Mad Money

I sold my first eggs this week! Yay!

The ones in the blue tray, I'm keeping for myself.

The eggs I sold are still a little on the small side, so I discounted the price to $2.50. You can see that the eggs are getting bigger, though - compare the egg on the right with the one on the left.

I've haven't made any side income in several years, so this extra $2.50 in my pocket seems very, very cool. And somehow not inconsequential, even though $2.50 doesn't go very far these days.

$2.50 may look inconsequential,  but it sure feels nice.

This inspired me to contemplate at length what sort of special jar I should choose for keeping my egg money. Right now, I've grabbed an old-school wire-bale Ball jar so I can watch my mad money grow.

Keep on the Sunny Side

It's been sort of a rough week. Our neighbors to the west in Vermont experienced catastrophic flooding, I had 4 straight days of outrageous headaches due to a mystery virus (or maybe it's Lyme disease - the test won't come back until Tuesday), and I've missed work during a particularly deadline-ridden period of time.

But guess what?!

It's not all about me. While I've been trying to sleep myself back to feeling better and worrying about how Vermont is ever going to rebuild all those destroyed roads and what deadlines are more "flexible" than others, guess what? The universe has not stopped for me. Life is going on, just as it always does.

Fortunately, it's late summer and the weather, the garden and the chickens don't particularly care how I'm feeling. They're all doing great. The weather (once Hurricane Irene blew past) has been gorgeous, the tomatoes are finally ripening, and the Red Star hens have started laying! It's hard to stay focused on yourself when all these great things are going on in the larger world.

This egg was still warm from the hen.

The first egg-laying was so exciting for me, and it couldn't have come at a better time. When you're feeling like all you want to do is crawl back into bed, but you've just found the first 3 eggs from your pretty hens, how can you not make yourself a lovely breakfast with optimism?

I decided to make sunny-side up eggs.

Since they started laying on September first, we have received 7 pretty brown eggs from our Red Star hens. (As you can see above, one was a double-yolker, but the others have been on the small side, typical of new layers.) The New Hampshire Reds are two weeks younger, so we don't expect them to start laying quite yet.

I'm very very happy about the eggs, and also very happy for the lesson in perspective I received along with those sunny-side-up eggs.

Hens and Hornworms

A few surprising things I've learned about chickens from keeping six in the backyard:

1) Chickens really do flock together. The hens take turns being adventurous and taking off to explore various corners of the backyard, but it's never very long before the rest of them catch up.

2) They will eat anything particularly if they can peck it into small pieces. Until I learned better, this included the foam insulation sealing various holes in the house exterior. I also learned that hens have no problem pecking four-inch long tomato hornworms into bite-sized green chunks.

Action shot at the start of the hornworm feast - the race to get the worms is on!

3) Hens never stop talking. When we are home, I'll let them out to free-range the mosquitoes in the backyard, and it's nice to be reassured from their calls and coos that they have not run off.

4) Chicken feathers are soft! I guess I had never really thought about it before. It feels really nice to pet them. "Yellow" is still the easiest one to catch and hold for long periods of time, but the others calm down as soon as they realize that they have been caught.

5) Hens are astoundingly hard to photograph. They never seem to stand still, and it's almost impossible to sneak up on them unnoticed. I will have to research this further, or set up a chicken observation blind.

Who cares about posing for close-ups when there's worms to be pecked?

According to the chicken-raising book I have and the all-knowing Internet, the hens are supposed to start laying sometime next month. I'm awestruck at how fast these animals can go from being fresh out of the egg to making new eggs - it's incredible. I suppose I shouldn't count my eggs before they are laid (or chickens before they are hatched?), but I'm really quite excited about fresh eggs!

Seeds have been sown, chickies have grown...

I spent a lot of time this past week getting my gardens and my neighbor's garden prepped and planted for the summer. We are headed out on vacation on Wednesday, so I was definitely feeling a bit of pressure to wrap up the spring planting. No thanks to the mosquitoes and black flies, I managed to hack away at my neighbor's garden in 1/2-hour chunks before running inside to avoid the flying hordes.

