Farm life is lots of things. Most folks know and reaffirm to us, “Farm life is so busy!” Yep! 100%!

It’s also very cyclical. Certain things happen alongside the seasons, and it really is so interesting to witness the ebb and flow from year to year. Sometimes we change things to better mesh with seasonal changes. And sometimes we find a groove that we really like, and we try to stick with it.

One of the “grooves” is how we manage our laying hen flocks. Chickens don’t lay eggs forever, so it’s helpful to track ages and keep adding young hens so that egg production doesn’t fall off. We tried a variety of strategies to manage this in our early years. It took, oh, almost a decade probably, to finally land on what we think will be our go-to procedure for the foreseeable future, and that is, every April, we order in new little day-old fluff-ball chicks, then they grow up and around September or October, they start laying eggs. Once they’re really up and going, we then retire the old flock by rehoming the old girls as backyard pets. They are, after all, only 18 months old, so actually not “old” at all.

But we find that at that age, these older hens really begin laying pretty gigantic eggs, but not as often—we may only get an egg every 2 or 3 days, versus just about every day. And it’s a whopper—jumbo or even a super jumbo, meaning it might be the equivalent weight of 1 and a half “regular” size eggs! And we have to use special cartons to be able to fit those in. And because Mrs. Hen will eat the same amount of feed over the 3 days, we have to charge more for those massive eggs. Most folks just want plain ol’ large or even extra-large eggs, not so much jumbos. At that age, they make lovely backyard birds and now that we have been doing this for a handful of years, we have lots of repeat customers looking for these pretty little hens.

So it works. But it isn’t easy. You see, just as old hens lay giant eggs, young hens lay little tiny eggs, and so for about a month or two, as the new girls begin shifting to producing normal size eggs and we hang on to the older girls so we don’t end up with a giant gap in egg production, we end up with a LOT of weird overlap in sizes. I won’t bore you with all the technical considerations, but here’s how we finally figured out how to manage it. We mix sizes! And we weigh the cartons to ensure the minimum carton weight meets the standard for “Large” eggs: 24 oz per carton.

The funny thing is that we’ve actually been doing this for a while, but only with a single older flock, so you probably didn’t notice because their eggs didn’t vary in size so much. Ever since springtime, our “Large” carton has really had an average weight closer to or even over the “Extra Large” standard. We changed to a mixed size standard then to help manage the craziness that is egg inventory. And we figured that we’re ok with our customers getting a great deal (extra large eggs for the price of large!!) if it means we have one less “inventory item” to track and deal with.

But now you’ll notice a bit more variation in size within the carton, and the overall egg size may drop just a touch as we switch over to this younger flock, but it will still meet a net minimum of 24 oz per carton. But don’t worry. Farming is cyclical, remember? When the weather gets cool, hens need more calories to stay warm. So they tend to consume more feed, which means they take in more protein overall. More protein means… bigger eggs!

Our goal is to supply minimum “Large” equivalent eggs for $5.50/dz. We’ll keep an eye on that carton weight to make sure it’s happening. If here through the autumn we see a drop, we may downgrade carton size to medium if needed, but if this year is like other years in the past… those girls will probably be up and running here in no time.

This is the first year we’re going to attempt sticking with “large” all the way through the transition period from flock to flock, and we plan to accomplish this by keeping the older girls a bit longer than usual. But this means you may notice a bit more size variation within the carton than normal. You might find it a rather enjoyable experience, though, because different size eggs make jobs in the kitchen more customizable. A smaller-size boiled egg for a snack. A larger-size egg for omelets. A middle-size egg for baking.

Welcome to the ebb and flow journey of natural farming! We hope you enjoy the eggs!!

