Ninja Cow Farm LLC

When we started the store here at the farm, we really didn’t plan on it getting as big as it did. My term for what we do is it is really a kid’s lemonade stand that has gotten out of hand. So the first time we were giving a tour and someone looked at me and said, “Where is your bathroom?” I said,

“Oops, we really don’t have a bathroom for customers. I mean, we have a shop bathroom, but…”

“That will be fine. Where is it?!”

Our bathroom was fine for us guys. It had a sink, and a toilette, and even lights. There was no heat, and since it’s a bunch of farmers using it, it’s not exactly clean or tidy. I mean, realistically, at its dirtiest it was probably cleaner than we are half the time. But as SWMBO pointed out, repeatedly, it was NOT clean enough for a lady to use. The problem was over the past few years we were too busy to do anything about it. But that all changed when we changed our operation this fall. We now have time to actually get things done instead of hopping from emergency to emergency.

Since we’d had such awesome weather right up till this week, we concentrated on outdoor projects but with winter now officially here, we moved indoors. The bathroom project was high on the list.

Vicente spent about a week in the bathroom, adding paneling to the walls, cleaning up the mess that was in there, framing in around the sink so that there is a cabinet now with doors, painting, etc. It is now a nice blue color with white accents.

The floor is still concrete, and we still store shop things like welding masks and aprons in there. It’s still a shop bathroom. But at least now it is a presentable shop bathroom.

We still have some work to do. There are going to be curtains on the window as soon as The Princess sews them for me. I bought the material on Wednesday. And Spork and I are going to forge the stanchions for the curtain rod. 

Yes, as in that kind of forging. Hopefully both of these projects will get done shortly and the bathroom will be ready for VIP butts (those would be yours).

After spending all day on the farm the previous day where it was completely uneventful, the following morning I received a call from Miguel about 8:30. Normally Miguel only calls when something significant has gone wrong, or it is a topic that is too complicated for text.

“Jefe, do you know anyone that has ostriches?”

Mexican’s eat ostrich meat? Hmm, didn’t know that. Sometimes when Miguel has a friend that wants something that he/she used to get in Mexico I’ll get the request. Maybe I know a farmer that has it. Maybe one of my existing farmers has it but we just don’t stock it. Sometimes I can get it, sometimes not. After thinking for a minute, today was going to be a not day. I don’t know any ostrich farmers.

“No, sorry Miguel, I don’t know anyone that has ostrich. I’m not even sure who I might know that would know someone.”

“Oh, ok. Well, there are three of them walking around with the cows right now.”

“Wait, what??!!”

I quickly mentally transitioned from sourcing ostrich meat/eggs to birds big enough to ride are walking around on the farm. Apparently they’d been quite enthralled with the farm until the cows took interest and chased them off. The cows really enjoy anything new and exciting. Chickens big enough that you can ride, that checks both boxes.

The cows had chased the ostriches off of the farm and they were now next door, on the golf course. Since whenever a critter escapes I get a call from the golf course, I figured I better call my friend Kelly who manages it.

“Good morning Dan.”

“Morning Kelly. Hey, just so you know, there are ostriches walking around on the golf course. They just came from my place but they aren’t mine.”

“Several…quiet…seconds…go…by.”

“Dan, have you been drinking already this morning?”

What resulted was a quite hilarious conversation with Kelly via telephone and text over the next 30 minutes, filled in with humorous explanations to the lovely airport manager (Hi Natalie) I was standing in front of at the time. Thankfully pics showed up from Miguel proving that as well as my sobriety, Miguel’s was intact as well.

The first picture was kind of hard to figure out what was going on. Like it was a shadow bird or something. Then the second one rolled in. 

Yep, Miguel isn’t crazy.

I forwarded these along to Kelly, who sent them to a family member that was in wildlife. She confirmed that these were in fact emus, not ostriches. A fact that mattered not because whatever they are, they aren’t from Johnston County and I’ve never seen them walking around before.

