If you open my refrigerator door, you will see lots of fresh vegetables, skim milk, a large jar of yeast—and about 10 dozen eggs.
See, my 12 hens have not taken the winter season for a holiday. They keep laying and laying and laying.
The weekly menu on our refrigerator reads something like this: red pepper quiche, goat cheese and spinach soufflé, broccoli quiche. Dessert is crème brûlée.
Now, I am finally doing something about all these eggs besides just eating them!
I ordered 250 egg cartons—in a bright pink that, it turns out, somewhat resembles the rather lurid color of Pepto Bismol. I applied for and received my egg distributor certificate from the State of Maryland. This week I’ll check in with the county health department about local regulations.
All of this so I can give the eggs away!
I only have 12 laying hens (only!), so it isn’t practical to think I can sell them. My plan is to identify church and community groups that can take about four or five dozen eggs off my hands each week.
So, you see, my hens and I have a joint volunteer project!
So that’s what you do with too much of a good thing!
The temperatures here are in the low 30s today. It’s snowing. It’s blowing. My fingers are so numb from working outside cleaning the chicken waterers, I can hardly feel them. But despite the cold, the snow and the wind, one courageous little chicken mustered up the courage to lay her first egg today.
Along with the daily collection of six eggs from the red, black and leghorn chickens I found a small, bluish-green surprise. It could only have been from one of the two Easter egg chickens.
Now the question is, which Easter egg chicken produced this winter surprise?
Was it Meredith?
Meredith
Or was it Dorothy?
Dorothy
The chickens aren’t talking. They’re wily that way.
P.S.
Don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win this book.
The poor birds do their share of work by pushing out a lovely brown egg a day each. And yet do visitors stop to exclaim “My what a beautiful chicken!” like they do with the Polish hens? Does anyone admire their graceful movements, as with the white leghorns and their fashion runway walk? Does anyone listen for their beautiful voices, as with T. Boone Chickens?
They aren’t even athletic. While the other chickens can jump to snatch a treat from their bell toy in the outside run, the black hens can only stand underneath and look longingly at the lettuce. People laugh at their pitiful attempts to hop off the ground. The black chickens just can’t jump.
To add insult to injury, we can’t even tell them apart. That’s right. They look just alike. We use the names Madelyn and Marilyn interchangeably between the two of them.
But they’re lovely hens, I think. I can’t tell you which is which. But I still find them quite lovely.
What’s on your plate today? The weather here is sunny and at least not frigid. I’ll continue my early spring garden cleanup and also clean and repair bird houses. The bluebirds have made their return and are already checking out the real estate. What a joy to watch over my Sunday morning coffee.
I find this one of the most anxiety-producing times of the year in the garden.
As I head outside and begin the winter cleanup, the whole summer garden thing just seems incredibly overwhelming. There’s so much to do. And I’m just one person out there. Honestly, I felt like sitting down to have a good cry about mid-afternoon. But I managed to put one foot in front of the other and actually got a good amount of tidy-up work done. Tomorrow will be more of the same.
Thank you everyone who left a comment explaining how you approach reading and leaving comments on blog posts. The cumulative input has been extremely helpful. The overall consensus is that you’ll read comments if it’s an interesting discussion. You don’t usually subscribe to comments because it clogs up your email box. And you’ll only check back to see if the author has responded if you’ve left a question. That about sums it up.
On another note, I have selected by random number generator the winner of Grocery Gardening. She’s been notified. When she responds back, I’ll announce who she is.
I went outside to re-fill the bird feeders—AGAIN. The parts of my lawn that don’t look like the frozen tundra resemble a swamp. With every step I take my foot sinks down at least an inch. Walking to the feeders I can see my path in the mud.
I also see that we lost one small ornamental tree by the driveway as well as one of my rose trellises, which succumbed to the weight of the snow.
Spring better hurry up and get here. I have a lot of work to do.
Are you sick of everyone talking about the weather? I am too, but here goes…
There is so much snow on the ground, I don’t know when it’ll all melt. On top of that, much of it has iced to the extent that moving it from one place to another requires a pick ax. Walking in the back yard to fill the bird feeders is like walking on a bumpy ice rink. There are trees and bushes that need a bit of first aid to remove partially broken branches, but I don’t dare risk skating across the ice with my pruners. Not yet anyway.
Still, there is hope. Although we’re expecting snow flurries today, the weather should warm up into the forties in the next few days, providing some melting relief.
But really, all this unrelieved WHITE is getting to me!
