When it rains, it pours...

Or, in our case, when it doesn't rain, it pours! Does that even make any sense? No? Figures.

OK, I apologize for my absence, but I've been swamped as usual. Last month, my boss left our company for other opportunities and my team lead took his place. When this happened, I took over all but one of my team lead's products in addition to my own, and now I'm up to my armpits in work. It's a special challenge because I've got no less than 10 totally different products all at varying stages of development and all of which require my constant supervision. It is a balancing game, to be sure. In fact, my personal organizational skills have been forced into a major overhaul in the past few weeks and luckily, I seem to be coming out ahead. But barely!

On the homestead, things are buzzing along nicely. We have a beautiful tomato crop just starting to ripen, gorgeous red plums that we are devouring as fast as possible, blackberries just coming ripe and of course, the never ending supply of zucchini. This weekend, I'll be making MORE zucchini bread, freezing bags of it, and making a huge plethora of plum recipes. We had our first rain of the summer yesterday and as a result, all of our nearly ripe plums are now splitting open. It's going to be a mad dash to pick them all and save them before the birds and bugs get to them!

We also have one apple tree that is just about ready to start harvesting. In fact, I'm sure we'll be picking the first few bushels this weekend. Time to pull out the apple peeler/slicer and the food mill!

We have installed a new drip irrigation system initially to keep our tomatoes happy, but as we've discovered how well it's working, we've expanded it. We now have it in most of the boxes and half the row garden with plans to further expand. I'll do a whole post about it this weekend once I've had a chance to take some photos. It's really an amazingly simple and helpful system and we are both kicking ourselves that we didn't start this sooner!

Lastly, we are actually selling eggs faster than our chickens are laying them, so we are contemplating expanding our flock. We probably can't order layers right now (at least, not without ordering WAY more chickens than we have room for), so we are thinking about trying to hatch a few of our own eggs in an incubator. I also saw that there are a couple of 6 month old pullets at the local feed store, so we may take those off their hands. We just need to work on the logistics, first. Apparently, you can't just toss a couple of new chickens in with a flock without some prep work/controlled introductions ahead of time. Doing so would be cause for a chicken riot and probably cost us the lives of the new birds!

We are also selling goats milk occasionally, but all of our animals are thankful that our demand for goats milk has not yet outstripped supply. They LOVE that they all get the extra!

Lastly, both my H and I have been working very hard at getting healthy again. We've both let the craziness of the past year be an excuse to slack off on our own personal health and we decided jointly that enough is enough. We are eating better (and less) and we are actually working out in addition to the 'farm chores'. It's been about 3 weeks or so and we both feel SO much better. Now...if we can just keep this up until all our clothes all fit again, we'll be golden! ;-)

Eggs-travaganza!

Like the goat's milk before it, we are getting overwhelmed with eggs. We are now up to 8-9 eggs a day from our 10 chickens...and with just two of us, that's a lot of eggs! We have been selling them to some of the people I work with and we do occasionally give a dozen to our neighbors, but it's still a lot of eggs.

So far, I've been trying out recipes that are egg intensive with the intention of finding good ones and then freezing them. So far, I've made the following:


Spinach and cheese strata - this was delicous and reheated (and froze) really, really well. Egg total: 9

Ham and green onion quiche - not bad but a little bland even though I used some of our local grass fed ham. The crust made it supremely unhealthy - and for that amount of fat, it should be outstanding. Egg count: 4


Dehydrated eggs! (on the right) I used our dehydrator and dehydrated whole, scrambled eggs. I haven't yet verified how well they rehydrate, but this jar holds 21 eggs and will keep, unrefridgerated, for 3 to 4 months. Egg count: 21

I also make a healthy, high protien waffle that uses a lot of eggs. They just look like regular old waffles, so I didn't take a photo. I make a huge batch and then freeze them. They make excellent breakfasts either reheated with syrup or fruit, or toasted and used as bread with apple butter or jam. They are also great with icecream sandwiched between two of them, but that's not good for us! ;-) Egg count: 6 per recipe (12 for a double).

Our First Egg!!

Our first egg is the one on the bottom. The one on the top is a grocery store "large" egg for comparison.

