Hey everybody, Ryan here at Freedom Valley, and I wanted to take a minute to share with you the top 3 questions we get asked as farmers. This may be very helpful to you as well, as you may have some of the same questions rolling around in your head, but you just have never asked them!
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Do you name your animals?
We get this question all the time, in fact, it’s the question we get asked the most often. Answer…We used to name our animals!
I can still remember one of our first batches of chickens, maybe 15 or so, and each one of them had a clever name. Now that we are raising hundreds to thousands of chickens every year… well, eventually you run out of names for all those chickens!
We used to name our cows too, with our first one being known affectionately as Little Red. We named a few more after that …that is… until we were proudly serving up a platter of our ‘hot-off-the-grill’ hamburgers one afternoon for a family cookout and our Uncle Sonny, always the jokester, blurted out, “Hey Little Red, haven’t seen you in a while!”
Yea, we don’t name our cows anymore either.
Freedom Valley Farm has only been officially in business for a few years now, but as a family we have been living an “agricultural” lifestyle for many years. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a garden chocked full of fresh veggies each summer, and raising up chickens and turkeys has been our thing for over a decade.
So to us, some things would seem like a no brainer, like our second most asked question. But then again, I guess you can become so familiar with something, that it’s just like second nature to you, and you don’t even think that someone would be wondering this precarious thought…
2. Do your chickens come with the feathers removed?
You can rest easy that…Yes, our chickens are ready to become part of your culinary creation with all of their feathers already removed for you!
We also clean them nicely and place them in a poly shrink bag, just like you would find in a grocery store.
It does kind of seem like a crazy question, but I get it! People who are not used to buying direct from the farm may have no idea what to expect. I’ll tell you, this question especially comes out when we advertise for our fresh chicken, where we sell our fresh (not frozen) pastured chicken to our customers at our best discount of the year. There is always an amusing sigh of relief that comes from the customer when they learn that our chickens come free of feathers!
And finally…
3. How far away is the nearest Walmart?
When we have folks drive out to visit the farm, and they get “out here”, they will often smile and comment on how peacefully quiet it is… and then, with a quizzical gaze, proceed to ask about just how far away from civilization they have ventured.
Actually, the closest Walmart is only 20 minutes away in Shrewsbury, PA. Freedom Valley Farm is also only 25 minutes from Bel Air, 35 minutes from Towson and 45 minutes from Baltimore, MD. We think we have the best of both worlds, nice and secluded out in the country side, but still close to “modern civilization”.
So, not to worry when you do come and visit the farm, you will be happy to know you won’t be dropping off the edge of the earth!
There you have it! The three most common questions we get asked as farmers.
Did they surprise you? Do you have more questions?
Leave your own question in the comments section below, or feel free to contact us. We would be happy to answer your own questions!