I’m not counting chickens before they hatch, I’m counting eggs as they’re laid.  It’s less than a fortnight past solstice, and already the egg count is starting to rise.  No, we’re not getting dozens a day yet, and it’s not enough to put out the newsflash bulletins for everyone to start putting orders in for eggs.  But it’s definitely an uptick and numbers, and the color mix of our daily eggs has changed.

Maybe it’s just the excessively warm spell we’ve had this December, and not the passing of solstice at all.  It’s definitely clear though that some of our layers are back after their molt… we haven’t see a blue or green Auracauna egg for a month now, and in the last three days two of the Auracaunas have started laying again, nice big eggs.

We love how big the eggs are from the older birds.  We love having older birds around, actually, and not just because their eggs are among our largest.  Our two flocks have great leadership, both from the roosters and the hens.  A couple months ago now we took the thirty or so new pullet hens and their roos from their chick-to-pullet-coop and split them up and introduced them to their permanent flocks… the new Welsummers went west to the bigger flock, and the Cuckoo Marans to the east flock.

Having older birds and a stable flock/coop situation allows newcomers to settle in quickly.  There’s some initial confusion and a bit of put-you-in-your-place pecking, but that’s why it’s called a pecking order.  New birds come in near the bottom of the order, and work their way into a comfort zone.  Everybody finds a place, and within a short time, everybody knows everyone else and things are fairly settled socially.

Brunch with friends in the snow.

I read once that 50-60 birds in a chicken flock is about the most that they can handle well, because more than that and their little chicken brains can’t keep track of the social structure and civilization breaks down.  We haven’t pushed the upper limits of that range too much;  our west flock is around 70 right now.  But it’s very clear that everyone knows everyone else, and they all understand the pecking order.  So I think the maximum reasonable Facebook friendslist for chickens could actually be much higher, given a comfortable coop and roosts at night and plenty of room for free-ranging during the day.  Not such teeny chicken brains after all.

Back in November, there were three Barred Rocks from the east side flock that refused to stay in their fenced pasture, and kept escaping to greener pastures.  The west flock has better fences, so after a week or so of this, we simply took the lead escape artist and carried her back to the west flock, setting her on a perch after dark so that in the morning, she’d find the new water, food and “friends” before setting out for the day’s foraging in new territory.  We’ve found this a pretty reliable way to introduce birds to different flocks, that they always seem to find their way back to the coop after waking up there.

Two more escape artists headed for the West Flock.

In the morning at roll call, the escape artist found she’d fallen a few notches (plummeted, more like) and needed to find her new place.  Everyone in the West Flock knew this was someone different and yet someone who could belong here.  There were no death struggles, just don’t-stand-so-close-to-me messages and minor display-fight skirmishes.

Our wild/tame Tom turkey (who lives outside the flock in the trees, but spends all day with the west flock chickens) knows instantly who any newcomers are and quietly chases them around the hen yard, walking along with his long strides causing them to hop and run a little and behave themselves.  After an initial chase, Tom leaves the newcomers alone most of the day unless they get into skirmishes (which they do).  He’s our cop, breaking up all the fights, or trying to by sticking his head in and getting between skirmishers and *peenting loudly at them.  I don’t think the peenting does much, it’s not a very threatening sound, but he’s getting to be so massive that he’s definitely imposing.  He takes this job seriously, always picking out who he thinks is the troublemaker and targeting him/her specifically for little snakelike jabs with that big head of his.  So the newcomers learn fast to work their way up the ranks gradually, and not set off The Big Guy too much by being too much the social climber.

And it works.  We have happy flocks.  Whenever there’s a singleton newcomer introduced to a flock on either side, the process seems about the same.  Brief universal shunning, a few short spats, begrudging acceptance into the lowest tier, and gradual tolerance of the newcomer and a place on the roosts at night with opportunities for social advancement, given time.

Are you my neighbor?

