A few weeks ago, we decided to stray from our regular breakfast options (crumpets, bagels, etc.) Instead, we decided to give the many (many) eggs in our refrigerator a try....egg sandwich style.

First we toasted some english muffins, and put a pat of butter on each. Then, we put a fried egg in the middle.


See that cool ring the egg is in? S. unbent a cookie cutter to make that. Brilliant! (and it works perfectly).


Then we put some bacon on top, and some muenster cheese......and into the freezer they went.


5 minutes in the microwave, and these things make a delicious breakfast on-the-go.

I've been doing my best to keep track of how many eggs our hens and ducks have layed in the sidebar of the blog. About half a week ago, S. asked me why the 2010 chicken egg counter said "204". Um. Oops.

I'm not sure what it should be, although I know it was up around 1000. I also know that with about 10 eggs a day, we're probably several hundred off whichever way I look at it. So I've made the executive decision to restate the count as "approximate", and set it as 1000 when we noticed it was off (about a half week ago, when I had already spazzed on adding a few days worth.)

Here's to close enough. :-)

So over the past few weeks we've noticed that our laying hens seem to be laying considerably less....until S. spotted this....

This week, the chickens seem to be slowing down in production...we've been down to 5-a-day for the past few days (even 4 on one day). Of course I may be cursing myself by saying so! :-)

Usually pullets don't slow down much for their first year (no seasonal molt when they're this young)-- but yikes.

Today we sold--really sold--our first dozen eggs...goods to be delivered tomorrow. That's a pretty exciting feeling, I'll tell you. So now we're hoping to be able to come up with an official farm name (perhaps slightly less bare-bones-facts than Five Wooded Acres) for our little homestead-farm-croft. Yes croft. I like the word, and I'm trying to work it into the name (we'll see). :-)

Some names that we're (ok I'm) tossing around, but don't totally love: Windy Acres, Wrens' Croft, Frog....something...ok I don't know. Nothing sounds good with the word frog. But they're deafening on the warm, damp spring nights up here....

Any ideas? (not just frog-related!)

So our egg total continues to grow and grow and grow. We're trying to sell them, but so far no takers (there's a dozen dozen in the fridge right now...) . As the autumn months proceed, we have noticed a slightly decreased volume (a few more days of 5 eggs total, rather than 6), but not by much. There is still plenty of grass and green stuff for the hens to range and feed on, so we haven't noticed a change in flavor really, either. As it gets colder (avg. has been in the upper 50's this week), and the bugs and green plants get scarcer, we may see a change.

We did switch feed a few weeks ago. Now we're using Layena, which is 100% plant-derived (not sure what Dumor was, I didn't see a specification on the package). It has marigold in it, which has definitely made the egg yolks even yellower/oranger than they were before! It's a tiny bit more expensive (our store just started carrying it about a month or so ago), but we had heard nothing but good things about it, and the hens seem to like it better. Next week we're going to start mixing some scratch grains into the food mix in addition to giving them some separately. As it gets colder, the extra fats and oils are good to help them all keep warm.

It's so nice and peaceful at our house this time of year...(although I'm surprised there's no deer in this picture there are so many of them). But often I'm frustrated by not being able to capture the light exactly as I see it...and to share the beauty. This took me 3 tries and some edits....and it's still not...quite...right (55mm, 1/25 sec, f 5.6, iso 800). Any digital camera fans out there to help? Wouldya believe that my camera is TOO sensitive to light? :-) Maybe that's it--maybe I need to figure out how to change the iso setting...

(and 103 eggs!)

Today is normally Pizza Friday here on Five Wooded Acres. That's been temporarily suspended due to crazy amounts of eggs in our fridge....any takers? Seriously, we've been getting 4-5 eggs a day for the past 4 days and it's starting to catch up to us....help! (That one on the left was laid today--somebody took a peck out of it)


So today we decided to make something using eggs for dinner. Pretty simple really. First you saute some peppers, onions, and crumbled prosciutto (ham would be good too, I'm sure) in some olive oil. Add whatever seasonings suit your fancy.....


Then you beat 6 eggs, and 1 cup of milk together in a bowl.


Add the sauteed veggies to a pie plate (make sure to drain the oil off first!), then pour the egg mixture over it. We added some parmesan cheese to the top too.


Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30-40 minutes, or until the center is puffed and a knife inserted one inch from the center (not exactly the center--that's supposed to still be soft) comes out clean.

I love African Violets--what's not to like here? Low-maintenance, evergreen, and pretty little flowers. On Sunday, I re-potted my African Violets (all were gifts -- two of them were from S. -- and now I have even more: they have multiplied thanks to S's grandmother. I've never been able to get one to root from a leaf cutting, although I hear it's quite easy...she got two of them to.) They were due for a re-potting, the soil was depleted and the pots were too small---conveniently, the previous owners of our house left some lovely pots for us when they moved out (of course I told them that we would love to take them off their hands and no, no, please don't throw them out :-) Some of those turned out to be the right size, so I used them rather than some of our own stash of plant pots....I do think I want to find one glazed in the same style as the others for that one pot on the left (nice pattern, but just doesn't scream 'African Violet' to me, ya know?). There were some lovely brown ones at our local home improvement store but we were in a hurry, (when are we not, at that store?) so I didn't have a chance to get one. I think next time when I re-pot them I will, though, for a full matched set.

***Updated at bottom*** plus a new update: 9/2/09***

Today, when S. was raking the litter in the chicken coop, he found another chicken egg. He also found this:


It's bigger than the chicken eggs, and a color that we haven't seen before. It's cream colored with light brown speckles. He found it under the roosts (the chicken eggs have really been very reliably in the nestboxes.) Could this be a duck egg? I wasn't expecting them to start laying until spring, but this is pretty different from the chicken eggs. Plus, it's consistent with where a duck might choose to lay it---in a sheltered area (the coop, under the roosts). Then again, it COULD be a weird looking chicken egg...but for now I don't think I'll add it to the chicken egg counter.

***Today, there was another brown egg, and another one of these weird speckled ones...in the same place as the other one....Now, I'm pretty sure--not positive, mind you--but pretty sure that two out of our three ducks are drakes...which makes it a little bit harder to believe that it's a duck egg since they were laid so close in time to each other and they would be duck-pullet eggs...although we don't know how long that first one was there before we found that....sooo...for now they stay in the "other" counter. But I may move them a bit later...who knows. They could be chicken eggs after all...

***Newer update: 9/2/09*** Today there were two more eggs, a brown one and a lighter, speckled, one. Only this time, the speckled one was the same size as the brown one. Aha. That taken together with three in a row (even if we had two hens and one drake, the newly laying ducks wouldn't be laying 3 eggs in such a close time period since they would have just started laying) kind of rules out the duck egg theory. They're probably eggs from the White Rocks. So I've moved them all to the same egg counter. Wow--that means we're up to 23 already.