It’s taken a couple of days of this pretty intense cold snap for me to realize it’s yet another whimsical display of the crazy weather we’ve been having for the last six years or so. It’s not that overnight temperatures around -14°C (7°F) are unusual for southern Canada, just not in November. This time last year, there was a ton of snow, but without the unreasonable deep freeze. The winter before, I posted here in mid-January that “winter’s a no-show”—I was still digging carrots! Interesting… Inspired by the cold, I decided to see what it would do to chicken eggs and left a couple out overnight (there was a kinda practical purpose, it’s pretty cold in the chickenhouse). Of course, they froze as hard as hockey pucks. And cracked..
eggs
Big egg
Every few days, at two dozen a day, along comes one very big egg. It’s hard to see with the chipped paint on the old egg scale, but these big guys take it right off the chart. Beyond measurement by this technology. Poor girls (I think, or maybe not). They’re too big to fit into extra-large egg cartons, they won’t let the cartons close, so I put ’em aside and eat them. They’re pretty big, fat eggs!
Fantastic egg tray technology!
OK, so they’re just regular cardboard egg trays from the commercial kitchen world, and they’ve probably been around exactly like this for decades. BUT, they haven’t been around HERE. Lynn recycled them from Shelter Valley Folk Festival, where she was last week, where they were feeding big groups of volunteers. The trays are fantastic! Our chickens produce only about two dozen eggs a day, but that still adds up. I’d been keeping them at first in regular one-dozen cartons, then in bowls and small baskets. It was getting a little out of control. Now, they simply, efficiently stack in the fridge, 30 per tray. Every second week, like today, we bring a bunch to the farmers’ market as a bonus in the CSA shares, and the trays make transport a lot easier as well. Amazing. :)
Odds-and-ends omelet
Preparing and gazing at food can bring as much enjoyment as growing, sharing and eating it! I’m really not a cook, but with fresh, quality ingredients, whipping up something appetizing is…simple. For our field lunch today, an omelet made from stuff at hand: eggs, cooked chicken with a little store-bought prosciutto, a black tomato (from Raechelle’s home garden), garlic, onions, basil and 4-year-old cheddar cheese. Chopped garlic and onions were sauteed in extra virgin olive oil, then the chicken and prosciutto were added to warm up. Out with the filling, in with eggs, lightly beaten with salt, pepper and a little powdered cayenne pepper. As the omelet started to set, the meat was sprinkled on, and the whole thing topped with thin slices of tomato, grated cheese, and basil. Quick, easy…
…and pretty tasty. Everything except the ham, salt, pepper, cayenne and oil came from the farm, or nearby. We ate in the field… :)
Weighing eggs
Egg production has been moving along smooth as anything. The girls are great, easy going, seem to be having a good time, and they’re pumping out 23-25 eggs a day. Besides giving them out to everyone around here, there’s been enough to take to market every other week as a CSA bonus, usually, half a dozen per share. Bob unearthed an old egg scale from somewhere in the barn, and I’ve been playing with it lately (for actual distribution, there’s no sizing, everyone gets a mix). Egg size has definitely increased. Where they were mainly medium with a few small at the start, they’re now maybe half medium, half large. The scale is the kind of old school tech that I love, with everything simple, open, obvious, and FIXABLE. It may be a little hard to read in the pic: there’s a little pointer, with a fleck of red paint on it, at the bottom of the open triangle of the indicator—this egg’s Large, just on the border of XL…
Eggs everywhere!
Barely a week after the arrival of the laying hens, egg production is in full swing, with about 20-21 eggs a day from 25 birds. From the start, all of the hens took to laying in one particular nest, I only occasionally find the stray egg elsewhere. They’re averaging about medium size, getting closer to large by the day (that’s the extent of my egg size terminology so far). Donated stacks of egg cartons are coming in from all directions. We’re surrounded by tasty little brown eggs…!
Definitely ready to lay
It’s back-to-back chicken stories, from chickens to the slaughter to chickens ready to lay! The hatchery moved up the scheduled delivery of the 20-week-old Shaver Red Sex-Links by three days, and today was it. These girls are cool, and ready to go, dropping a couple of eggs before they were even out of their crates…
At the feed store in town, the crates were casually stacked near the loading dock (and you can see MORE BAGS OF FEED waiting to be picked up, these are 88lb sacks of layer mash). Our 25 were in two crates.
Like any other trip to town, on this chicken run, I ended up with lots of extra stuff besides chickens: several blocks of compressed shavings, the layer feed, and a sack of scratch for the Frey’s dual purpose.
Back at the farm, I opened one crate at a time and let them come out on their own to explore their side of the Chickenhouse. The young ladies seemed happy, unflustered, in fine feather… Within a few hours, I collected the first three, still tiny, warm, fresh eggs! Felt great!