Our first year of the “real” farm life here has proven to be quit humorous at times. Andrew and I have been amazed by some of the questions people have asked. At times, those funny questions and comments have triggered funny memories from the past. Recently though we shared some of these bits of humor with our family when a realization hit us. While the situations were funny at the time, when you really think a moment it isn’t so funny. Why? Read on and see for yourself as we share a few different scenarios.

1. Hill Cows

  I sure hope my mother will forgive me, but this one is to good not to share! My Dad told me this story one time of when he and my mother were just married. Mom was only 18 at the time, a young girl from a small town and not at all familiar with farms or livestock. While out on a drive one day they spotted a scenic hillside dotted with grazing cattle. Dad pointed them out to Mom and said, “look there at them hill cows!” The hill was quit steep, and Dad went on to tell Mom how those cows had two legs shorter than the others so they wouldn’t fall down the hill. He said those poor cows have to keep grazing around the hill because they will fall down if they turn around. Mom actually believed him up until he burst out in laughter.

   

 2.Brown Cows Make Chocolate Milk. 

While I am telling on my family we’ll add this one! Several years ago my young cousin got in trouble at school. Their class was discussing where food comes from. She was only 7 at the time when the topic of cows and milk came up. Danielle was so completely convinced that brown cows make chocolate milk, and white cows make white milk that she argued with her teacher. Not even her mother could make her believe that evening that all milk starts out white, regardless of the color of the cow!

    

3. “Them roosters lay eggs?” 

At the end of last summer, we found ourselves with a bakers dozen of mature roosters and about that many extra week old chicks. I advertised them locally on an online sales page. The ad specified that we had six month old roosters and one week old straight run chicks. The following was perhaps one of my most memorable phone calls ever!

Me: Hello?

Man: Yes, ma’am. I saw your ad and was calling about your chickens. You still got them?

Me: Yes we do.

Man: Are any of them laying eggs?

Me: All we have are mature roosters and chicks, we don’t have any hens left for sale.

Man: Them roosters aren’t laying eggs yet?

Me: Excuse me?

Man: Are the roosters not old enough to lay eggs yet?

Me: Well, roosters don’t lay eggs. They’re boys. Only the hens lay eggs.

Man: Oh, well are the chicks laying any eggs?

Me: They are only one week old.

Man: Well when will they lay eggs?

Me: Some of these may be roosters, but the ones that are hens should lay when they’re about 5-6 months old.

Man: So what do you use roosters for if they don’t lay eggs?

Me: We use some of them for breeding stock, and the extras that don’t sell we put in the freezer.

Man: Why do you do that?

Me: So we can eat them.

Man: You EAT roosters?! What do they taste like?

Me: They taste like chicken.

Man: Well I haven’t ever had chickens before and thought me and my wife could get us a few to get some eggs.

Me: I’m sorry, but we don’t have anything for sale that is laying right now.

Man: Well I don’t want no birds that can’t lay eggs. We don’t eat roosters, just them roasters from the store. You don’t have any egg chickens for sale?

Well, as you can imagine, we didn’t make a sale that day!

   

 4. White Rocks aren’t Jersey Giants. 

  Sometimes, no matter how hard you try there is just pleasing some people. Nor can you change their mind when they whole-heartedly believe something to be true. Not long ago we sold a small flock of five white rock hens with one white rock rooster. He went home thrilled, and e-mailed us at least twice a week for three weeks telling us so. He went on to place an advanced order for some spring chicks this year, as well as some fertile turkey eggs. We thought that was a successful sale, until three weeks later…

  Then we get an e-mail from this man accusing us of cheating him by selling him “mixed up birds” and not Jersey Giants, something he claimed to have just discovered that weekend when his six month old birds did not reach over 10 pounds. He said that we knew they weren’t Jersey Giants, and cheated him on purpose. I told him I knew they were not Jersey Giants, that we had never owned Jersey Giants. Our ad had said White Rocks, he bought White Rocks, and we delivered White Rocks. I told him all we had in that pasture was White Rocks and Barred Rocks and I sent him a description of both breeds of birds with pictures of our flock. He responded that we must be lying, because according to him I sent him pictures of Jersey Giants and Dominique’s. There was simply no convincing him otherwise, even when I gave him the name and number of the certified poultry hatchery we bought all of our foundation breeding stock from.

5. “You have any meat sheep?” 

