Oologah Family Farm

Enter – my father (hand pictured above). Dad has always been one to go out and try something new, and when we moved to a farmhouse in the country with a modest amount of land, he wondered – could he raise and keep his own chickens?

So we got to work.

We first started raising chickens in winter of 2021. We raised them to adulthood, but despite our vigilance and best efforts, they were tragically killed by various predators who snuck into the yard. After fixing some problems in our fence line, we tried again…and failed again. It was a hard time for everybody. Nobody likes to feel like a failure, and everyone felt terrible for our poor chickens.

But we didn’t give up!

We finally conceded that we may have to get a guard dog. We had lost our previous family dog, Gabby, several years prior, and that loss left us reluctant to open our hearts again. But, for the sake of our chickens, we purchased a Great Pyrenees from a local breeder in March of the following year, and she has been a part of our family ever since – and we all love her very much.

Now that our chickens were well-protected, we were able to successfully raise a flock, and under her watchful eye, we haven’t lost a single one. However, with this success came a dilemma. You see, much like the time we tried to grow cucumbers (of which we had dozens of overflowing bags taking over our kitchen), we soon had so many eggs, that we didn’t know what to do with them. We tried to give them away to family and friends, but even they couldn’t make much of a dent in the sheer amount of eggs coming in every day. Honestly, we were just content with simply raising the chickens as a hobby, but the obvious solution was that we might as well make a little profit, too.

So, we decided to get our egg license, and once all the paperwork was in order, it was time to sell our eggs. We partnered with the Farm Hippie, a store in nearby Collinsville that specializes in selling local goods, where every week we come in to bring our cartons to go on their shelves.

Like I said, we didn’t get into this for the money – it’s not exactly lucrative on a small scale, and it really is just for fun. With the recent inflation, though, egg prices have skyrocketed all over the country – and forget being able to buy eggs that don’t come from the cruelty of a factory farm, where chickens are pumped full of hormones and stacked on top of each other in dark, noisy, miserable conditions. We quickly realized that not only has it become invaluable to us to have our chickens provide this staple food, but being able to sell our eggs at a relatively low price helps the local community, too. That is a service we are happy to provide.

Going forward, we’re hoping to expand the farm into selling homemade jams, fresh garden vegetables, and our very own honey. It’s been an incredible journey for us so far, and we hope you’ll stick around for what we do next!