Category Archives: chickens
How to boil and peel a farm fresh egg
One of the questions I’m asked most often is “how do you peel a fresh egg?” There are all kinds of methods that I’ve heard how to do this, and some of them work, some of them don’t. What’s worked for me most of the time is this:
Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Heat the water to a boil then reduce the heat to obtain a very slow rolling boil. Let the eggs boil for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes place the eggs in water that has ice cubes in it (aka ice water). Let the eggs sit in the ice water until thoroughly chilled, about 15 to 20 minutes.
When you start to peel an egg, gently crack the shell all over. There is an air pocket in an egg, and it’s at the bottom in the big end of the egg. I’ve found that if you start peeling at this large end that you’re more likely to get the membrane with the shell, which makes it much easier to get all the shell off.
Another trick is to use eggs that are several weeks old, which means that there is less moisture in the egg and the membrane is more likely to come off with the shell.
I like to boil at least a half dozen eggs at a time to add to salads and make deviled eggs, egg salad, and so forth.
I hope you have access to fresh eggs and I also hope this tidbit of information helps!
Entertainment, country style
Last winter was one of the coldest on record–day after day after day of just blistering cold. So cold, in fact, that “it should really cut down on the bug population”. HA HA! Liar, liar, pants on fire. That saying is absolutely not true and I think next time I hear someone say something like that I’ll have to put my hands over my ears and go “la la la la la I can’t hear you” just to keep from being rude…..well, that in itself might be considered rude. On to today’s post……
This year is a banner year for Japanese beetles–well, here on the farm anyway. I actually found their central meeting place last evening……
As you can see, there are literally hundreds of beetles on this Pussy Willow hedge–must be the Motel 6 in the beetle world. An evil thought struck my mind. I usually carry a container of water with me through the rose arbor to collect jap beetles in the mornings on the way to the chicken house because they love to sleep on the rose bushes, and they are very still and easy to knock off into the water.
I got a small bucket and put a couple inches of water in it–just plain water, no soap or oil or anything, and started knocking the beetles off into the water. It’s an entertaining game to see how many beetles you can knock off at one time in the bucket without any falling on the ground…….
As I made my way around the hedge I collected several inches deep of beetles in the bucket.
When I felt satisfied that most of the overnight guests had been successfully checked out, I took them one step further……..
The girls say “hmmmmm good Japanese beetles, thanks, mom!”
He has a name!
In a recent post I shared the news that Mr. Rooster Sir had moved on to wherever roosters go when they don’t come back to their roost at night. The chicken coop on the farm is divided into two sections so when there is a group of young birds they can be separated from the older hens (they are really mean to the younger birds).
A couple of days after Mr. Rooster Sir’s disappearance I heard one of the “pullets” practicing crowing (a pullet is a young hen). So, once I confirmed which pullet was actually a rooster, it turned out to be an Ameracauna–one of the hens who lays green eggs.
He’s really pretty….
I don’t normally name chickens with the exception of Lucille….
She was one of my incubation experiments. I borrowed an incubator from a friend and she couldn’t/wouldn’t eat after she hatched and the other girls were pecking her. I separated her from the others and fed her with a syringe for a week or so and she recovered. I named her “Lucky” since I didn’t know if she was a she or a he, but once she started laying eggs, I renamed her “Lucille”.
I took Lucille with me to my parents’ house one weekend and my Mom made me promise to never “get rid” of Lucille, so she has a life-long pass to live. She’s also easy to identify because she has white “earrings”.
Anyway, back to the rooster story. After thinking and pondering on the subject of a name for the very-important patriarch of the flock, I came up with the name “Mr. Green Genes”–get it? Green eggs, genes……..lol!
Out with the old, in with the new (rooster, that is)
Chickens became part of the Wild Things menagerie back in 2009. The flock started with 6 Red Stars that were supposed to be all pullets. I bought them from a backyard chicken momma and she was “sexing” them by their color–now I realize that was a waste of time. I ended up with 3 pullets and 3 roosters. Fast forward, ended up with one rooster, and I named him “Mr. Rooster Sir”. He was a beautiful, polite, rooster, who really watched out for the girls. A rooster isn’t required for a flock of hens to lay eggs, but I personally think they are more content with a rooster around. Sure, some of the eggs are fertilized, but that doesn’t hurt a thing.
A month or so ago I had let the girls out to roam around the yard since there isn’t anything growing in the gardens right now, and that evening, Mr. Rooster Sir didn’t come back. I never found a feather or any sign of what happened–
Back in September I got 25 Barred Rock pullets and 5 Amerecauna pullets. They’ve been growing like crazy and have all survived so far. Note: a pullet is an immature hen—back to the regularly scheduled program:
The morning after I discovered Mr. Rooster Sir was gone I was at the chicken house feeding and watering and I heard a strange garbledy noise coming from inside the house–could it be? One of the pullets was crowing? (lol)
A few weeks later and it is confirmed–one of the pullets can crow! Oh, I guess that means “she” won’t be laying eggs. That’s okay because I really like hearing a rooster crow in the morning, although right now he sounds more like a tire squealing on pavement. The worst thing is that it’s one of the Amerecaunas; they lay green/blue eggs. I like to keep enough of them to be able to put one green/blue egg in each carton. Now that means that there are only 4 Amerecauna pullets to fulfill that duty.