It’s not a bad system.  Better than some human ones I’ve participated in.  Similar to several of them, more humane than a couple.  I think it’s closer to being a newcomer in high school than to being a new professor in a mid-tier academic department… the latter situation can range from uplifting to downright horrifying, depending on the roosters in that flock.  I’ve seen it both ways, occasionally at the same time in the same department.  Being now a bit removed from the daily academic environment affords me the luxury of looking back and seeing it with new eyes.

Roosting neighbors

Overall, I loved being a professor.  And now I love being with my chickens even better.  Happy New Year.

*note to birders: I know that only woodcocks are said to “peent”, yet this unique and seldom used vocalization of the turkey reminds me of peenting (search “peenting” and you can hear woodcocks on YouTube), although it’s far from being the same call.  Someday I’ll record this insistent, nasal warning the turkey makes and post it.  Meanwhile, I’ll call it a peent.

Old Mr. Welsummer stands guard over the flock of hens, head up and sternly on the alert.

We were right there this morning when the hawks attacked.  A beautiful morning, my favorite kind of summer morning - cool, a slight mist, dew hanging on every stem and flower and spiderweb, rays from a low sun cutting through at a sharp angle.  P had just let the chickens out of the coop for the morning, then ducked inside for watering and egg gathering.  I had just thrown last night’s corncobs and tomato remnants to the flock of young birds and was enjoying the first leisurely Saturday morning in the garden I’ve had in more than a month.  Then there was the unmistakable sound of the attack - a sudden rushing Whoooooosh!, feet running, shrubbery rustling, and a split second later, chicken alarm call cacophony.

We both just missed seeing the actual attack, though we were right there - P in the coop, me head down in the swiss chard.  By the time we popped out and came running, chickens were in the shrubbery hiding, but loudly chorusing their distress call, and there was nothing to see in the bare area a distance from the coop.  We walked out a bit and looked around at the sky and trees.  At first we saw nothing, then, there it was.  About fifty feet from us, and only maybe 20 feet up on a dead tree branch, a young hawk or a falcon sat still, looking at us.  And at the chickens.  Waiting.

We made a move to see it more clearly, and it flew off.  But then, right after it, a second one hopped out of the deeper greenery, perched for a moment in the same place, and then followed the other one away.  By then we recovered from surprise enough to speed it on its way with some loud clapping and yelling.

We don’t know what they were for sure.  Perhaps young redtails.  They moved too fast, and I didn’t have my glasses on to see clearly.  Two young juveniles learning to hunt?  We will need to ramp up chicken security.  The raptors were smaller than the chickens, but still entirely capable of killing, if not carrying off, a full-grown chicken.  Our pack of roosters came through for us again, giving the alarm call and shepherding the hens to safety.  It seemed that the attack missed this time - no feathers on the ground, and actually siting the raptors to know they weren’t carrying a chicken - but they will likely be back.   (from The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, regarding red-tails, “Hunts mainly from perch, choosing same sentinel perch day after day….”)  Sigh….

Young radicchio starting to head

Last week’s bounty we took to the market included what were - to us - exciting additions of puntarelle, endive, and radicchio.  People bought the puntarelle, to some extent, often because it sounded unique and they were looking for something new to try.  But the beautiful heads of radicchio and frisée endive with its pretty blanched center, stayed on the table with the exception of one sale each.  So we have been eating a lot of both of them, and loving it so much that I’m not sorry they didn’t sell at market.  Except, I’m sad for how much people don’t know about greens and what they are missing in flavor, variety, and nutrition.

So I thought I’d do a series of posts about my experiences with these more unusual greens, and what delicious things to do with them.  The bitter greens I am talking about are just that - the bitter ones, from the chicory family.  These are different from the mustards - arugula, mustard greens, etc.  Mustards are all degrees of peppery, hot, and spicy, but not really bitter, while chicories are all degrees of bitter, but really not spicy.   I am not as much of a fan of the mustards as I am of the chicories.  This first post is devoted to Chicorium intybus, the radicchio.