It seems the 13-year mark of small business is when all your equipment decides to break down, especially if most of it was already almost a decade old when you started (but of course we didn’t own much “new” stuff. We like our equipment already “broken in,” ha!). We’ve had to do a boat-load of repairs this year. Matt says we can start calling him Jack, as in Jack of All Trades, Master of None. Thankfully he’s super handy and this last decade-plus has taught him a whole bunch about fixin’ stuff, and fixing it fast! He’s a pretty useful fella these days… Guess I’ll keep him. 🙂

It all started during our July delivery to Longview and Marshall. On the way to Longview, we heard some rather icky noises coming from the undercarriage of the Hambulance (our farm delivery vehicle which is a 21-year-old retired Red Cross food distribution truck). He pulled over several times to check things and try to identify where the noise was coming from. Thankfully we try to budget extra time into our delivery days for just such occasions as these when our old farm vehicles are feeling needy.

Matt determined it was non-critical and coming from the e-brake, so he temporarily disabled it and we managed to get through our drops and get back home. One funny excerpt from the day was when Matt said, “Well, it seems my speedometer has suddenly stopped working!” Trifles! Ha!

Now that happened to be our last delivery of July, leaving a full 2 weeks to investigate, order parts, and make repairs. Driving older vehicles has certain advantages. Things are still mostly mechanical and so can be repaired without much extra technology. But the downside is that at some point the parts become obsolete and hard to find. One of the main parts was on backorder, but amazingly was able to ship out ahead of schedule. Whew!

Matt diligently went to work as often as he could to get the ambulance drive shaft taken apart, busted parts removed (turns out it was a toasted transmission-mounted e-brake bearing… two of them, actually), and new parts ordered. But he had plenty of other stuff to do as well, including rounding up a bunch of turkeys for processing on Monday morning of our “off week” of July. That happened the same Sunday night when I noticed our egg cooler was not quite down to normal temp when I stopped in to grab some eggs for the next morning’s breakfast. It would not have been unusual except that Sundays there is no in-and-out of the egg cooler like the rest of the week, and so no reason the temp should have risen at all.

As a precaution, we moved the most thermally fragile products out and Matt checked out the unit and made some adjustments. Again, thankfully Matt has learned so much through these years of shoestring business ownership. Our local refrigeration expert finally retired a few years ago (in his 70s???) but had mentored Matt along the way to help him be able to do many of his own maintenance things on refrigeration.

Monday morning the temp had not recovered, but still was in the safe range, and we had to switch gears and deal with turkey processing, which would take most of the day. We took the whole family down with us and everyone did a stellar job. Forty more gorgeous turkeys in the freezer! We’ll be releasing these into inventory soon….

Meanwhile I had posted info about our farm store job opening, so we were getting all sorts of calls and emails about that. Eeek! Emails and messages were piling up and I was busy bagging turkeys! And Matt was due to receive 1600 baby broiler chicks on Wednesday morning and still had a brooder house to prep for that. But out of nowhere, our hatchery called and asked if they could delay this batch until Monday of the following week. YES PLEASE!

Monday evening we decided to move everything out of the egg cooler, so we stuffed eggs into every refrigerated space we could find on the farm. Here’s how you fit 3 cases of eggs into a single fridge shelf:

I was getting nervous because I had placed a big order with Azure Standard, our main dairy supplier, and had about 350 pounds of delicious cheese and butter headed to me on an 18-wheeler with no way to cancel or postpone it, and I only had about 48 hours to figure out what to do with it all with no big walk-in cooler. I’m going over options in my head. Could I rent temporary cooler space in a local restaurant? Do I need to find a commercial cold storage place in a bigger city like Shreveport or Tyler? Should I go to Lowe’s and buy a couple more refrigerators? Even then, how would I get them home? Our ambulance was still down for repairs, and of course Matt was busy trying to repair the egg cooler and it didn’t make sense to stop to drive to town to buy fridges or move product off site. We even considered routing some freezer air into the cooler, but any stop-gap solution only stole time from getting the real solution accomplished. We would proceed with the repair.