He’s a handsome thing–he has awful big shoes to fill though. Now for a name–Firestone, Michelin, Cooper (oh no, I had a dog named Cooper)
It’s just Winter
Okay, so I’ve been taking pictures of food, snow, chickens, and such, to accompany the blogs I’ve been planning to post. Well, the best laid plans go awry, don’t they?
This morning IS the morning to dig through the miscelleous photos and notes and make sense, of it all.
The temp outside is
Can you read that? It’s -1.5! Brrrrrr! I put extra shavings in the doggie houses last night and hung a towel over their door openings to keep out cold air (they aren’t housebroken).
This morning I thought I’d be nice and let them in to warm up and visit for a little while. Well, they came in very willingly, ran to the woodstove, and Hattie laid down like a good girl. Blue kept pacing all around the house, rubbed on the rug in the living room, went through the bedroom, foyer, kitchen, into the dining room….I reached down to pet him and YUK! He had blood all over his face, neck, front legs……his ear was cut on the very tip and I got to tracing his steps back through the house and I sure am glad there isn’t any carpet in the house!
I took a towel, wet it, and cleaned him up as best as I could without putting him in the shower–they went back outside at this point. The next half hour was spent mopping up blood specs from ALL OVER the house. 3 throw rugs have been washed and the big rug in the living room has been spot-cleaned. So much for being a considerate dog mommy! I’m not looking forward to seeing how many spots are on the porches of the house 😦 His ear will be fine. Seems like those tip-of-the-ear cuts always bleed profusely.
The chickens HATE snow! I don’t blame them. Their little hairless feet and legs look really frigid on the frozen ground. Yesterday I made the morning trek to feed them and provide them some unfrozen water–they finished off the feed, grabbed a drink of water, and headed back inside the coop.
I snapped a couple of photos of the frozen farm along the way to the Empire of the Happy Hens……
This is a shot of the arbor (top not done yet) with the beginnings of the blue bottle “trees” at the upper entrance. This arbor has rosa rugosa, raspberries, hardy kiwi, muscadines, and one grape vine planted along the length. Just to the left is the beginning of an herb bed. So far, catnip and borage have been planted there, but rosemary, lavender, and other perennial herbs will be planted there when warmer weather comes around.
Here is a shot of the virgin fire pit–still waiting on a load of some type of pretty gravel to drop out of the sky to cover the weed barrier! I’ve wanted a place to have campfires AND am trying to get rid of the grass in the yard. Meanwhile, the fire pit covered about a 20 foot circle of grass and I like the way it looks too!
This past fall I planted 9 butternut trees, 70 raspberry bushes, 8 hazelnuts, 2 persimmons, 4 Chinese chestnuts, and 6 rhubarb plants in areas of the front yard that had been previously smothered and killed with leaves. Seems to be working great so far! I’ve got lots of leaves to play with, so the smothering shall continue when the weather warms a little.
Meanwhile, lots of projects going in the house…more to come later!
Monday, Monday
This morning I was standing at the kitchen sink, making myself a cup of tea, still in sweatpants and house shoes and looking out the window. My kitchen window looks across the backyard and over the empire of the Happy Hens. I spied something that looked alarmingly unusual–like something eating a chicken.
I went for the binoculars and took a second, magnified look, and OMG a hawk was feasting on one of the girls! I grabbed my coat and jumped into my rubber boots and took off running. The hawk was so involved in its fresh meal that it didn’t even see me until I was THERE. A couple of years ago I had problems with hawks getting in the chicken pen so I strung wire in a grid over top of the pen and it’s worked really well, until now.
The hawk attempted to fly out but kept hitting the wires and falling back into the pen. I stood there and watched and was formulating a plan in my head IF indeed, it couldn’t get out.
Finally, after several attempts, the bird sat down, all fluffed out, pissed off, and about 30 inches wide with mouth wide open. I took my coat off and threw it over the bird, grabbed its feet and carried it up to the shop where I have a handy-dandy cage that has had everything in it from puppies, to kittens, chickens, raccoons, etc. In other words, a very handy cage! I put the bird in the cage and snapped it shut.
It was a beautiful bird and I definitely wasn’t going to hurt it, but I was wondering just how far I’d have to take it to keep it away from the girls….did I have enough gas in my car to get that far?
I called my boyfriend and told him what had happened and asked him how far should I transport the bird and he laughed and said it would probably be fine to bring it to his house, which as “the hawk flies” is about 5 miles (he doesn’t have chickens, by the way). So, I took the bird to his house and let it out of the cage.
The hawk took off flying in the general direction of my house so I waved and hollered “see you at the house!”
