Well, October has been much better, harvest wise, than July, August or September. The garden has consistently provided enough greens for a salad about 3 times a week, and I was even able to bring a salad to a family gathering for 11 and I only had to add a cucumber from the grocery store. I was pretty excited!! These greens include mesclun (looks to me like only red and green leaf lettuce), romaine lettuce, baby kale, parsley and occasionally baby swiss chard. It is so nice to have homegrown greens again.
This was taken early last week. The eggs are usually bigger, more like the size of the green one, and we usually have more than 7 as well.The hens have really hit their stride egg production wise. Their eggs are getting bigger, averaging large size, though there are two who are laying the equivalent of jumbo eggs. They are also averaging 9 eggs per day now, up from about 6 last week. This month, they laid 186 eggs!! I am extremely pleased with this number. It comes out to an average of 6 per day for the entire month, and that includes days with only one egg and even one day with zero eggs. In fact, we have so many eggs, I'm not sure what we will do with them. We gave away 3 dozen this week, ate or baked with 2 dozen and have 4 dozen left in the refrigerator. I wish I knew where to find one or two customers. I don't think I could support more than two, just in case they don't lay well one week, but it would be nice to have an outlet for these eggs.
In the meantime, I guess we'll be eating lots of omelettes, like the one above, which is made with caramelized veggies and cheese. Yummy!!
3 comments:
I am going to have to check with a local vegetable stand that carries my soap and see if she would be willing to have my eggs there too. We are getting mostly 8 a day with some days being 9 or 10...we figured out that on an off day where there were 5 or 6 they were laying in the woods; Matt found 13 eggs clustered under some pine branches. :)
I need to start keeping tract of their production to see what we are actually getting.
Sounds like your "mini-farm" is doing great. Hope all is well. :D hugs
Michelle,
We have stopped letting the chickens have the run of the place, at least for now (we've planted rye grass for them and the boys bring them bugs every day to help make up for it. We had to for a few reasons. They were ruining our yard, eating up my garden and laying in the woods as well as neighborhood dogs taking a sudden interest in our yard. We are thinking of fencing off a large area of the woods for them to give them access to bugs and stuff, but in my condition, and with as much as hubby has been working, we may not get to it until the spring.
I hope you can get your eggs at the veggie stand. That would be great!! I decided I am going to put out the word with friends and people we do business with to see if they know anyone looking for "farm" eggs.
I had to laugh - yesterday I decided to boil several eggs for deviled eggs (Andrew's favorite snack) and for sprinkling on salad. I boiled 8, hoping to make some headway in using up the eggs, then when I went out to feed the chickens, I collected yesterday's eggs - there were 8, so now I'm right back to where we were, lol.
Girl, you need to make some custards for dessert! There's always cheesecake, french toast, omelettes for dinner, egg salad, etc. I cannot WAIT till I have an abudance of eggs to reduce my overall meat purchase.
My kids/hubs will gladly eat egg salad at least once a week and we eat eggs every day for breakfast. Last spring I was making a custard a week, and that uses 8 egg yolks. Of course, then you have to make divinity or macroons to use up those whites, though Rhys would rather eat egg whites than the whole thing ( crazy).
If/when my hens are laying surplus, I plan to send some w/Redd to work. he's already got a guy who was willing to pay him RIGHT NOW for eggs in the spring LOL.
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