Urban planners are always cooking up new ideas for "traffic calming," like roundabouts, neckdowns and bump-outs. A farmer in Gilmanton is trying something simpler: steer heads laying on either side of their road, along with cardboard signs telling drivers to slow down.

Robert Potter Jr. of Potter Road said he's tired of seeing cars zoom up the dirt road, especially since he saw a speeding car hit two of the family's dogs in February, killing one of them. Last Saturday, his teenage children suggested they startle drivers by marking the road with the heads and hides of two steers they'd just slaughtered for beef. Potter said he was skeptical at first, but it's worked.

"I couldn't have a cop sitting out here and have it work as well," Potter said.

Many people chuckle, he said, including one man driving a pickup truck down the road around noon yesterday.

But not everybody's amused. One neighbor complained, he said, and another local woman called the police and the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Gilmanton's police department has encouraged the family to remove the hides, but there's nothing illegal about displaying steer heads on private property, said Sgt. Dennis Rector. The SPCA agrees, said humane agent Anne Taylor.

"When the chief of police came, I said we had four eyes watching the situation at all times," Potter said. (He got little laugh for that one, he said.)

Courtine Emerson, 28, of Concord said she was moved to complain after taking her 7-year-old to visit friends down Potter Road and struggling to explain the steer heads to the little girl.

"I just thought it was absolutely wrong," she said. "She doesn't really know where food comes from, and she doesn't know that the cow she feeds gets killed."

The skinny dirt road cuts through the center of the farm, coming within feet of the Potter's house on one side and within yards of their barn on the other. About 10 houses lie further down Potter road, which a dead-end street off Stage Road.

Now, to get to those houses, a driver must pass cardboard sign chiding speeders, followed by skinned remnants of two steers lying on either side of the road, each with its own sign: "I was Dash!" and "I was Fast!" (Fast and Dash were the names given to those steers by his 10-year-old son, Sam, Potter said.)

The idea came from his 14-year-old son, Carl, and his 16-year-old daughter, Katie, he said.

"I thought that was a very clever thing for a teenager to come up with, something like that, and have it work," he said.

Ruddy-faced and rubber-booted, Potter, 37, took a few minutes from tending his 85-head herd of cattle yesterday to explain himself.

The 250-acre farm is one of the oldest in town, Potter said. The first girl born in Gilmanton was born there. Gilmanton's first town meeting was held on the farm, he said. He can tell you the names of all five people there.

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