For the last year we have raised hair sheep. We started with some Barbados, and now raise mostly registered katahdin with a few Barbados and painted deserts. This past fall we advertised a pair of hair sheep for sale. We had more than one phone call asking us if we had any meat sheep available. I was amazed at the number of people who were confused about this. Many thought that wool sheep make wool, hair sheep make hair, and meat sheep make meat. They seemed shocked that you could eat both wool sheep and hair sheep, and that a “meat sheep” was simply one or the other of those. Then we also had people call and ask what do you do with a hair sheep, which my typical reply is we raise ewe’s for breeding and send most of the rams to slaughter. I lost count of how many times I heard “people EAT sheep?!” Apparently many believe that “lamb chops” and “rack of lamb” are just names, and not actual descriptions of the meat!

  

6. “I don’t want any White Chickens.”  

While advertising hens for sale this past summer, I encountered one woman who was quit comical in her animated description of exactly what she was looking for in a chicken. We were at the farmers market one weekend selling chicks and she had asked about hens. I told her I had a few white rock hens for sale. She proceeded to tell me that she did not want any of those white birds, she wanted brown eggs. Well, this was what triggered the brown cow/white milk memory!

I explained to this woman that we had white hens that laid brown eggs. She looked at me in surprise, shook her head and said “what will they think of next!” Then she asked if I was joking her. I told her no, that I was quit serious. Every bird in our flock lays brown eggs, although many of them at the time were solid white and some were solid red and others were black and white. She took my phone number, but never called back. I truly believe she left still thinking I was joking her.

     

7. “How can you tell if it’s fertile?”  

Recently we had a farm visit with a couple interested in raising sheep. While they were here we went on a tour and they got a big thrill out of collecting the eggs from the nesting boxes. When we came inside, they saw our incubator set up with this seasons first run of eggs. This brought a whole round of questions.

Woman: What’s in that?

Me: Chicken eggs, and a few turkey eggs.

Woman: What’s it for?

Me: We put fertile eggs inside, and it hatches chicks.

Woman: Where do you get fertile eggs?

Me: You just did. We use our own eggs from the barn.

Woman: How do you know they are fertile?

Me: We have six roosters.

Woman: How do they get fertile?

Me: Um, well the roosters breed the hens.

Woman: Are they ok to eat?

Me: Yes. Nearly all of our eggs are fertile, but we only hatch in the spring and summer time.

Woman: What does a fertile egg taste like?

Me: Well, it just tastes like an egg.

  

8. Bacon isn’t Hickory Smoked. 

During another recent conversation with a potential customer we were discussing cuts of pork. She had never had a pig butchered before and was wanting to know about the different cuts available. I asked what she usually liked purchasing from the store and as she gave me her list she mentioned how much her family likes hickory smoked bacon. I told her that she could get bacon cut with her purchase, but it wouldn’t be flavored. She expressed concern that our pigs had a different flavor, and thought that maybe she should look for another one that would have that hickory taste. I explained that no pig naturally makes hickory smoked bacon, that this is something that is done after slaughter. She had no idea that the taste of store bought bacon was not how it naturally comes straight from the hog.

   

We have heard similar stories from others involved in agriculture. Not only in regards to animals, but produce as well. One woman recently commented on our facebook that she knew some children who wouldn’t eat “dirty vegetables” from the garden. They only eat those clean vegetables from the store. Now while this and the chocolate milk episode above can be attributed to children who simply don’t know any better, what about the rest of those? All other above scenarios were grown adults ranging in age from mid-twenties to past retirement age. Some were college educated teachers, business women, and even a doctor. Is it really funny that these grown adults do not know more about their food supply?

Andrew and I were joking at first about these things, but as we thought more about it we were struck by how little the general non-farming public knows. Remember those Hill Cows? While my poor mother may have given my Dad a good laugh those many years ago, she evidently wasn’t the only one to fall for that line. At www.urbandictionary.com you can actually find the definition of a Hill Cow. Hill Cow: “A species of cow that live on hills. The legs on one side are shorter, so they can never turn around or they will roll down the hill.” Wow.

Our oldest children are only six and four years old, yet they can tell you which animal what kinds of meat come from. They know that chicks come from chicken eggs, roosters don’t lay eggs, and white chickens can lay brown eggs. While they may not know the breeds of all the animals we have here, they can tell you everything else about them from their eating habits to how many babies they have at a time. How sad it is to think that our culture today does not teach these lessons to all of our nations youth! To many children now think that food simply comes from the grocery store. Then those children grow into oblivious adults totally out of touch with the reality of what they eat. Seems like our country may need a lesson in Barn Yard 101.

