“All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”  Grant Wood

Do not read your kindergartner Charlotte’s Web when you have an upcoming appointment to bring a lamb to the butcher.

If your child won’t drink milk.  Buy a goat for your child’s birthday.  Milk the goat.  Tell child not to make the goat sad.

Do you know you need to sharpen the ax you buy from the store?  Otherwise, it takes a lot longer to cut down a tree.

Wear your overalls with pride.  Don’t worry – they’re staring because they’re jealous.

If you want your new puppy to think of chickens as friends, not food – give them wheelbarrow rides together.

If our children ever offer you a country pancake, you should know it’s a.k.a. cow manure.  Beware of an offer of country meatballs which is a.k.a. horse manure.  And country raisins are a choice between goat and sheep manure.

Don’t forget to order a box full of earplugs when you get your husband his first banjo.

Put a clock on your barn wall so you don’t miss the New Year countdown.

True friends are willing to hold a chicken upside-down and get pooped on with you and your children at a poultry show.

Why did the chicken cross the road in Texas?  To show the armadillo how it’s possible without getting run over.

A francher’s paradox is when you butcher fifty chickens one day and weep over the sudden death of a newborn calf the next.

It’s hard to hide ducks from your children until Easter morning when they won’t quit quacking.

Slipping off a round bale of hay into a pile of cow manure isn’t gross if you are a 10 year old boy.

You don’t really need to spend hours training border collie to herd if your sheep come running from the pasture every time your children head out to the barn.

Free-range chickens don’t know to stay off a newly sealed franch driveway.

If you don’t see a single leaf on any of the lower branches of the trees in a pasture, a goat lives there.

For a smile: plant plants that attract hummingbirds near your front porch rocking chairs.  Unless you don’t like birds…or smiling.

Do not freak out if your goat has a temperature of 103 degrees F.  They’re not human.  That’s normal if you’re a goat.

We didn’t plant a garden to grow vegetables.  We planted a garden to grow our children.

Apparently, Siri knows a lot about farming.

How do I show my husband that I love him?  I come home with spinach plants for his garden.

Chicken manure is slippery on cement barn floors.

Not a good idea to say your favorite food is chicken during an icebreaker at a 4-H backyard chicken meeting.

Wish someone told me that you should wear eye protection when cuddling with chicks.  Being pecked in the eye hurts.

Be on the lookout for a caterpillar in your dinner salad when you use freshly picked lettuce from your garden!

Plant a peach tree.  Tell your child afternoon snack isn’t in the pantry, it’s on the tree.  Now that’s a healthy snack.

Sometimes people will just stare at you when you say you’ve got to get home to milk your goat.

It helps to have a neighbor who hauls away dead farm animals as a business and who understands and cares about how hard it is to say goodbye.

Winston Churchill once said, “No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.”  So if you feel like you waste time, get a saddle, and if you don’t want to look silly, probably a horse too.

Plant trees that are good for climbing.  So when your tween is upset, she doesn’t go to her room and slam the door, she climbs her favorite tree to think.

Don’t panic yelling “It’s dead!  It’s dead!” if you see your sick sheep lying in the pasture.  It could just be taking an afternoon snooze.

If you ever need a smile and to remember it’s going to be okay, kneel down next to a child at bedtime, and listen to their prayers.  Feel better?

A mean rooster will make you chicken of a chicken.

Instead of crossfit, go help a farmer unload and stack some hay.  There’s no monthly fee, and you may even get paid.

It’s pretty special when you have to duct tape a child’s Bible because it’s falling apart from being read so much.

Don’t wear a long necklace when loading sheep.  If you straddle a sheep and bend over to lift its front legs into the trailer, the necklace will loop around sheep’s neck too.

A quote my husband says in a way like it’s a famous one, “There’s nothing wrong with a man who appreciates a good bubble bath once in a while.”  I think he’s the only one who says that.

“I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats looks down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.”  Winston Churchill

Always check your barn boots for scorpions, wolf spiders, and toads.

Every time our dog starts to harass our horse, the horse bucks, toots, and runs away.  I told my teenager that her horse may just have taught her how to respond to annoying boys.  All you need to do is “buck, toot, & run.”

Archery arrows can get lost like needles in haystacks when you use half-eaten hay bales for target practice.

Our cows and goats in the dairy business are worried about job security as almond and coconut milk popularity grows.  I told them they’re not likely headed for a Great Depression because you can’t pet a coconut & how do you milk an almond anyway?

Sometimes I don’t think I’m a good mom…but when my teenager panics on the way to school because she forgot to open her blinds, and it matters to her because “my fish likes to look out the window,” and I don’t forget to open her blinds when I get home…it’s a good mom moment.

Growing up on a farm…sibling fights involve squirting goat milk at each other while milking together.

A bag of chicken cracked corn can kill a horse.

“Don’t try to teach a pig to sing.  It doesn’t work, and it annoys the pig.”  Judy Sheindlin.  The crazy thing about this quote is that it needed to be said.