Radicchio beside young leeks

This one isn't forming a head - just loose leaves

I have a lot of radicchio this year.  Two kinds - Palla Rossa, and Palla di Fuoco Rossa. I have finally learned that to have a lot of heads of radicchio, you have to grow a lot of it.  About every third plant is forming a really good head.  Some of the others have gone straight to a bolt - sending up a flower stalk, and some have turned into a ridiculous loose fluffy clump of leaves that should be in a head, but didn’t quite manage it.  Fortunately, the chickens love them, and can eat their fill of the unusable plants.

Chicken family happily feasting on outer leaves of radicchio

The delicate way the Fedco seed catalogue describes this unpredictable unreliability of radiccio amuses me:  “These radicchios are easy to raise from transplants although they have not yet been refined to absolute uniformity…”

That’s okay.  I like it.  I like the imperfection, and the wildness of it.  Our heads of radicchio are often a little bigger, softer, and looser than the rock-hard, small, dry grocery store radicchio heads.  If you are buying radicchio from me at the market, I’ve left some of the larger outer leaves on to keep them fresher - you can strip these off and find more of a head inside.

Beautifully headed and ready for picking

These things are as gorgeous as a rose, to me.

Two of our favorite ways to eat radicchio are cooked lightly with bacon, vinegar, and maple syrup, or mixed with frisée endive and tossed with a garlic-anchovy dressing and parmesan cheese.  Ohhhh, deliciousness.  I think that people often don’t know how to work with the bitter element in bitter greens and cooking, and therefore avoid it.  If you don’t think you like bitter greens, the key is to either cook it, which softens the bitterness, or to mix it with other greens or other foods to dilute the bitterness, or to dress it with flavors that compliment and change the bitterness.  (Or all three!)

Vinegar and acid flavors work magic on bitter chicories.  It seems like the bite of the acidity covers, or cuts, or changes the bitter flavor, and somehow, leaves it tasting sweet in the aftertaste.  All kinds of vinegar, and lemon can be used.  I also like a sour-sweet combination, like the vinegar-maple syrup dressings we often make.  Strong flavors - parmesan cheese, anchovies, garlic, good olive oil, and salty meats all also complement the bitters and work to the improvement of both tastes.

Dragonwood Radicchio with Bacon, Maple, and Vinegar:

pink and white hearts of radicchio, being shredded for sautée

Slice up a head of radicchio, or two (it cooks down to a fraction of its raw size) into fettuccini-like ribbons. While you’re slicing, start a skillet heating, and fry some diced bacon.  Slice up an onion or some shallots.  When the bacon is done, toss in the shallots, then the cut-up radicchio, into the pan with the bacon, and toss and turn it to coat it with the oil.  Add a tablespoon or so of red wine, or apple cider, or balsamic vinegar, and a splash of maple syrup, and salt and pepper as desired.  The heat should be high enough to cook away most of the juices as they form.  Keep tossing and stirring while the radicchio wilts down and cooks - just a few minutes is all it takes, and then it is done.  We like this topped with a fried egg and toast on the side, for breakfast.

If you like to grill, there are all kinds of grilling recipes for radicchio - here is a delicious-sounding example.

This week, I was struck by two moments that made me think about egg yolks.  The first was a lovely salad in a nice restaurant.  This very unique local restaurant continually champions local farmers and local products, and uses these in their meals to a great extent.  So I was particularly surprised to note the color of the hard-boiled, halved egg on my plate.  I couldn’t eat it - I realized I’d grown accustomed to our eggs and their healthy-looking, brightly-colored yolks.  I used to have many egg aversions - utter nausea at the sight of a runny soft-boiled egg, distaste for other people’s scrambled eggs, complete avoidance of anything with a raw egg in it. Many of these feelings have changed a lot with using our own eggs. This egg, though, brought those aversions back to me suddenly.  It was pale, kind of beige.  It looked unappealing.  I brought it home in a box and photographed it to show what I’m talking about.  And then it went on the compost pile.

