Garnett ? When was the last time you opened up your egg carton at home and found a story inside?

It sounds crazy, but that’s what you get when you open a carton of eggs from Cedar Valley Farms.

The Bauman family, including Ivin, 7, raises chickens at Cedar Valley Farms in rural Garnett. Ivin chases chickens Thursday on the farm. The chickens are free to move about in quarter-acre pens, and their feed is free of growth hormones and antibiotics.

Inside each carton of eggs raised by John and Yvonne Bauman and their six children is a little slip of colored paper with a few sentences detailing that week’s happenings on the farm. The topics range from a new flock of 600 baby chicks to the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa.

“It’s a way that we can kind of communicate to customers about what’s going on at the farm, so they get to know us a bit,” says John, 44.

John and his daughter, Rosanna, 15, generally write the “Farm Updates.” And they get plenty of feedback from customers.

“They tell us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t stop putting those strips in there,'” John says.

Not all the Farm Updates are crowd pleasers. Customers didn’t like the story about the calf that got stuck in the mud while trying to get a drink from the pond. It didn’t survive.

“People said, ‘Don’t put sad stories in there. Put happy stories in,'” says Yvonne, 43.

And there are plenty of happy stories to tell about Cedar Valley Farms, a 160-acre, family-run operation in Anderson County about six miles from Garnett.

The Baumans, who are Old German Baptist Brethren, strive to raise 1,350 hens “the way Grandma used to,” according to the farm brochure.

That means their chickens are free to move about in quarter-of-an-acre pens, where they can scratch in the dirt, enjoy the sunlight and eat a diet of fresh grass, insects and feed grain that’s free of antibiotics and growth hormones.

The Baumans believe the environmental conditions makes for a better egg.

“Which would you rather eat,” Rosanna says, “an egg from a chicken that’s inside all the time, or one from a chicken that’s running around outside?”

Connecting with consumers

Yvonne and Rosanna deliver fresh brown eggs each Thursday to the Community Mercantile Co-op, 901 Iowa, where they are a hit with customers.

“They like the eggs. They’re fresh, they taste good and they have a really dark yoke,” says Nancy O’Connor, the co-op’s director of education and outreach.

“But the thing I hear customers say about them is those little strips of paper (in the cartons) — it touches them. I didn’t get it at first. It took me a little bit to realize that they’re something totally different each week.”

Audio/video slideshow: Eggs the Old-Fashioned Way Photo gallery: Eggs the Old-Fashioned Way

O’Connor says that the Farm Updates, apart from being quirky and charming, symbolize a lot about the way the Bauman family goes about the business of raising food.

“The term is ‘value-added product.’ There’s more to it than just the eggs,” she says. “Because of that little strip of paper, it makes you know that there are real people behind that food, and that kind of connection in our culture is something that we’ve lost in the last 100 years.”

Hard work, no regrets

The Baumans are fairly new to commercial egg production.

In September 2003, John and Yvonne bought the egg operation owned by the Bennett Ranch, a family-owned farm east of Ottawa.

They purchased the farm’s chickens, moveable pen enclosures and other equipment. Included in the deal was leftover stock of Bennett Ranch egg cartons. The Baumans will continue to use them until they run out, which will be about two months. Then they’ll print up new ones of their own.

The family has lived on the farm near Garnett for three years. John’s parents, Glenn and Laura Bauman, own Bauman Carpet & Furniture in Garnett. John and his son, Marvin, 17, also work at the store.

John and Yvonne have six children: Marvin; Rosanna; Kevin, 11; Steven, 10; Ivin, 7; and Joanna, 4.

The children are an essential part of the family’s operation, in which every egg is gathered, washed, graded and packaged by hand.

“The boys have something to do,” Yvonne says. “It teaches them responsibility. They’re learning marketing skills, too.”

The Baumans also have beef and dairy cattle, raise organically fed broiler chickens for meat and grow hay, alfalfa, clover, white milo and soybeans.

The daily routine on the farm keeps everyone busy until suppertime, which sometimes doesn’t’ come until 9 p.m.

“It’s not easy, and it’s not easy to make the payments (on the farm),” John says. “But we have no regrets.”

Adds Rosanna of the feathery flock she helps tend, “We’re glad we got ’em.”