Wow! Wow! Wow!

If I thought getting those 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads was exciting, I’ve now been wowed all over again. I submitted several articles to a few homesteading magazines, hoping maybe one might be a fit. As it turns out, two of them not only accepted them, they’re paying me for them—and have invited me to submit more stories.

Color me amazed, surprised, grateful, and more than a little pleased. Breaking into the magazine market is no small feat. Editors have limited space, high standards, and no shortage of people hoping to see their name in print. So when someone says, “Yes, we want your work,” it means something. When they say, “Send us more,” that means even more.

As a writer, every yes is encouragement to keep going, to keep trying, and to keep believing there may be room at the table after all. It’s easy to assume opportunities belong to other people, somewhere else, doing bigger things. Sometimes they’re waiting right where you are.

What’s next, you ask? Well, I’ll let you know when I find out. For now, I’m just standing here grinning like a hen that found the feed room open.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

I’d Rather Fix a Fence Than Fight a Website

The other day I spent far too long trying to change a credit card on a website. Not fix a fence. Not stack hay. Not wrestle a goat. Just change a number. At one point, I seriously thought I’d rather have a goat buck pee on my leg than deal with this. At least with a goat, you know exactly what just happened and why. There’s no mystery, no hidden menu, no tiny link tucked in a corner pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s unpleasant, sure—but it’s honest.

Give me a problem I can see any day. A broken fence post doesn’t hide behind three screens and a
button labeled something vague like “manage subscription.” It just stands there, leaning, waiting for me to fix it. I grab the tools, set it straight, tamp it in, and I’m done. Problem solved. No passwords required.

Now, I’ll admit there are times I don’t know how to do something that I’m not above looking it up. I’ve gone online to figure out how to stop a rooster from attacking my shoe, and I built my porch steps with the help of a YouTube video. That’s the good side of all this technology—it can teach you things you didn’t know yesterday. Although, as a bit of a side note, while I was looking up porch steps, I also somehow learned how to artificially inseminate a pig. Being a farmer, every time I hear “AI,” that’s still the first thing that comes to mind. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the tech folks are talking about.

And that’s really the difference. Technology is a tool, and a useful one at times. It can help a business run smoother, keep track of invoices, schedule jobs, and organize records. It handles the behind-the-scenes work that used to eat up hours of a day. But the customer doesn’t care how neat your bookkeeping is or how efficient your software might be. What they care about is whether you can come when something breaks and fix it.

Let’s talk about farming, for instance. You can have all the technology in the world, but at some point someone still has to show up, feed the animals, fix the fence, deliver a calf, doctor a sick goat, and deal with whatever went wrong overnight. There’s no app for that. You don’t get to reschedule chores because the weather’s bad or you’re not in the mood. The work is there, every day, and it doesn’t wait.

There’s a fellow online, Iowa Dairy Farmer, who uses robotic milking systems and can track everything from a cow’s temperature to how efficiently she chews her cud. It’s pretty amazing what technology can do. But even with all of that, when it’s time for a cow to calve and something doesn’t go as planned, it still takes a person. No robot is stepping in to handle that.

We just hired a contractor to re-side our house, and he can’t even start for three or four months. Not because he doesn’t want the work, but because he’s already buried in it and can’t find enough reliable help. Try calling a plumber, an electrician, or someone to fix your furnace in the middle of winter on short notice. You’ll find out pretty quickly how irreplaceable those jobs really are.

Mike Rowe has been saying this for years. The trades aren’t going away. They’re starving for people willing to do the work. These are jobs that don’t happen on a screen. They happen in crawl spaces, on rooftops, in barns, in mud, and in weather that doesn’t care whether you’re comfortable or not.

I have a friend who works for Asplundh. Every time there’s a storm, I say a silent prayer of gratitude for people like him. While the rest of us are inside hoping the lights stay on, they’re out there in the wind and the cold, clearing trees off power lines so we can keep the heat running—and not be digging through drawers in the dark, hoping we can find a flashlight that still works. That’s not a job you do from behind a screen. That’s a job you show up for, no matter the weather.

The truth is, there are jobs you can do from anywhere, and then there are jobs you have to show up for. And when something breaks in the real world, nobody calls an app. They call a person.