Yesterday was a really exciting day for us here at ANS Farms. It was our first official “sheep visit” since we began raising katahdin last summer. We had a wonderful time with a very nice older couple interested in raising a few sheep of their own. During our conversation, the question was asked “How many animals do you have here?” Hmm… well, we had to sit and think on that awhile!

We don’t just do one thing here, but a little bit of just about everything. Which reminds me, I have been asked “Why Confessions of a Cracked Egg?” Apparently, I have never explained the origins of our blog title. Last year we needed to build our poultry flock. We started here with just 7 hens, not even a rooster. So in March we purchased a pure bred barred rock rooster and six more hens. Then we purchased some Narragansett turkeys. By April we were continuously running the incubator, doing as many as 108 eggs at a time of both chicken and turkey. Our friends thought we were crazy, our family just laughed. One day a Facebook friend posted a quote on my page that just about summed me up. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”- Bernard Meltzer. This made me laugh, and just seemed a perfect fit for our blog!

So lets do a run down of exactly what all we have here these days. I’ll start with our family. One year ago when we were just starting our farming adventure there was myself, my husband Andrew, our oldest daughter Macey, and our son William. In October, our third child Cierra was born. Here they all are in their first group photo. Macey is now 6, William will be 5 next month, and Cierra is almost 3 months old.

  

So as I think you can guess I have a fondness for poultry. Our original hens were all cinnamon queens. Now, the majority of our chicken flock is barred rock. We still have those cinnamon queens today, with a few of their barred rock cross offspring which hatched out white. Our chicken total today is 23 hens, 7 roosters. Here are our original “Golden Girls” and the barred rock rooster.

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Besides the chickens, we also have 7 guineas. These were purchased to eat the potato bugs off our plants last year, and they did so quit efficiently! I was impressed by how well they ate all the bugs in the garden without damaging the plants. We have 5 royal purple guineas and 2 lavenders. The lavenders are by far my favorite, the royal purple remind me to much of a vulture. I would like to eventually replace the purples with more of the lavenders.

  

In the fall of 2010 GRIT featured a beautiful turkey on the front of their magazine. I was struck by the beauty of that bird, and began investigating different heritage breeds of turkey. Andrew and I decided to try the Narragansett turkey first. Our first purchase was supposed to be 3 hens and a tom. However as they grew we discovered we had 2 of each. They just became old enough to breed this past month, and we have their first eggs in our incubator now! Unfortunately, last week one of our hens wandered to close to our Poland China boar Boss. Boss Hog had himself a 30 pound snack before dinner. Hopefully some of these eggs will be hens! Last summer we found a local man advertising fertile turkey eggs. He raised Bourbon Reds, another heritage breed and the second breed we were interested in raising. We ended up with 108 eggs, and only had 11 hatch from that run. Of those 11, only 1 bird lived to maturity. Not the success we were hoping for! So today we have 3 Narragansett turkeys and one lonely Bourbon Red. Since the death of our other hen, both turkey toms have decided to compete for the attention of the remaining girl. Here they are having a gobbling match.

   

When we went last year to purchase our barred rock flock from a poultry hatchery we took both kids along. They saw some baby crested ducks, and just had to have a pair. We brought home Donald and Daisy that evening. Six months later, we discovered Donald and Daisy were really Donald and Daffy. These boys were hilarious, and pretty sweet creatures. Unfortunately, Daffy was killed by a hawk just a few weeks ago, leaving us with one pretty lonely Donald Duck.

   

So that makes a total of 42 total birds we have here now. We are hoping to double our number of laying hens and turkeys this year. I’m also looking for a female companion for poor Donald.

As for the four-legged farm critters we have plenty of those as well! Our largest stock here are Momma and Baby donkey. Momma and Baby are livestock guardians who purchased from a cattle and goat operation. They are both very sweet with humans, and deadly to dogs! We have seen them many times charge fence rows and make a huge commotion when neighborhood dogs have attempted to run the fence row. Last month Momma Donkey bent a twenty foot section of fence nearly in half after a pack of five dogs began digging and barking at the fence. While we weren’t very happy to have to repair the fence, we were thankful that the dogs did not get in to the birds, their obvious target after finding one dead bird outside the fence. Momma and Baby are both bred to deliver this summer. We bred them to a nice gaited donkey stud that belongs to a neighbor.