The other moment occurred the next day when I made our traditional springtime lemon curd.  Lemon curd is basically a pudding made out of lemon juice, sugar, and egg yolks.  I halve the sugar, at least, and increase the egg yolks and lemon.  Our homemade lemon curd is the most gorgeous bright yellow.  Again, I was struck by the comparison, and I took a photo to show it.  Lemon juice is pale or nearly clear - all the yellow color in this recipe is provided by the egg yolks. What you’re seeing is the color of egg yolks from pastured hens fed a wide variety of foods.   What this post is about is this naturally-sourced color that has gone missing from commercial foods.

When I was a kid, mustard yellow or autumn harvest gold were popular colors for kitchens, appliances, and linoleum.  Probably due to this oversaturation, I remember declaring that yellow was my least favorite color, and I would never have a yellow kitchen.

I find it fascinating now that this color fad of the late ’60s and early ’70s happened to be timed to coordinate with about the time that eggs were beginning to be castigated, and healthy yellow yolks systematically eliminated from Americans’ diets.  Americans were encouraged to remove and discard egg yolks and scramble the whites only (have you ever tried this? eww…), to use low-cholesterol egg “substitutes”, and to use boxed mixes for cakes, muffins, and puddings, brilliantly tinged with artificial yellow color that you mixed with zero to two pale supermarket eggs, rather than make a “high cholesterol” nourishing homemade pudding, custard, or dessert out of 6 or 8 farm eggs.  Our kitchens looked bright and nutritious, but the food?  Not so much.

I wish people asked themselves more often why there is any need for artificial yellow color.  I mean, if it doesn’t add anything to flavor, consistency, recipe performance… why should you care if your “yellow cake” is yellow or not?  The answer is, “Yellow just looks better - it’s supposed to be yellow”…  and this leads to the next question of why?  Why are people attracted to “golden” in their food?  Why was I averse to eating the pale egg?

In my opinion, at least, the answer is that our bodies are trying to tell us what’s good for us nutritionally. Naturally occurring golden yellow is a visual signal telling us that the food contains important nutrients, like carotenoids.  But we’ve allowed ourselves to be duped - we’ve taken out the natural food sources that make things yellow, and replaced them with an artificial color to fool our eyes and brains into being drawn to it because it looks like nutrition.  Or, in the case of the egg straight-up itself, we’ve gotten used to the pallor and forgotten how to think about what it means.  How outrageous that people have done this to themselves, and fallen for it.  I wonder sometimes if part of why so many of us are driven to blog about food, to marvel at what we grow and produce ourselves, is because it is so astonishing, so difficult to assimilate, the extent of the deterioration of quality we’ve allowed in our food.  Rediscovering the colors and flavors and nutrition of real food is a revelation, and shows up the sad state mainstream food is in.  Check out this site, sporting a sick-looking egg, that insists color has nothing to do with nutrition, even as it discusses the fact that pale yolks are associated with feed problems.  Strange disconnect, eh?  And here’s info about pastured egg nutrition from a source we trust more.

Before we started keeping chickens and making sure that their diets contained enough greens, berries, bugs, and vegetables to produce nice eggs, I never thought about the color of yolks and how that affects the foods that you make out of eggs.  I made lemon curd with commercial eggs, and never gave its weak pallor a thought.  I actually wondered why there was such a thing as “yellow cake” and why  it should need to be yellow.  My first baking projects with our own eggs were almost a shock - we couldn’t stop admiring the golden color of batters and the products.

