eggs – Crack of Dawn Farms

Gardens, Happy Chickens, and Eggs, Glorious Eggs

I packed a lot into this post – I hope you enjoy!

The Garden

It has been a busy time here at the farm. With the onset of real springtime weather, we have been busy getting the garden ready for planting. BIG thanks to my men for plowing up the dirt that had gotten packed down quite nicely from all the snow.

The tractor was putting at slower-than-walk speed, so Jerry let Ryan drive while he spread compost before plowing.

We also spread some manure compost in that we bought… not much, but hopefully enough to help give the garden a boost. One of these years I will actually get my planning right and go have my soil tested and amend the right way. We have horrible clay in lots of places, and I know I make my job harder by not putting in the time/effort for that fall/winter work.

Carrots, lettuce, and soon-to-be broccoli

So far, I have planted lettuce (in the raised bed), carrots, and I’m warming the soil for my broccoli seedlings that I hope to put out next week. The other seedlings are coming along indoors waiting for that magical “average last frost date” (which happens to fall on tax day!).

Happy Chickens

We have been trying to get Atlas and the chickens together more since the weather has improved. We noticed that the chickens REALLY wanted out of their inner yard to scratch for bugs — to the point that they were escaping on their own through the gaps in the hawk netting. The cool thing was that Atlas was really ignoring them for the most part – showing signs of maturity as a livestock guardian.

I tossed out the idea that we needed a hen-sized (not Atlas-sized) opening under the coop so that when Atlas did chase the chickens they could get back in their yard to safety. Turns out they usually would flee under the coop and then be cornered by the wind breaks we have under there for Atlas in the bitter cold winter.

Well, my ever-resourceful oldest son got busy and made it happen. This sweet boy called it my “early birthday present,” and I can think of nothing better! He added an opening under the coop, and they LOVE it!

He actually added another one down the fence a bit so that they could come and go without getting in Atlas’ space if he was sleeping under the coop. I do believe the chickens are happier, and we are certainly loving the springtime egg production!

Eggs, Glorious Eggs!

In fact, we have had so many eggs that we are not only able to share with my parents, but we also sold some! Jerry had people at work who had been asking about eggs, and he took some in to them last week. We’ll be putting this aside into the “feed bucket.” We didn’t really get into chickens for the business, but that little extra back into the pot is nice.

Before... 7 of the lightest brown eggs in the basket. — Before… 7 of the lightest brown eggs in the basket (sorry about the blurry pic!).

We always seem to get too busy lately to dye eggs for Easter, but this year I decided to try something new. I picked 7 of our lightest brown eggs and steam-boiled them.

My mom had some pickled beets, and I decided to use the juice to see how it would work to dye eggs. Then, I remembered my yellow spoon from my pickle-making, and thought turmeric ought to make a good yellow. I wish I had remembered from our science that red cabbage will actually make a beautiful blue liquid, but for this time we used blueberry juice since I had no red cabbage.

The boys really had a fun time making their eggs. They took a lot of care and actually made wire hoops after deciding they didn’t like working with the spoons 🙂

The eggs turned out pretty nice. I win the prize for “ugliest egg” as I used the one that was the darkest brown to color. I think I may need to add a white egg layer or two to the flock 🙂

One last thing…I came across a blog post from Fresh Eggs Daily on how to make egg noodles, and decided to give it a try. I have been wanting to make my own pasta for a while, but haven’t felt like I had the patience to figure it out. This was SO easy!! Thanks to Lisa for sharing it – it was a big hit with my family, so I will definitely be making it again (and might even start saving up for a pasta machine so I don’t have to roll/cut by hand :-).

That is a lot for today. I will probably be featuring a guest blogger (my son!) next week so he can tell you all about his chicks that are going to be here Tuesday. For now, I will close with some random Atlas pictures (because he’s just so handsome!). Just click through to see them all.

: Puppy sit 🙂

: Enjoying the sunshine

: Maybe shade is better

: Happy boy!

: When I finish this tunnel…

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Quick update from the farm. The kids and I were gone for over a week, and we left Jerry to look after things at home since he had to work.

Just a few days before we left, we had our first case of Atlas getting hold of one of the chicks and over – playing. That was a tough loss, but somewhat inevitable with a livestock guardian puppy in training.

All seemed to be going well while we were gone until Friday. Jerry came out to find chicks outside the fence, and one was not ever found. Our suspicion is that she was snagged by a hawk. We’ll probably not know for sure, but if it was a hawk, I am concerned that it will return now that it has had a taste.

There is some “good” in this update… promise 🙂

It seems that one of our black stars has decided she doesn’t want to be Christmas dinner. Yesterday – approximately 30 weeks post-hatch, we got an egg!! So, we are back up to 2 a day for 2 days straight.

We are definitely doing the happy dance, and looking at the silver lining in the midst of our chick losses.

(I’ll try to get pics up soon… Atlas goes for a weigh – in today so we can get more heartworm prevention. He seems to have added a good ten pounds while we were gone!!)

What a difference an egg makes

Wow, we’ve been busy around here! Started school this past week, and we’ve been trying to adjust to the new schedule. Life on the farm keeps moving, and it has been exciting!

This week, we got our first second egg! The brown/red chicken finally started laying, and none-too-soon 🙂 This family of four (plus 3 extended family in the Joelton Woods) all love eggs, so our roughly 1 a day since we brought the ladies home has been tough.

I know, I know – we aren’t officially even supposed to HAVE chickens (according to the “original plan”) until the week of 9/16, so yes, we are grateful to have ANY eggs at all. But still. Once you start getting a “home grown” egg, it’s hard to eat the “boughten” ones 🙂

TWO! Eggs. We can’t really know for sure, but most likely the smaller one (left) is from the newly laying red chicken.

Atlas has continued to grow in the past week (surprise!). Hard to believe he’ll be 3 months old Tuesday! We learned this week that it is important to get down to visit him and give him some attention several times during the day. Otherwise, his puppiness gets bored and wants to play with the chickens. This, of course, can’t be tolerated. I expect that over the next few months, his guardian instincts will start kicking up a notch. We’ll definitely be keeping the 4-week old chicks in a small pen with only supervised free time until they’re bigger and all parties are used to one another.

Ah, the joys and challenges of life at Crack of Dawn Farms. Wouldn’t trade it for anything! Here is a little album of some more pics around the farm over the past week.

: I think Ryan likes the dog house as much as (or more than) Atlas.

: An aerial shot from my deck of the ladies hanging out in the shade of the coop.

: Atlas hanging out in the shade of the coop.

: Pretty clean for a white fuzzball after several stormy days. He’s smart enough to hang out under the coop for the most part.