I may not look smart, but I can surely get those skeeters.

In a fleeting attempt to control the mosquito population, we've been putting the chickens out in the yard while we are at home. They do go crazy for mosquitoes and any other flying insect, but I don't really believe that six little chickies are going to make much of an impact. The pen is just two pieces of wire panel that we got as a side gift from Freecycle (Adam went to pick up metal roofing and the landowner asked Adam if he wanted any wire panels in addition -- yes, please!). The wire panels lean against each other forming a circle and I placed a window screen on top to keep Yellow from escaping the pen.

Free-standing open air chicken pen - not predator-proof

They love it, and I'm half-tempted to build them a little chicken tractor so they can stay outside all summer. The latest issue of Mother Earth News says I can make one for $200 bucks, but I'll just need to learn how to weld first! (Sorry, I don't think I'll be welding any time soon - gardening is enough of a hobby to keep me occupied for years.)

Fresh from the garden this week:
Salad greens!! including Swiss chard, spinach, arugula, mesclun and a few types of lettuce.
Mint - I made some awesome refrigerator tea with fuzzy mint, chocolate mint and black tea.
Chives and scallions

A Break from the Rain

Today was the first day in over a week where it didn't rain, alleluia. The plants did not mind too much, as the extra moisture and cool temperatures allowed them to establish their roots and acclimate to the garden. I did mind the rain, as I did not acclimate very well and had to wear shoes and sweaters.

The perennials have really greened up. The peas and spinach have been slowly growing, and the onions seem to appreciate the moisture. The lilacs have had electric purple buds for a week, but now have gone whole-hog into unfurling their petals. The scent is just wonderful!

Today was also the first day for harvesting in quite some time - I cut a mini-bouquet of lilacs, cleared out the over-wintered spinach, cut back the arugula, thinned the over-wintered scallions, and grabbed a few stalks of chives. Adam also picked a colander full of chocolate mint. We had our friends/neighbors over for spinach-arugula-chive-scallion quesadillas and mojitos - it was great!

Flowers and spring greens make me happy.

We just moved the little chickies (two-week-old Red Stars) into the coop with the big chickies (one-month-old New Hampshire Reds) and they seem really happy. The coop is nothing fancy just a plywood box with a lamp, but it is a step up from a plastic bin. They are also very happy to eat any little flying insects that may enter their domain - they are extremely coordinated when it comes to mosquito control!

Here's a photo of Yellow - she's got big wingfeathers now but her head still looks goofy.

Yellow might be my new best friend.

The Answer to Slugs, Compost and Vegetable Scraps

3-day-old New Hampshire Red

Long awaited, the chickens have arrived!

3-day-old Red Star

We ordered two different breeds, New Hampshire Red and Red Star, three of each - and because the breeding houses are organized according to a schedule, we received the first three chicks during the last week of April and the second three chicks this past week. They will have to live separately until they are full-grown so that the big ones don't pick on the little ones.

Being first-time chicken owners, we really don't know what we're getting ourselves into. And we've have several interesting discoveries already.

Ooh - what's in the box?

First, the chickies come home in a Happy Meal box. Magalloway is intrigued but actually afraid of the baby chicks - they make so much noise and hop around erratically.

Second, the saying "Birds of a feather flock together" definitely holds true for chickens. The chicks do everything together; if one wants to have a snack, they all scurry over to the feeder. If one wants to take a nap under the heat lamp, they all huddle around into a chicky-pile. (Very cute, but hard to photograph - they tend to wake up when people come near enough to take a photo.)

Third, baby chicks grow really fast. We were amazed to watch how the New Hampshire Reds' wing-feathers  and tail-feathers grew day-by-day. The two-week-old NH Reds look completely different now and are "huge" compared to the baby Red Stars. Both breeds as adults will be reddish brown and fairly similar in appearance, but it's fascinating how different they look as chicks.

"Yellow" at two weeks old - we have temporary names for the chicks.