April Fool’s Day – farming style

Apr 01, 2015

Farming has seen its fair share of mischief

It’s April Fool’s Day.

The day where the truth is stretched, news is made up and everyone seems to take themselves a little less seriously.

Every industry seems to participate in April Fool’s antics.

In 2011, Virgin Group announced Sir Richard Branson purchased the planet Pluto, while in 2009 Hotels.com announced it was selling hotel rooms on the moon.

Farming and agriculture are no exception to April Fool’s pranks and Farms.com has found a few pranks related to life on the farm.

Spaghetti Tree Hoax
In 1957, the BBC produced a segment about a Swiss family completing their spaghetti harvest. Women were seen on TV taking strands of the pasta from trees and leaving them to dry in the sunlight. With Richard Dimbleby, a legitimate broadcaster providing the narration, people were calling the BBC with requests for spaghetti trees.

According to Dimbleby, the end of March is a crucial time for spaghetti because the winter’s frost can affect the taste.

Lard from live pigs
In 1921, Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung did a story about a German farmer from “Schleichegrieben” who figured out how to get lard from live pigs.

The farmer would remove the rashers, put bandages on the pigs and let them heal. The farmer said the operation could not be done more than three times a year.

People were astounded by the finding but concerned about the welfare of the animal.

Upon further investigation, not only did the city of “Schleichegrieben” not exist, it also translated into “sneaking bacon”.

Marshmallow farming
Channel 9 news from Iredell County produced an undated video about North Carolina’s marshmallow crop and its danger due to rain.

A farmer is seen in the video standing in front of marshmallow trees talking about the struggles of the crop.

“It takes four years from the time that you get the tree planted before you’re going to get your first harvest,” the farmer said.

Join the conversation and tell us of any other farming-related April Fool’s pranks you know of. Did you play any on someone today? If so, what was it?

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.