   

That is Momma and Eeyore visiting for the first time. Not long after this we had to put up hay in the barn that sits in their pasture. We discovered that donkeys REALLY like jelly beans. Only when you run out, they try to come through the window for more!

   

Our main livestock operation here is sheep. We started with a few different kinds of hair sheep. Of those, we have three left. Barbie is a full blooded Barbados ewe. Her daughter Annie (born on our Anniversary) is a Barbados and katahdin cross. Then there is Paint, she is a full blooded painted desert sheep. In late summer of last year we added a registered herd of katahdin hair sheep to the flock. We have 7 ewe’s and 1 stud. Our favorite in this flock is Lil’ Red, our only red katahdin. Red John, our stud and Old Lady (the oldest in the flock) are also characters. All of our katahdin have been pretty easy keepers so far, not to difficult to catch or handle and seemingly resistant to the foot rot problems we were having with the other breeds. All but two of our girls are bred to deliver in the next 30 days. We can’t wait to have a pasture full of babies! This is our first year lambing, and we are all pretty excited. Our current sheep total is 11 head.

    

These girls are either pregnant, or they each swallowed a barrel!

  

This past fall we added a few pigs to the farm in an effort to clear our garden areas in a productive and environmentally friendly way. We currently have 2 Poland x Chester cross slaughter pigs we are growing out, 2 registered Poland China breeding pigs, and 2 Poland x York cross females for breeding. Our first piglets should be born sometime in March. That’s another first for us! We don’t know much about pigs yet, and are doing a lot of learning as we go so this should be quit the experience! Here are our two newest sows, Daisy Duke and Ellie May right after arriving here in October.

   

Besides livestock we also have three dogs. Two of our dogs are registered redbone coonhounds. Both are show and hunt dogs. Andrew used to raise and train dogs for show and hunt. Since moving here though we have sold his other dogs just keeping these two, our favorites. Sweets is our young female, and Digit our male. Digit is the kids favorite hound ever. He’s pretty easy to handle, and William has been able to show him since he was three years old. Here he is at a show when he was three with “his” dog Digit.

   

Then there is Tucker. Tucker is a Brittany and Springer Spaniel crossed house dog we got in May. When we moved here, we had a Wheaton Terrier female named Lucy. Lucy was our family mascot, the kids best friend, and a joy to our household. She was a very talented dog that was able to climb six foot ladders, go down ten foot slides, sled in the snow, and do many other tricks. Shortly after moving here our new neighbors son shot and killed Lucy for running across their yard one day. She had never been over there before, and we did not realize she had wandered off until it was to late. The kids were devastated, and we were all upset over the loss. Tucker was a gift from Andrew’s mother to the kids, an attempt to give something back to them that they had lost. While he will never be Lucy, Tucker is a sweet pup.. Most of the time!

   

So back to the question of how many of what we have here on the farm. Looks like we are currently at 3 kids, 30 chickens, 4 turkeys, 7 guineas, 1 duck, 2 donkeys, 11 sheep, 6 pigs and 3 dogs. For now. Can’t wait to do an end of summer inventory in a few months! We are expecting February lambs, March piglets, June and July donkeys, and chicks all spring and summer long. The kids have also asked Daddy for two kittens, which he promised they can have now that we have two barns built. Who knows what else will make it's way onto the farm this year. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Stock panels are one of those common things universally found on nearly every farm across America. They come in several heights and lengths of varying wire placement marketed as goat panels, sheep panels, cattle panels, and so forth. These panels are usually used for either temporary or permanent fencing to keep livestock contained. We have a permanent catch pen assembled from wood posts, t-posts, and stock panels as I am sure many of you do.

   

This past year has found us with a long list of improvements needed a short supply of dollars to accomplish it all. Our first year here on the farm did not go entirely as planned. Just a few months after moving here we found ourselves in quit a situation. Within a 30 day period Andrew was laid off of his job of seven years, I found out we were expecting our third child, and we went from the owners of six chickens to the owners of 50 head of assorted livestock housed in temporary quarters while we fenced our unimproved land. It was time for some serious money crunching, and some good old fashioned country ingenuity!