So no, I’m not too worried about AI taking over everything. It might help run the office, keep the books straight, and maybe even show you how to build a set of porch steps. But when the pipes freeze, the power goes out, or the barn door comes off its hinges, we’re still going to need people who can look at a problem, roll up their sleeves, and fix it.

In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I’ll be outside, fixing something that doesn’t require a password.

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It’s All Natural… So It Must Be Safe

During my 35 years as a massage therapist, I heard a lot of things from clients lying face-down on the table. Some were heartfelt, some were questionable, and some made me pause just long enough to decide whether to laugh or educate. One of the most common went like this: “I started taking this herbal supplement. It’s all natural, so it can’t hurt me.”

Now, I understood what they meant. Natural sounds wholesome. Clean. Like something you’d find growing along a quiet country road—or even in your herb garden—instead of behind a pharmacy counter with a warning label that folds out like a road map. I’d usually answer the same way every time. “Well… poison ivy is all natural too. But I wouldn’t use it for anything.” That generally got their attention.

Out here in the country, “natural” doesn’t mean safe. It just means nobody put it in a bottle yet. We’ve got plants that heal, plants that irritate, and plants that will make you wish you’d never brushed up against them in shorts. Even the chickens don’t eat everything they see—and they’re not exactly known for thoughtful decision-making. If a chicken walks past something without pecking it, I figure that’s a pretty solid warning sign right there.

I think part of the problem is that if something doesn’t come with a printed list of side effects, people assume there aren’t any. No warning label, no problem. We all know not to roll around in poison ivy, but there are a whole lot of plants that fall into the category of “looks harmless” that probably ought to come with a sign that says: if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Like coltsfoot. Those bright yellow flowers that show up first in the spring, before the dandelions are even thinking about opening their sleepy eyes. They look cheerful. Helpful, even. The kind of plant that seems like it would bring you a cup of tea and ask how you’re feeling. They’ve been used for generations for coughs and colds, and folks swore by them. But just because people have used something for 200 years doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Kind of like a few old-time farm tools—worked great in my grandmother's day, might also take a finger off if you aren’t paying attention. Turns out, coltsfoot comes with a few strings attached that nobody mentioned back in the day—including liver damage.

And it’s not the only one.

A lot of those old remedies worked. That’s why people kept using them. But they worked for the same reason a sharp blade works—use it right and it helps you, use it wrong and you’re headed for trouble.

Foxglove was used for heart conditions, but it contains digitalis, where the difference between helpful and deadly is dangerously small. Comfrey—sometimes called “knitbone”—was used to heal bones and bruises, but can cause serious liver damage if taken internally. Pennyroyal showed up in remedies for colds and digestion, but can be toxic even in small amounts and has caused fatal poisonings. Jimsonweed was used for asthma and pain relief, often smoked, but can cause severe hallucinations and delirium that nobody signs up for twice. Yarrow was used for wounds and fevers and is one of the milder ones, but can still trigger allergic reactions and interact with medications. Even elderberry, which people still use today, has to be prepared properly because the raw plant can make you sick. And belladonna… well, the name “deadly nightshade” really was all the warning label anyone should have needed.

Nature doesn’t hand out instruction manuals, and it definitely doesn’t label things “safe for beginners.” A lot of what we use in modern medicine started out in plants, and somewhere along the line somebody figured out the right dose, the right preparation, and what happens when you get it wrong. That’s the part people tend to skip when they say, “it’s natural,” as if that settles the matter.

I’m not against supplements, and I’m not against herbs. I’m just in favor of a little common sense before you start treating your body like a science experiment based on something you read on the internet at midnight. Because natural can help you, and natural can also knock you flat if you’re not paying attention, and sometimes the difference between the two is just a matter of how much you take—and whether you know what you're doing.

And if all else fails, just remember: poison ivy is natural too.