Kelly said that a couple of deputy sheriffs were on the way and that they’d take care of it. I pictured them trying to herd emus in full sheriff gear, much like what happened to my friend the deputy during our own lost animal adventure. I told Kelly to take video. Sadly he did not. It turns out we have a neighbor who apparently bought these critters and they’d escaped the day before. With several people, none of which were me, sadly, they walked these giant birds back to their home and got them secured.

Two weeks ago, we had a guy wake up dead in our ditch. This week we had emus cruising around. Things seem to always happen in threes, I’m afraid to even guess what is next. Locusts? Pterodactyls? If things go quiet on the blog, you’ll know that we are dealing with the loose Tasmanian devil that showed up unexpectedly. 

Just a reminder that we are closed today for Thanksgiving. We look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow when we will be back to normal and open 8-5. Plus, the girls are making cookies for Saturday!!

Also, since we are closed today, there is a rumor that the girls and I will be making cup cakes as well. I’m not saying I already bought the ingredients for the worlds best, from scratch, cupcakes. I’m just saying that the pantry is stocked with unusual items.

See you Saturday.

So, we have the results in. People overall think what we are doing works. However there is a contingent of people who would like Mondays added to the schedule. There is also a contingent of people who would like to expand the hours. I have already interviewed a great new employee and she’s just waiting on us to decide what days/ hours we want to be open so that she can start. We are sitting on go, except I have no idea what is best for you fine folks. I can’t both be open Mondays, and expand our hours. That’s just too many hours for our people, and too much payroll for our little store. I can do one, or I can do the other. I cannot do both.

So, I’ve created a ONE QUESTION survey. It should literally take you a minute to answer. Do we expand to Mondays, or do we change our store hours on Wednesdays and Fridays? Saturdays as a reminder are unaffected.

Please give me your feedback on this follow up survey so we can announce our new dates/times and get people working those hours. With the holidays approaching I’d like to expand anyway so we have more time available for you.

And our last customer comment that we will highlight.

Wish you had produce for one stop shop.

This is one that is interesting. This past year we dabbled in some produce in the store. We brought in mushrooms from a great local mushroom farmer right down in Willow Springs. We ended up feeding most of them to the pigs. I know not everyone likes mushrooms. Heck, even Spork, who eats just about everything doesn’t eat mushrooms. But these were beautiful mushrooms that tasted great. The price was good and nobody bought them. After a few weeks, they were no good anymore.

I don’t think with our hours and our days open, we are the kind of place that can carry produce. Produce has to turn daily as it’s shelf life is VERY limited. That’s why the produce guy is always roaming around restocking and removing stuff from the produce section in the grocery store. What I think instead is we need to partner with a local CSA. If your CSA drop was at Ninja Cow Farm, you could swing by and get your box of produce, and grab some meat while you are here. It would be a one stop shop for you. We’d have produce move in, and produce move out so it would work well for us. Maybe we could bring in a bit extra for the weekend for last minute items, I don’t know. But I just don’t see us being a produce stand based on experience and how we run our operation.

Does anyone have a CSA they recommend I contact? Somebody they already love dealing with?

The rest of the comments that we received were all very positive and made me feel really good. I love getting feedback that what we are doing helps people, that our kids do a good job, etc. I’m not highlighting those comments because it feels self serving but to all you kind people who left wonderful comments, thank you!

Now we are back to the purpose of this survey. What days and hours should we be open. Except for one ambitious soul who thought we should be Wal-Mart, the majority of customers thought our existing days were fine. But there is a reasonable amount of people who think that adding Monday in makes sense. As do I. When I created this survey, I thought adding Monday to the week was a good idea. Then you can pretty much come today or tomorrow any time of the week. Of course there will be people that forget and come on Tuesday but at least we’ll have reasonable time frames to shop. So if we are going to expand the days, it looks like Monday is the day. However…

Since I was asking about days of the week, and remember I’d already figured that Monday was the day to add, I thought I’ll ask about hours as well. In retrospect, I should have thought this question out a bit more. It was kind of a throwaway question about hours. The top two choices were, your current hours are fine, and noon to 7pm would be better. Third in popularity was 10am to 7pm with 8am – 5pm coming in last of the ones with any volume of response.