Matt got the parts picked up Tuesday morning and started repairs. By Tuesday afternoon he had everything installed and was ready to test it. Now it was a wait-and-see game. I packed up my frozen orders that would be going to Tyler that week (it was a relief to know the freezer was still working after June’s fiasco!). I wondered how we would pull that off—our only other delivery-worthy vehicle was the 15 passenger van, but a normal Tyler order collection simply wouldn’t fit in there unless we removed a couple rows of seats (more time away from the solution!). The ambulance repair was close, and the remaining parts arrived Saturday and Monday, but now Matt was busy dealing with this even-more-urgent egg cooler issue.

Suddenly I had an idea! I could split up our Tyler drops and drop off Granary’s order a day early. This would solve both the issue of not having a large enough running delivery vehicle, and it would offload 10 cases of eggs, freeing up just about the exact amount of refrigerator space I would need for my Azure order. I contacted the manager there to make sure that was ok, then I loaded up the kids and we did it all in one big loop—dropped off Granary, and headed to Marshall to pick up our order from Azure. Matt stayed home to continue monitoring the cooler. I stopped in to say goodbye to him and he looked a little frightened when he saw me, and asked, “What??” I said, “I came to tell you goodbye!” He sighed, “Oh, I thought you were going to tell me something was wrong with the van!” Poor guy is a little shell-shocked, I guess!

Off we went and Matt finished up his repairs. The cooler temperature was finally dropping! When I got home, I did my employee interviews and hired Kathryn!

The next day we drove to Tyler again to meet up with our customers. It was kind of neat because we got to take all the kids with us in the van and make a bit of a family day of it. The really neat thing about this business is that it does involve the whole family, and our hope is that the children will grow up and become your farmers, too, right alongside us, and then continue carrying the torch with their own families someday if they so choose that path.

What was wrong with the egg cooler? Well, actually, this particular condenser/evaporator setup was given to us (it needed some fixing up), so it was already a little old. (Fits right in with the rest of the equipment, I suppose…) Matt replaced all the replaceables and was able to identify where the malfunction was, although it was rather puzzling. Turns out that the previous owner had it sort of “throttled down” by using two methods of restriction, rather than the usual one. Matt was amazed that he was able to find it. Just this little tiny thing called a restrictor. Looks like a fat copper washer. The cause of all the trouble. I guess the heat and age finally just got to the whole system and caused a breakdown!

We are praising God for watching over all these details this week as He always does. So that’s a little glimpse of what it’s like around here. Might help explain why we sleep so soundly at nighttime. God’s got this all worked out. We just keep putting one foot in front of the other!

Sometimes our life here at the farm feels like an experiment of epic proportions. I think it’s partly that because we are a family-run farm, things change every day because WE change every day. The kids are growing to be more and more a part of farm happenings. They seem to love every minute of it and are always listening for Matt to come in and say, “Would you like to come with me?” The answer is always yes!

So we feel extremely blessed, that though the work is hard and seems to sometimes move at a snail’s pace, making the end of the to-do list so far away that you hardly believe it’s even there (maybe it’s not, ha!), what a joy it is to share this life with our kiddos, teaching them the skills they need to succeed, whether in the future of this farm, or some other venture of their own.

Part of involving them is trying to take a little time to just enjoy the space we are in. That usually looks like Sunday afternoon walks. We go exploring different areas on the farm—sometimes the pond, sometimes the cow paddock, sometimes the woods. This time we took an old trail that we haven’t explored in a while. There were neat old grapevines struggling to reach the sunshine on the other side of a very tall canopy of pines and holly trees. No grapes, sadly. But there was an interesting old gorge and lots of American beauty berry. I didn’t take many pictures because at first it felt like a same-old walk in the woods. Enjoyable for us, but not that interesting for blog material. But I did snap a few photos of the kids monkeying around.

It was an ordinary, peaceful evening walk. Until…

We had finished our frolic and started back up the hill toward home. We took a slightly different path—why, who knows. There really weren’t any paths, actually, just the occasional passage through the brush, so you pick the one of least resistance. Suddenly, there on the ground was a huge pile of feathers. Very clearly chicken feathers. OUR chickens’ feathers, and it certainly seemed to be from more than one bird. The light-red feathers of our young layer flock were here located over a quarter mile from where the chickens were SUPPOSED to be.