I'm so excited! The roosters have been 'violating' the chickens for about a week and a half now, so we knew it must be close to laying time. In fact, today we had to separate the roosters for the first time because they were fighting so badly. We put the smaller one into the goat paddock for the day so that he could free-range. The others we left in the coop/run since it was rainy anyway. When my H went to put the rooster back in, he saw the egg sitting there in one of the nesting box! Thank goodness we got those boxes done last week! This is an egg from one of the two white leghorns. They are supposed to be the most prolific layers of the group, so it makes sense that they'd be the first to lay for us.

This was a busy weekend as usual. We did get the chicken coop waterproofed yesterday. It had been clear for a few days, so the coop was nice and dry and it was supposed to be sunny yesterday and warm enough (barely) to apply the water seal. By the time we'd put the chickens back in, it was dry enough that the fumes were mostly gone. Today, it rained and we could see the water beading up on the coop. Excellent!

We also skimmed more milk and ate the last of the carrots from our garden. And we tried one of the pints of canned carrots with our dinner one night...they were surprizingly good! Not mushy at all...which I was totally expecting. Next weekend I hope to can a batch of something else (I did no canning this weekend). We did get some big beef bones from our CSA, so maybe I'll use those to make some beef stock.

Today we managed to get in a 20 mile ride. It was pouring rain the whole time, but all of our gear served us well and we stayed dry and comfortable. I was actually kind of glad that I got a chance to test everything out (including my fenders) before I have to ride to work one day in the rain. We are both also working on getting back into shape, so a 20 mile ride was a nice workout towards that end.

Lastly, I managed to get the outside of our house decorated. I put up icicle lights hanging from the front porch overhang. Then we put rope lighting as an outline of our roofline. Lastly, I framed the front door with fake evergreen boughs laced with white lights. It all looks nice but isn't too much. I'm not a fan of house decorations that light up the night! Tonight we are putting up our tree. The ceilings in this house are 7ft. The tree is 7.5 ft. Somehow, we'll make it work!

Poor little chicken

More peaceful days - their first exposure to watermelon. This is Bruno, Maple and the red in the back is Seven.

Once a week we move our chicken coop so that the chicks get fresh grass and so that we don't kill the grass it's sitting on. It used to be that once a week was often enough, but now that they are getting bigger (read: eating more and poo-ing more), we have to start moving it more often. Last night was moving night. I called home as I left work and my H said that he'd already put the chicks into the big dog crate in prep for the coop move. I said that was fine and that I'd be home in half an hour.


I get home, change my clothes and shoes, and we go out to move the coop. While H was looking for the moving strap, I check out the birds in the crate. One of the Rhode Island Reds was bleeding! This is the little red who spends most of her time in the coop while the other birds are out in the run (I named her Seven). I know she's the bottom of the pecking order, but I didn't realize how severe it was. While I was standing there, each of the other three red's took turns pulling out her tail feathers! She had a gross, bloody stump where her tail used to be and they were just making it worse. We immedately got her out of there and let her roam in the grass. Then one of the reds started going after some of the Ameraucans! We pulled her out as well while we got the coop moved.


We found a nice spot for it, set up the feeder and the water and let the chickens go back in. Then we rounded up the free chickens (Bonny had taken the oportunity to get a little freedom too) and put them in the coop. We decided that poor little Seven (the one with the bloody tail) needed space to heal. We set up the smaller dog crate with a waterer and feeder from their brooder days and filled it with wood shavings. H fashioned a perch and we put Seven in there for a few days. I really hope she heals up ok. She doesn't seem too upset by it...but it looks nasty and painful. We also did a little research on the chickens breeds and sure enough, this is an issue with Rhode Island Reds. Lovely. Solutions are to clip their beaks at an early age (too late!) and to give the birds lots of free-range time. We can't let them free range when we aren't home, so that only leaves weekends. We are going to see if there is any way we can give them more space to roam even when we are not home.


I also did some calcuations and realized that my original guess that we'll start seeing eggs by Thanksgiving was wrong. It looks like 20 weeks puts us at the 2nd week in December. So, if we see any eggs by Christmas, I'll be pleased. That is also the time of year with the least daylight, so laying naturally slows anyway. Hopefully by next January, we should be getting a good flow of eggs. That is, of course, assuming that all the chickens survive until then!