So, noon to 7pm is the number one choice, barely over our normal hours are fine. Noon to 7 was a terrible choice of an answer. Is coming at noon what is attractive? Or is coming at 7pm what is attractive? I don’t know, which one helps the customers more? Like I said, this was a bit of a throwaway question and I messed it up by not asking the question better. Let’s handle the last question and then we’ll go to conclusions. 

Our last question was do you care who you meet when you walk in the store? Some people like to come on Saturdays and see the girls and maybe get a home made cookie. At least one person likes to see Lucy when they come. But the majority either don’t care, or don’t care as long as they know what they are doing. Good, that makes hiring another person easier since you are ok with whoever takes care of you, as long as they take care of you properly.

Our chicken/turkey farmer just contacted me and said that she now plans on bringing the turkeys on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Some sort of SNAFU on her end but good news for those of you who are looking to get your turkeys sooner.

Lucy is going to open the store at 3pm on Tuesday so that she can meet anyone that wants to come a day early. Otherwise we’ll see you between 2-6pm on Wednesday as originally planned.

Sometimes, I run out of things Saturday or Sunday and can’t wait until Wednesday afternoon to get stuff for the week. It’s poor planning on my part.

If I had to wait till we were open, I’d never have anything. We are open 24/7 for me because I just walk over here. This too gets to the heart of the question we are asking. Again, we’ll get to this in a later question.

There are probably 2 reasons. 1 – when I come by I stock up. I have a large freezer and the meats keep perfectly well. Secondly for the meat we eat the most of (chicken) it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for us to buy it at your store for $12/lb when I can get antibiotic free/free range chicken from fresh market for $4/lb. however for other things like whole chickens wings etc. the price is competitive enough. We just don’t eat that as much.

I didn’t call Fresh Market to check their prices. I’m going to take this customer at their word that the price comparison is correct. I think they know their business and I trust my customer. I’m not the chicken farmer so I’m not the expert on this part of the business. But I do buy chickens, and sell chicken meat, so I do have some experience beyond the norm.

There are two details I want to point out on this comment. Antibiotic free and free range.

According to the USDA, antibiotic free means that the chicken has not received antibiotics through its withdrawal period. So if the withdrawal period is seven day (typical) then the chicken hasn’t been fed antibiotics for SEVEN DAYS! This does not mean it didn’t receive antibiotics every day of its life prior to those seven days. In fact, you can bet your bottom dollar the chicken received antibiotics from the day it was born until the last minute before the withdrawal period. Actually I think we can even get antibiotics in the egg before it is hatched. And if pharma comes up with a 4 day withdrawal antibiotic, then that will get used instead.

Sanderson Farms had a marketing campaign recently taking advantage of this rule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=-6EJTwcDd_I

So by law, “all chickens are antibiotic free.” So buy our regular chicken or you are a dope. Except antibiotic free doesn’t mean what we (and what Sanderson would have us believe) would think it means.

Free range is another misnomer. It is a legal definition and a producer cannot utilize it unless they meet the federal guidelines. Those guidelines state that the chicken must be given access to an outdoor area. That area doesn’t look like this.

In my previous career, I’ve walked through these chicken houses. The “free range” area is a small door which lets the chicken go outside onto a small concrete, wire enclosed area just a few feet across and long. There is no food, no water, no grass, and no bugs on this piece of concrete. There is literally no reason for a chicken, should they actually locate the door in a barn like the above, to actually go outside. And standing in the barn, I can tell you that the chickens do not, in fact, go outside. They pretty much avoid the outdoor area completely. Saying this is free range is the equivalent of saying you or I could go walk on the desert if we need to get exercise. Inside is food, water, and a breeze from the coolers that keep the chickens from dying of heat stroke. But they are “free range” according to the USDA.