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The Fine Dining Preferences of Chickens

Every morning I carry out a carefully measured, nutritionally balanced ration of premium layer feed. It’s formulated by people with degrees, tested for optimal egg production, and designed to meet every dietary need a chicken could possibly have, and I pour it into their feeder like a responsible farmer who is clearly doing everything right. The chickens do eat it, but with all the enthusiasm of someone facing a bowl of plain oatmeal, pecking at it only because it’s the only thing there is for breakfast, not because they’re particularly impressed. And let’s face it, it’s still better than starving, which is about the highest compliment that feed is ever going to get.

They’ll stand there, half interested, half distracted, taking a bite or two, wandering off, coming back again, as if they’re trying to convince themselves this really is as good as it gets. It keeps them going and it does its job, but you wouldn’t exactly call it a highlight of their day. It’s more like the kind of meal you eat while staring out the window, wondering where things went wrong, particularly if you ignored the chocolate-filled croissant that practically begged you to reconsider your priorities.

Now let me walk out there with a bowl of kitchen scraps—leftover spaghetti, a questionable piece of lettuce, maybe something that spent just a little too long in the back of the refrigerator—and suddenly I am no longer just the person who fills the feeder. I become the bringer of joy, the keeper of treasures, the one who clearly understands fine dining. They come running, wings half out, voices raised, with at least one hen acting like she hasn’t eaten since the Carter administration, and if I hesitate even slightly, I’m fairly certain they would climb me like a tree and knock the bowl out of my hands. A chicken has no dignity when pasta is involved.

Which raises the question: do chickens actually taste what they’re eating, or are they just enthusiastic about anything that isn’t nailed down? So I went looking for answers and, as usual, ended up asking Professor Google, who seems to have an opinion on everything. 

As it turns out, chickens do have taste buds—not many, and certainly not enough to qualify as food critics, but enough to know the difference between “this will keep me alive” and “this is worth knocking Mildred over for.” Their regular feed is the sensible meal, the one they eat because it’s there and they're hungry, while kitchen scraps are more like an open buffet where everything is interesting and nothing lasts long, including your personal space.

They seem to recognize textures and smells, and whatever mysterious chicken logic is involved works quickly to determine that a limp noodle is worth a full-contact sporting event. One hen grabs it, another chases her, a third joins in just because something is happening, and pretty soon the whole thing looks less like feeding time and more like a barnyard version of the running of the bulls. I’ve seen perfectly reasonable, law-abiding hens turn into feathered hooligans over a piece of bread without a moment’s hesitation, as if they’ve all agreed that civilization is optional under certain circumstances.

The thing is, their excitement isn’t really about hunger, because they’ve got a feeder full of perfectly good food sitting right there. It’s about variety and opportunity, and maybe a little bit about the thrill of getting something different—something better, or at least something they’re convinced is better. Honestly, they’re not that different from the rest of us. We all have our version of layer feed—the sensible, balanced, responsible choices we make because we know we should. And then every so often something else comes along that isn’t necessary but is different and interesting, and we find ourselves reaching for it anyway, even when we know better. 

Either way, I’ll keep bringing out the scraps because it’s the only time I’m treated like a five-star chef instead of the hired help. If they ever develop enough taste buds to start leaving reviews I have a feeling the spaghetti will get five stars while the carefully formulated layer feed will be described as adequate, but nothing to get excited about. And if there’s a lesson in all of this, it might be that sometimes the sensible choice will keep you going, but it’s not always the one you remember… which is probably why I’m still thinking about that chocolate-filled croissant.

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Big News!

After months of research—and more time than I care to admit talking to people who use words like “integration” and “smart systems”—I’ve finally upgraded the chickens. We now have an AI-powered nesting setup that tracks each hen’s laying schedule, productivity, and overall attitude. It connects right to my phone and sends alerts when a hen is thinking about laying an egg, in the process of laying one, or just sitting there pretending to be productive.

There’s even a feature that plays soft classical music in the nesting boxes to improve shell quality and reduce stress. Apparently Mozart is good for yolks. Who knew? So far, production is up… although one hen keeps pecking the sensor and another refuses to participate unless the music is changed. At the moment, I’ve got what I can only describe as a full-blown labor dispute going on in the coop.

Farming has come a long way.

For those that think I'm serious (aka, those that don't know me), yes, this is an April Fool’s joke. My chickens won’t even cooperate with an automatic door. There is absolutely no chance they’re syncing with an app.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm