Often the media and popular culture will latch onto a sensational story and run with it even if the facts are skewed or misrepresented. At Swore Farms, our purpose in having questions in the maze is to give you a light-hearted educational experience. We take no political stand, but do offer you the chance to challenge some of your long time misconceptions about agriculture. We encourage you to follow the links and do your own reading on any fact or answer that surprises you. Most of all, we hope you had fun!

(#2)

Cows...

Can produce 200lbs of flatus a day. (Farts and burps)

Our kids think this is a most excellent fact.

Cows can produce 125 pounds of…

Saliva a day!

BTW: Cows produce an average of 8.5 gallons of milk a day. Each gallon weighs about 8 lbs. So they can make about 68 lbs of milk a day.

One pound of wool from sheep can make…

10 miles of yarn

See this and more sheep facts here

800 is how many…

Kernels are on an average ear of corn. (in about 16 rows) A big ear can have as much as 1,200, but 800 is average.

(#20) Thousands of varieties of potatoes exist today. Potatoes were first domesticated in...

Peru

Read more on the history of potatoes online

In Japan, the most popular pizza topping is...

 Squid

If all US farmers became “organic,” how many additional cows would be needed to produce the nitrogen for crops?

One Billion

That's a whole lot of cows.

(#38)

Idaho grows more hybrid sweet corn seed than anywhere else in the world.

True.

Idaho produces 70% of the world's hybrid sweetcorn seed.

Alligators and Yaks are…

Raised on farms in Idaho

(There's a pretty big farm with them over in Buhl)

Here's the link.

(#16)

Smell food 6 miles away

(#22)

If you are really quiet, you can sneak up on cattle and go "cow tipping."

False

Granted, you can TRY to go tipping, but the fact remains that cow tipping is an urban myth. Besides the fact that they can see you even in the dark and have excellent hearing, here's one of the many websites explaining why cow tipping only works in the movies.

(#18)

Over 82,000 crayons.

(#50)

We have to protect our bees, produce, eggs, and chickens against...

Skunks.

Skunks will sit outside of beehives and thump the box so the bees come out and then eat them. They also love to eat eggs and will kill chickens when they sleep at night.(We lost our white rooster to skunks this year)

(#56)

This was once thought to cure freckles and snake bites.

Pumpkins!

(We recommend seeking medical attention for all snake bites, and as for freckles...they are cute. Leave them alone.)

Fact from previous year's maze:  

Some organic practices, such as the use of copper for pesticides, have a much bigger impact than conventional methods because many organic pesticides and fertilizers don't break down in the soil. Organic farms also typically produce more greenhouse gasses and consume more diesel fuel than their conventional counterparts.

Here's an article from Oxford university about the dangers of organic farming methods

And here's another great article. 

At Swore Farms, we are a Minimalist farm. We use an organic fertilizer made of worm castings and fish poo for most of our produce, and many years, our potatoes and other produce are produced totally organically--but if some bad microbe, fungus, or noxious weed invades our farm, sometimes conventional methods are safer to use than organic. In other words, we think moderation and common sense are a better approach than one or the other.