No, I haven’t seen it this afternoon. But there is one less Happy Hen on the farm. Such is the way of living so close to the land and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
p.s. I filled my truck full of firewood while I was there 🙂
Brrrrrr! Cold Chicken Toes
That’s the only suitable title I could come up with for this post. Sunday was fairly warm for January–in the upper 40’s actually–then the wind blew and blew and the bottom fell out of the thermometer. Monday and Tuesday night were both 8 degrees below zero and the high yesterday didn’t get over 6—SIX! That’s not much.
Then, then…..the power went out about 3:15 yesterday. I had a gut feeling about it so I put a pot of chili on the woodstove….
Oh, and the reason it looks so light in there is because of the camera flash. It was really dark, but I had candles lit in my awesome scavenged wrought iron chandelier that couldn’t be used electrically anymore……
It is hanging over the table in the “wining room” (the room where all of my wine is in various stages of fermentation) formerly known as the dining room. It’s actually part of the “great room” so the candles worked great. Who actually uses a dining room that much anyway….
After staring at the fire, chunking wood, reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” with my tiny flashlight, and eating a bowl of pretty darn good chili, the power came on–just about 5 hours after it went off. I’ve lived off the grid before and really, I like a little electricity. I don’t use my clothes dryer, don’t have tv, I heat with wood, am stingy with hot water…..but I do like electric lights…oh, and the computer 🙂
Today I had to get outside. The temp had gotten up to 30 so it was time for an excursion to the high tunnels to see how the veggies had held up to the brutal temps. Lettuce, chard, spinach and kale all did well. The broccoli raab and arugula succumbed to the bitter cold–BUT they were sort of on their way out anyway so it’s not a big deal.
When I went to the empire of the Happy Hens yesterday to water and feed, I saw blood in the snow around the water and feed pans. Oh no! Not blood…..not now! I looked at chicken toes until I found the problem. One of the hens had broken a toenail into the quick and it was bleeding pretty profusely. I gathered her up under my arm and headed to the house to the first aid kit. I told her to not tell the others that she had actually been in “the house”. I grabbed some gauze and peroxide but couldn’t find any adhesive tape, so here we go to the shop. She behaved fairly well and didn’t try to attack me or anything. I was able to clip off the damaged part, pour peroxide over it a couple of times, then bandage it with a gauze pad and——electrical tape. Maybe it will stay on long enough to heal a little. Even a small problem seems amplified in bitterly cold weather.
This morning when I went to water and feed and collect the frozen eggs I saw no blood and I didn’t see a bandage on any chicken toes, so maybe all is well. Their feet do look awfully cold in this weather though.
A lot of the country is experiencing this brutal cold front called, what, “Ion” or something like that? Stay warm and pore over the seed catalogs…..spring will be here before we know it!
Twas the week before Christmas
And all around the farm, the creatures were stirring….
Really looking for something to harm……did you think I was going through that whole poem? Really……..
Today was one of those wintertime treats! Sunny….mid 40’s at some point during the day. It’s funny how 50, cloudy and breezy is intolerable but 33 and sunny calm is great!
One of the projects on my “to do” list for the winter is to mulch around the blackberries and blueberries and I got started on that yesterday……
I know, I know, the black leaf holders are kind of ugly, but they do keep the leaves from blowing around until they are put in their place. I’m using layers of newspaper around the bushes then lots of leaves to keep the weeds down. I do have lots of leaves….
I LOVE my leaves!
Each season, John, Dear (that would be my tractor) and I spread a thick layer of leaves over every inch of garden space, in the chicken pens, and wherever I want new garden ground. I did get the orchard completely mulched last week as well—yay!
One thing I’m experimenting with this year is planting seedlings in the high tunnel throughout the winter season. Most of the crops in high tunnels are planted in late September/early October but in the hurry of getting another high tunnel built this year and all the other chores I have around the farm, the big high tunnel wasn’t completely planted before cold weather set in. I’m experimenting to see if everything doesn’t need to be planted at the same time. So far I’ve planted endive, yellow and scarlet mustard, braising mix, assorted varieties of lettuce, sorrel, and kale. The first test plot was planted about 3 weeks ago and I’ve harvested a few greens from them. Today I planted another 5 flats of seedlings and we’ll see how they do. True, things do grow slower this time of year, but they do still grow! I say hopefully next year I’ll have time to get everything in earlier 🙂
Okay, now scroll back up to the first pictures. The kittens follow me into the high tunnels and catch and eat grasshoppers! I don’t know how to reward a cat, but I make a big deal when they catch one.
(2nd pic) Hattie the Catahoula dug in that bed for hours–then she came up with a mouse! I was so proud–that’s one I won’t have to deal with 🙂 Notice one of the Happy Hens had made her way up to the bed…..see next pic….
The chickens were in their pen and I was in the back garden spreading leaves. This garden is really close to their pen, and they were following me up and down the fence. I got to thinking–hmmm what is there to keep them in the pen? Just a fence–no gardens to scratch up and destroy, so I let them loose. They had a ball! I think I’ll let them out again tomorrow…it’s supposed to be pretty here again (yay).
Until next time…..
Mirror, mirror
Mirror, mirror, in the pen
Tell me who’s the prettiest hen?
Wild Things Farm 