This is a really interesting link to a European egg information site.  I have somewhat mixed feelings about it because if you follow the links, it’s done by a manufacturer of supplements - promoting feeding hens supplements to improve the nutrition of the egg.  I agree with improving the nutrition of the egg, but I think it should be done by the vegetable-and-bug approach if possible, instead of synthesizing the nutrients.  It’s not so hard to raise a pumpkin patch and some extra kale, and feed the hens from that well into or through the winter.  Still, regardless, I love that European site because it talks about things that just aren’t “significant” mainstream considerations here in the U.S., like how important the color of the yolk of an egg is to your nutrition.

Feeding hens bright fruits and veggies even in winter

A truly pastured hen on summer forage

This is another Dragonwood egg report… we haven’t had one in a while.  In short, February has been nothing short of amazing.  In the first week of February the hens were laying about 6 eggs a day (range 3-8) and had been doing so since November.  It’s now the 26th of February as I write this, and today we got 26 eggs.  That’s an increase of about one egg a day for three weeks straight!  Go ladies go!

For reference, this is the way egg season seems to work.  As the hours of daylight get longer, the ladies lay more eggs, more frequently, and as the hours of daylight wane across the summer, the egg laying falters.  For us, it means eggs start coming back in February, peak in June, and start waning in earnest come September.  From mid-October to late-February we don’t get enough eggs to sell, and barely enough to eat ourselves (and an occasional dozen for nearby family).  In mid-summer, we get roughly 2/3 production daily - two of three hens lay each day.

Our flocks are pretty naturalized… we don’t give them artificial light or artificial anything during the winter to force them through molting faster or to stimulate laying.  The most artificiality they get from us is that a couple times a winter when the temperature at night is going to fall below zero we might turn on a heat lamp for the coldest hours.

By contrast, it’s standard practice at egg farms to completely manage lighting cycles for hens so that they lay as many eggs as possible with as little seasonal downtime as possible.  This is equivalent to cracking the whip over those slave hens.  The hens have a brief molting period artificially imposed, and then it’s back to work.

Them: Egg Slave Factory Farms.

Us: Hey, take four months off, you deserve it.  Thanks for all the hard work.

So, now it’s February and the eggses are landing.  We’ve got lots of teeny pullet eggs coming in from the new flock we raised last fall, as well as increasing numbers of large eggs from the older ladies.  This photo is the first dozen eggs I collected today, laid out in the fresh snow on our picnic table.

We get so used to our big eggs that we think the pullet eggs are just SO TEENY that we call them “culls” and never sell them to anyone.  But I began wondering, just how small are these eggs?  And how big are the big ones?  So I got out the market scale to measure a few, and now I can quantificate our eggsitential nature for your edification.

Our littlest pullet eggs:  6 of them weighed in at 9.8 oz.  That means a dozen would weigh in at 19.6 ounces… not bad.

Our big bruiser eggs: today’s biggest three eggs weighed 8.4 oz together.  That means a dozen would weigh about 33.2 oz.  Wow.

Last fall I measured a couple of our average dozen we were selling at the Westside Farmer’s Market in Ann Arbor.  The dozens (with a range of all our sizes except for “culls”) averaged a hair over 30 oz.

Perspective?  At yer local store where sellers have to actually sort them by size and such, the size categories are: small (18 oz), medium (21 oz), large (24 oz), extra large (27 oz), and jumbo (30 oz).

Holy ostrich, Batman!  Our teeniest pullet eggs are halfway between small and medium.  Our average dozen we sell are jumbos.  What does that make our real bigguns?  Extra jumbo?  Super jumbo?  Ginormous?

And then talk about yer bargain pricing.  We sold eggs last year for $4 a dozen.  Chemical free, free-ranging, practically pets, beautiful browns and greens and blues in the jumbo size for $4.  By comparison, you can drop in at the People’s Food Co-op and get somebody else’s eggs there that look just like ours, browns and blues and greens all pretty, for $5.75 a dozen, in the “large” size.  Large.  That’s 24 oz of eggs.  Dragonwood’s Dozen, by comparison, is running 25% more egg (30 vs 24 oz) for about 25% less, which works out precisely to… oh, that’s not easy math.  Instead, those eggs from somebody else would only be about $3.25 at the pricing scale we use, not $5.75.  And if we sold our eggs at somebody else’s price, our jumbo dozens should cost about $7.20 per dozen, instead of $4.