Matt had suspected some predation was going on, and recently got a skunk that had invaded the chicken pen. But this was the work of no skunk. It was a larger animal, something capable of carrying its prey a long distance. We have our ideas of what it might be. But the main goal instantly became: secure chicken pen. We headed that way next.

We have been long-time advocates of keeping a livestock guardian dog in with pastured hens. There are so many different chicken predators in Texas that a nice mellow breed like Great Pyrenees, though it is super rare that they ever actually have to FIGHT a predator, their imposing presence is great insurance against attacks. And their favorite activity is to stay up all night and bark at the darkness, as any Pyrenees owner will affirm. Haha!

Now, the thing about the livestock guardian dogs is that they mostly only protect the chickens INSIDE the pen. Sometimes our hens get to feeling extra-adventurous and literally “fly the coop!” Oh, they stick around. All the good stuff is inside the pen—the food, the water, the shade, plus 600 of your closest friends… I think maybe they just get excited and flap around and suddenly find themselves on the outside, trying to get back in! When we arrived, sure enough, there were two little red hens hanging around on the outside of the fence. Come dusk, they’d be some coyote’s chicken-dinner-for-two, so we have learned a little trick for this situation, too. Our two oldest sons each grabbed one of the escaped chickens. The oldest pulled out his Swiss army knife and trimmed down her flight feathers on one side. This is 100% painless—just like cutting your fingernails! And the hen can still use her wings to land and coast. It just keeps her from being able to completely lift off and get over the fence.

Back into the paddock after her little haircut, and hopefully she’ll learn to remain safely inside the fence where she belongs, even after her feathers grow back in. I don’t know that she left a tip for her stylist, though. 😉 

As for the predators that are daring enough to cross the fence themselves, well it just so happens that we have a rather goofy but very large and intimidating Pyrenees named Long John Slobber. Named, well, because he slobbers, but also because he is HUGE, with a super long tail to match. You’ll have met him if you’ve come out to the farm store within the past few months. He used to guard a different flock of hens until they retired last spring, and he’s been out of a job since.

Long John is pretty shy and only has a slight enjoyment of patting. Our oldest son, the resident animal whisperer, was able to get a collar on him, but Pyrs don’t like leashes so much. And he’s well over 100 lb, so carrying him to the chicken pen wasn’t an option, either.

But Long John had to go back in with those hens. Predators never decrease unless conditions change. Things looked pretty grim if we didn’t take some kind of action. Word would surely get out that there’s a free chicken buffet located at Shady Grove Ranch, and we’d soon be lacking a very important flock of chickens! 

The two farm dogs, Shadow and Long John, enjoy following us around on our walks, so they followed us down near the hens. Matt tried unsuccessfully to grab Long John’s collar, and away he went. So we tried a different method—Matt opened up the chicken fence and set it up around the two dogs (and us). Then he carried Long John into the middle of the chicken paddock while Shevi and I reinstalled the fence.

I didn’t get the memo that the still-standing portion of the electric fence was still energized, so when I took the “cold” fence and tried to attach it to the other, I got quite the zap! Whoops! Matt then demonstrated how to reconnect them without getting shocked. “You just touch it between pulses!” He lives for a thrill, ha! I’ll pass and stick to writing stories about other people playing with electric fences!

We stayed for a bit longer while Long John settled in, watching the kids play hide-and-seek in the tall grass. Tevka volunteered to be “it,” so the other four went to hide. They were shockingly hard to find, until Danny sneezed, and then the grass around him started wiggling. I laughed and laughed as Tevka ran over and tagged him, and then he resumed cruising around his yellow dump truck while she proceeded to find the others.

The next morning, all seemed well. Long John seemed content with his new employment. Hopefully that’s the last pile of feathers we find for a while! The experiment continues…