring debt, the young couple needed a supplier.

“That was the biggest hurdle: finding a supplier,” Patrick Collins said. “Since we were going to pay as we went out of our own pocket, we had to figure a way to keep processing costs down. A friend of mine in Sylvester owns a feed company, and he worked it out where we wouldn’t have to buy in bulk. He worked it out where we could buy a palate of 50-pound bags and keep them in cold storage to use as we need them.

“Peanuts have a long shelf life if they’re kept in a cool, dry place, so my friend’s offer really opened the door for us to move forward. We had been praying for something like that to happen, and I can tell you wouldn’t be talking now if it weren’t for my friend.”

Collins bought and retrofitted a deer feeder that he uses to package his products, and he currently sells his feed through his website www.nuttybiz.com or over the phone at (229) 603-9815.

“I offer free shipping,” he said. “I just think there are a lot of people out there who will love having something that will help them get their kids up and outside in nature. Every trip into nature is a giant lesson of how good God is to us. We all have our own ecosystem in our backyards.”

The Collinses are marketing Nutty By Nature through social media and word of mouth.

“I think there’s a lot of potential with this business,” Patrick Collins said. “We’ve talked about trying to get our products in stores, finding additional distribution possibilities and adding additional products. But we’re interested in things happening organically.

“We will always be a scripturally-based business, as far as ethics are concerned. We want to glorify God in all we do. We’re open to where God leads us. We wouldn’t be here without Him.”

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