Get yer Dragonwood Bargain Basement Eggs now!  Whoohoo!

That smorgasboard seems to sum up the week!   On our porch is a chicken in a cage, and two planters full of celery plants.  We butchered 17 meat chickens while enduring a communal cold, and something has been simmering on the stove almost all day every day.  I’ve had a bit of a break from work this week, and tried to use it for autumn catch-up, even while nursing a cold.

The young chicken on the porch in a cage has a broken leg. Total mystery how that came to be, she just turned up hopping on one foot with the other hanging, obviously broken.  Chickens are relentless at picking on someone who’s injured, and her companions turned bullies immediately.  She had to be separated from them to not be killed by pecking.  Between the options of putting her down, or going to the vet and ending up with a $500 chicken, I decided I couldn’t do either, and would try splinting her leg as best I could, and leave the rest up to her and the higher powers.  She has a break right in or above the equivalent of the ankle on a chicken.  She’s been doing great in her little homemade cast for the past week -immobilization made it comfortable, and she rests and eats and seems to be healing.  She is one of our new Aracauna pullets for next years’ laying flock; I was not happy about this damage.

On one particularly cold clammy afternoon, I made myself go out even with a throbbing head and runny nose and dig the celery to save it from hard freezing.  We are not as advanced with hoophouses/winter shelters this year as I had hoped we’d be.  We have a wonderful harvest of celery… finally!  It puttered all through the hot dry summer, but has grown to loveliness now in this last cool but not cold 2 months.  I harvested down as much as I can keep in the refrigerator, dug about 15 of the best plants, and replanted them in planters to bring in under cover.  They will keep on producing useable celery for us for a little while.  You just can’t make really good soup without celery, and yet it is on the list of the most pesticide-poisoned veggies you can get (and not easy to wash or peel!).  It’s so nice to grow our own, but it takes some strategizing to have it available more than only 1/3 of the year.

We’re filling our freezer with 6-9 months supply of homegrown pastured chicken, and traded some of the chicken for half a grass-fed organic lamb raised a few miles away.  I’ve been making stocks from boiled bones, from some organic grassfed beef we had in the freezer, and now from the chicken bones.  It is amazing stuff - lovely color, tasty, so full of gelatin and chondroitin that it gels up strongly in the refrigerator.  Making really good soups while we have colds has been wonderful.  Here’s one that disappeared really quickly…it was soooo good:  That rich chicken broth, our own Snowcap beans, and our veggies, including onions, leeks, celery, wax beans, garlic, and kale.

When the stockpot hasn’t been occupied with broth and soup, I’ve made a batch of quince jelly, and one of Green Tomato Chutney.  The chutney turned out really spectacularly.  Green tomatoes, apple, quince, red bell pepper, hot pepper, onions all get chopped and simmered in a pot with raisins, mustard seed, curry powder, cinnamon, cardamon, allspice, and ginger, some sugar, and some vinegar.  I use maple sugar/turbinado/sorghum when I can.  Oh, it was delicious this time!

photo by Paul

Ain’t she lovely?

It’s been the season of the moult here.  Chickens moult about once a year, meaning they shed a good deal of their feathers, lay kindof low, and (usually) cease laying eggs.  Our egg production has shrunk until we haven’t any extra to sell, and probably won’t from now until late January or February.

It always seems crazy to me that moulting has to occur at the time of year when it’s getting cold…. those poorly-clad shivery-looking bare chickens in the cool breezes of November tug at my heart.  But I suppose it does make sense.  Their feathers grow back by the depths of winter when they really need them, and then in spring and summer, during chick hatching season, hens absolutely need their feathers for incubating eggs and warming little chicks.