Are these chickens in the second picture cheaper to raise than the first picture? Absolutely! Are they worth the $4 you are paying at Fresh Market vs. the non-free range chicken which is cheaper still? Nope. Same thing, different marketing. If you really want to help your budget, buy regular chicken from Sanderson Farm, or Tyson, or whoever is in the mega mart cooler. It’s tasteless, pumped full of saline to make it appear juicy (and sell you salt water as part of the paid for weight, salt water is cheap), and has lived a horrible life, but it is affordable… That sounds terrible, I’m not trying to shame you. Look, we all have budgets to live with. What I’m trying to say is, sometimes you can eat the meat that is better for you, and sometimes you just need to get dinner on the table. On the days when the budget is priority, don’t be fooled by “free range, cage free” at the mega mart or Fresh Market. Just buy the chicken that is on sale. If you want to try and stretch the budget, or have a better quality chicken for a special event, then go see your local farmer. The stuff that is marketed to you as better for you, isn’t. That rule pretty much applies to every aisle of the grocery store.

One last tip, the comparison of prices was unstated as to the cut, but it was for boneless, skinless chicken breast. That is the MOST expensive cut of meat on the chicken. For the price of one pack of boneless, skinless, you can buy the whole chicken. One whole chicken is three meals from one bird if you do it correctly. That’s how your grandmother did it and it REALLY helps the budget.

Tomorrow we’ll tackle some more comments in part 4.

Today we continue to address the awesome write in responses from our customers on our survey.

I’m still part of a CSA that’s winding down, but supplies most of my meats right now.

I don’t try to compete with other farmers. I don’t want to take their customers. We have lots of customers who say, “I’m so glad I found you, we were driving to (insert far away place here) and you are only minutes from us.” That customer, I’m glad to help. But stealing other farmers customers isn’t why we get up every day. I think a rising tide floats all boats and we’ll be better off helping each other so I’m perfectly happy for this customer and their CSA. And I thank them for what they do buy here. When the CSA shuts down, we’re happy to help them. When the CSA starts back up, we’ll be glad to see them when we can.

Though it is not really too far to drive to your store, there is nothing else out there that I would go to. So your store is out of the way for me.

I have this same issue with other people I do business with. We can’t do much about it from our end, other than to make our destination as pleasant as possible. In a few years, we’ll be inside of 540 so maybe the drive will be easier, and the destination will include other things.

More grocery stores are now selling grass fed beef; it seems to be a little cheaper. I do prefer to buy directly from you though. Just can’t do that all the time. Plus, I eat mainly vegetarian, so I don’t need that much meat.

This was an interesting quote for two different reasons. We had several vegetarians who answered, and many more who shop here. When we first started the farm, we were worried the vegetarians would boycott us since we sold meat. Instead we’ve found them to be wonderful customers. It’s been eye opening for us, especially when our peers told us we were crazy to let a bunch of people off the street onto our farm. That PETA would be here protesting. We’ve found the opposite is true.

The other point is that grocery stores are carrying more grass fed beef. That is true. Lowes has built their brand on local food these last few years. Wal-Mart, the king of running local businesses out of business, now features grass fed beef in their store. However, there is a caveat. Grass fed doesn’t actually mean anything. It is not a defined term by the USDA or anyone else with regulatory authority. What they don’t tell you when they say grass fed, is they mean grain supplemented grass fed and/or grain finished.

So they say grass fed and you think. 

But what they mean is.

Is the grass fed beef better than pure feedlot beef? Sure, probably. Is it what you think it is? No. Is it grass finished beef, like we sell? No. Trust me, we are looking at offering another farmers grass fed, grain finished beef ourselves as a lower cost option for our customers. Not everyone wants grass finished beef due to cost, or due to flavor and tenderness. I’m fine with it because I’m trying to please my customers and save them the trip to the grocery store. At least I will know what grain the cow had, how long they had it, and how much grass went along with it. At Wal-Mart, you have no idea.

We are keeping our cows on 100% grass though because that’s what my family eats. If you know what you are buying, then buy away. Just don’t be fooled by a pretty label.

Rush hour on old stage road is awful!

Now we have a comment that gets to the heart of our question. We are open 2pm – 6pm. That was an idea for a time that Lucy originally proposed. It worked well for her so she could still get dinner on the table and gave people a chance to get here after work. But this commenter is right. Traffic is awful, and it’s only getting worse. We’ll talk about this more in a later question we asked.

In part 3, we will continue to address the write in responses from our customers.