While walking through Tractor Supply one day with our notepad and pen gathering prices for all of our assorted needs, an idea struck. Looking back, we are really not sure who first had the idea. It was one of those moments you see on the cartoons, where two characters look at each other and suddenly a light bulb pops up on screen. We had purchased a hay rack the previous week for $39.99, but it was only big enough to service one of our three pens holding hay-eating livestock. We needed at least two more, but didn’t have enough left in our monthly budget to purchase them. While standing there outside the store staring at the stock panels on sale, we knew exactly what to do! So we loaded up an extra twenty foot long stock panel for the sale price of $18.99 and headed home.

Andrew got straight to work when we got home. He started by cutting the twenty foot panel into four sections. Each section was then bent into the same shape as our other hay rack, think rectangular bowl shape only open on one end. The ends were filed down so they were not sharp, and several of the exposed bars were bent into hooks. These hooks were what hung the rack onto the fencing. These hay racks may not be as pretty, but they hold nearly double the capacity at a cost of $4.75 each! They can also easily be attached to a barn wall, and can be molded to fit inside the corners of stalls if necessary.

  

The hanging hay racks are great for the sheep. Most of our sheep are kept inside pasture with chickens, guineas, or turkeys so it is important that the hay be suspended where it is easily reached by the sheep but not so accessible for the poultry to perch on as this can get quit messy…..

A few months later we brought home a few piglets to place in our garden. We needed a shelter to keep the late summer heat off of them. Since the pigs were only going to be in the garden until they cleaned up the weeds and leftover plants, it could not be a permanent structure. At the time we only had two small piglets, so a single stock panel bent in an arch and anchored by four t-posts was sufficient. A tarp covered the top to provide shade.

   

We soon purchased another two pigs the same age, and moved all four into a larger garden. The single panel was no longer sufficient, so we added another panel, several more t-posts for support, a perimeter of hay bales to block the winter wind, and a larger tarp. The t-posts were extra from our summer fencing project, the tarp was an extra from my parents, and we had plenty of hay in the barn from our own cutting. So our winter pig structure cost us under $40.

   

This summer we ran into another serious dilemma. We are raising both sheep and pigs for meat. This requires occasional trips to the feed lot to sale sheep and to the slaughterhouse with pigs. Only problem is, we don’t have a good way to get them there! In the spring, we had relied on a borrowed truck and trailer to take care of our livestock hauling needs. This was getting quit expensive though, since it required an hour drive to pick up, another hour to take back, and lots of gas in between. We acquired “Ole Blue” the 1981 Chevy truck earlier this year. She’s a good farm truck, but not a good trailer hauler. My parents two horse trailer loaded with one cow caused her to repeatedly over heat earlier in the summer. So we needed a light weight method of hauling up to six head of sheep or pig at a time. We had talked about purchasing a light weight cage for the truck bed but after pricing them that was just not an option.

So once again Andrew set about some country rigging. We inherited a small trailer after Andrew’s grandfather passed away a few years ago. It was the perfect size for what we needed, only it didn’t have tall sides or a top.

   

By this point, when we needed to construct something we first thought “How can we do this with stock panels?” So once again, we headed to the store for two panels. Andrew borrowed a welder from a friend of ours, and in one afternoon he made a trailer topper with sides, a top, and a hinged door. It secures by U-bolts, and is removable when not needed. The topper cost $38, and the U-bolts were less than $9.

  

  

We have already used this twice and so far have had no problems. It seems to be the perfect solution for our short trips.

At the end of the year we found ourselves with an extra stock panel. I had just planted another two blackberries next to the two we planted last year. Last years plants grew beautifully, but the canes were weighed down and sagging. I thought it may be nice to have a trellis for them. We decided to take the extra stock panel, secure it with t-posts, and use it for a berry trellis. The holes in the panel are the perfect size for reaching through and I am sure it will make picking easier this coming year. I also plan to use these in the garden for peas and beans this summer. Andrew is currently designing his next stock panel project as we speak, a hay rack/feeder combo with removable feeders for easy cleaning for less than $70 to rival the $120 co-op version.

So this past year we found many alternative uses for stock panels, besides our normal fencing requirements. In our short time on the farm we have quickly learned the value of several useful items. Stock panels, portable electric fencing, tarps, and zip ties will always be kept in supply here from now on!

Have you found an alternate use for stock panels that we haven’t thought of yet? Please share them with us here or on our Facebook farm page “Ans Farms.” We would love to hear them!