This hen’s moult has been more severe-looking than many of them are.  Most just look rumpled and untidily ragged, but this poor girl lost more.  Many of the other chickens in the photo have already gone through their moults, and are sporting nice new feathers for winter.

There seem to be two ways to spell “moult”, or “molt”.  I like the UK way, adding in extra letters.  We had to choose which way to spell it here, and, not necessarily to be unnAmurkun or anything, we went for the Brit way.  This girl is, after all, a Speckled Sussex.

The call comes promptly at 7am.

A sleepy sort of shaky-excited voice says, “I’m calling because your chicks are here!” Twenty-nine new chicks arrived at our post office this morning.  P went to get them while I set up the bin and heat lamp on the porch that will be their home for a week or so until they can transition to an outdoor coop.

These will be next years’ layers.  We tried to restock earlier this summer, and raised 40-some lovely egglayers and meat birds to strong fully-fledged teenagers, only to lose all of them to a huge raccoon attack.  That was two months ago, and it’s still hard to talk about it.  Few can really understand how farmers feel about marauding predators until they see for themselves what animals will do to each other.  Most of us carry a fantasy ideal that predators will only kill what they need to survive.  In my experience, raccoons will usually eat portions of one or two birds, and simply bite the rest of them in the head and neck and leave them lying there, going from one to the next until they kill all they can, or are interrupted.

So that unhappy history is the background to these new chicks.  Our flocks are also aging now, we have fewer eggs coming in, and we’ve lost some adults this summer to either a hawk, a coyote, or a fox, as far as we can tell.  No sightings, just a random chicken vanishing into the thicket here and there.  We also have 9 2-week old chicks hatched out under 2 setty hens, and another hen setting eggs due to hatch in a week and a half or so.  But we can expect half of those to be roosters.  Next week, meat chicks arrive.  Today’s new little ones are pullets - a mix of Aracaunas, Buff Orpingtons, and Black Australorps.  They should be very nice, and we’re excited to start over…again.

Friday the 13th:  We know now that we’ve been losing chickens this week.  About 10.  About one a day, since about when the leaves fell.  We’ve seen the hawk several times.  This morning I got up early and when it was light walked out in the morning mist.  The weeds and branches were softer in the fine rain, and didn’t cling to me so much as yesterday.  I found three spots, as though visiting shrines on a pilgrimage, where a sad soft cloud of feathers on the ground marked a chicken loss.  The cobwebs dripped teardrops when I brushed them.  And the complicated interwoven circle of life goes on.

We sold out of eggs in record time at yesterday’s market. We are so grateful to our clients - who are so happy with the eggs that you come back early and devotedly. We regret having to tell anyone we’ve sold out…. and yet, it is reminding us to consider that it is okay to be “just” a tiny producer.

We think this world would be a healthier place with lots more tiny producers. A small flock of chickens remains naturally healthier with lots of room to move around, with caregivers who know and recognize each one of them individually, with access to good wild food to eat. But there are limitations that come with being a tiny producer…. namely, accepting the ebbs and flows of nature, of normal chicken behaviour, of the effects of declining light, and the realities of the first-come, first-serve, early-bird-gets-the-worm policy! :)

And reality it is. In a sustainable world, there is not an unquestionable endless supply of boxed eggs like at the box store. Sometimes they are there, sometimes they are not. It is part of the lifestyle, the nature of living close to the earth, to celebrate gifts when they are abundant, and accept the seasonality of all things, including the egg.

One of the exciting reasons we have a few fewer eggs is that some of our hens became “setty” this summer, and wanted to stop laying, and brood eggs instead. When possible, we saved eggs with the most desirable qualities from the flock for a couple days and gave them to the broody hen. Three weeks later, this is the lovely result, if all goes well:

five tiny fluffy new home-hatched additions to the flock!