Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
About Fern Hill Farm
Q: Are you nuts? What are two 50-year-old women with young children doing running a farm?
A: The short answer is yes, we are nuts. The longer answer is that ever since we have lived in the country we have entertained the idea. It is because we are 50 that we decided it would be now or never.
It is also to our advantage to become a farm for tax purposes and the additional income will be very helpful.
Q: Are you planning on quitting your jobs and doing this full-time?
A: No way. We are both very happy in our jobs at Chapel Hill Library and Duke. This is only a part-time venture that we can all do at home as a family.
Q: You aren’t going to start wringing chicken necks yourselves, are you?
A: Fortunately not, as we are a bit wimpy. We will take them to a small poultry processing plant outside of Pittsboro. The plant has a USDA inspector on site that inspects each bird and ensures that all health and safety standards are met. This plant processes all local poultry sold in the Triangle. The chicken is packaged in vacuum-sealed bags. You can purchase whole birds or various cuts.
Q: Are your chickens organic?
A: We are not a certified organic farm. The process to become one takes a lot of time, is quite costly and is very involved. However, no pesticides or herbicides have ever been used on our pasture, our feed is custom-milled with grains and soybeans and does not contain any hormones, antibiotics, additives or animal by-products. We have lots of bugs for the chickens to eat and they LOVE our table scraps. They are just regular chickens eating healthy things.
Q: Will your chickens be cheaper than buying them in the grocery store?
A: It depends on where you shop. Our products will be competitively priced with items you would find in Weaver Street Market or Whole Foods Market. If you are looking for a real bargain, Costco or Sam’s Club is probably your best bet. There is no way we can compete in price with large agri-business and national retailers and we are not even going to try.
Q: What kinds of chickens do you raise?
A: We get day-old chicks in the mail from hatcheries and incubate eggs. Sometimes we will buy older chick or teenage chickens from local farmers. Just depends on what we need. Currently, we have about 70 hens for eggs, 50 small young chicks that will either be used for eggs or meat and we usually have about 150 meat birds. We have 37 different breeds of all shapes, sizes and personalities.
Q: How do you raise your birds?
A: Our hens and family pets live in a chicken coop and a chain link fence with avian netting for protection, but we will soon be moving them out to the pasture until the weather gets cold. We raise our meat chicken on our pasture in moveable pens. The chickens love to have fresh ground to scratch at every day.
Q: What about Avian Flu?
A: There is much speculation about Avian Flu and it is something we take very seriously. However, there is also quite a bit of hysteria on the subject. If Avian Flu becomes a human health threat in this area, we won’t have chickens. Period.
Got a question? Let us know.