Look at Sheila waiting quietly for her dinner while Poppy stomps about shrieking through all the dishes, making it impossible for me to retrieve them. Usually I have all the bowls out of their area before dinner time, but yesterday I forced myself to go to the supermarket and buy fresh vegetables and was late home.
The man at the check-out said: Are you making a big vegetable soup? I said, no, most of this is for my pig. She is a very special pig we want her to live a long time so she eats lots of fruit and vegetables. Is she a miniature pig? He asked. No, I said, as I rummaged about in my handbag looking for a pen, she is about 600 pounds. He blinked, then went back to packing my bags.
No kitten shots today, by the time I got home at 3pm there was no real light coming through the windows at all. The light is heavy as lead.
All six of the kittens are eating their solids very well. Eating and drinking from bowls. Climbing the furniture, playing with anything they can find, balancing on the firewood pile next to the woodstove, sleeping where they fall like little burrs along Boos back and one always under his chin. By my reckoning they should be nearing their 6 week birthdays, which means off to the vet for their worming, health checks etc. And Marmalade goes in for her operation.
Tomorrow I set up a new water arrangement for the calves across the way at the West barn. There is a water fountain for the stock there but the gasket has gone in its centre and it is leaking badly, and as you know, in this environment any leaking water immediately becomes ice. A sheet of ice under cattle is very dangerous. So tomorrow I will set up a trough with a water heater in it to kee it from freezing solid and I will trace the line back to the house and turn the water fountain off. Hopefully we can fix it in the summer. Till then I will fill the trough with a hose, just like I do here at the home barn.
Also tomorrow I bring the ten Rhode Island Reds home. (layers) They hatched in the autumn and have been growing at Jakes – safe from the Bastard Mink. He will keep some for his own flock. This will bring my flock of big birds back up to a reasonable number and they will be all start laying again in March probably.
Good morning. This reminds me of a story one of my house guests told me at Thanksgiving. She grew up in post war Germany. Her birthday is in January. She distinctly remembers when she was a child wanting an egg for her birthday. Not necessarily because of the food shortages, though food was scarce, they lived in a town, but because in those days chickens were not put under lights to force them to lay in the winter, usually a chook will rest in the short winter days, not laying through lack of light, so eggs were simply out of season in January. It was highy unusual to see eggs for sale in her town in the winter.
Interesting how our modern world seems so normal to us but the diverse largesse at our tables is a comparitively new thing. Lucky for me and the pigs I am still getting about six eggs a day though as we near the shortest day even this number is dwindling and then we also will do without eggs until the light returns.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Love your friend on the farm,
celi
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
49 responses to “Eggs”
Nothing like fresh you know where they came from and what the chickens were eating eggs! Morning miss c….t
Sheila’s face tells a thousand stories, made me laugh out loud, talk about oh why don’t you just shut up! Glad all the kittens are getting on fine, have a lovely day x
Morning, Miss C! Sounds like things are happening on the farmy as usual. Stay warm—-pats to the all the kitties from me!
I love a new fresh laid egg….in comparison shop eggs looks quite colourless and insipid…..Boo is such a lovely Man-mum….its his place in life….Keep warm all of you
Sad though it is … much better to wait it out than have to revert to grocery store eggs which are awful in comparison 🙂 We will miss the Kitties if they all leave for new homes. Hope you don’t have to start carting buckets to the West Barn. Laura
Sheila’s a very well behaved pig – perhaps it will rub off on Poppy in time… 🙂
Oh my, I could not be without eggs – not sure our 3 cats would allow chickens either so I will stick to buying my eggs from Woolworths.
I thought of you earlier today when I took another of our cats to the vet – poor thing is getting old and senile I have now been told. Anyway, it is my second visit to the vet in the past 3 weeks and goodness me, it is frightfully expensive and I know how often you have to call on a vet or like you say tootle off with the kitties and their mommy.
Have a beautiful day C and love to everyone on the farmy.
🙂 Mandy xo
Gosh, I never even though of the eggs in winter scenario. That’s very interesting. Actually, I just re-watched a six half-hour series of BBC gardening programs by a lovely, spunky red haired girl named Alys Fowler. She lives in an ordinary London home with a 20″ by 60″ garden, where she grows loads of fruit and veg for herself and husband, plus has two chickens who provide here with 2 or 3 eggs each day! Wow, now I think urban chickens might just be doable for me on my little city garden…which is bigger than Alys’s. (By the way, the series is on YouTube under The Edible Garden…in case you have nothing to do of an evening…yeah right. 😀 )
YOU have succeeded in so many ways I’ve failed and I admire you soo much, so much!
Lucky you getting six eggs – we struggle to get one! Your pigs remind me so much of ours; Flora, who was well mannered and patient and Effie, who shrieked and blundered around like a hippopotamus in a china shop!
Christine
I am getting 4 or 5 eggs from my girls at the moment – so very lucky. Not so lucky is losing one of my chickens on Monday. Not sure what was wrong with her, acted like she was drunk on Sunday, walking around all funny. Put her in a box in the green house with lots of straw and food close by. Kept checking her every couple of hours and she seemed to be doing ok except she couldn’t stand. It was like her legs had gone paralyzed. Then later in the afternoon I went to check on her and she was on her back dead! I think she must have managed to flip herself over and couldn’t get back, and any one who has ever had birds knows that once on their back they don’t last long! So sad but the other girls all seem to be fine. So now there is 9….
I can almost hear Sheila’s heavy sigh and Ton thinking,”Good grief, would you chill already, Poppy!” Great photo, Miss C! 🙂
I wonder how you remember the long list of jobs to be done each day and season. Nothing better then a free range egg, it brings sunshine to the table and to my baking. Speaking of baking, I have Cranberry Walnut Apple Cakes in the oven and they smell delicious. I did reduce the sugar, I will email some photos of my results when they are cool enough to cut and taste.
Is typing with my mouth full as bad mannered as talking through my food? Yum, yum! Good job I took photos of the cakes before I did the taste test.
My mother-in-law is getting maybe 4 eggs a day from her flock of 30. That’s been going on for a time now – nearly a year. I believe she doesn’t get many eggs because she has too many roosters for her small flock. At one time she had 9 roosters to 30 chickens – I haven’t counted lately. In her mind, she believes having all of those roosters insures fertile eggs which she also believes are much more nutritious than non-fertilized eggs. All I see are torn up hens with few feathers and fighting roosters all day long. To boot, her chickens all suffer with leg mites something terrible. In general the girls look bedraggled and unhealthy. I tried to help keep the barn clean knowing she won’t, but her practices are so different than mine, and of course if I’m vocal about the conditions of the barn and lack of good health and too many roosters, we just end up arguing about it. She is a strong-willed woman (I’m sure I am too when it comes to animal welfare issues) and there is little point to reason with her. FD and I have culled the roosters in the past (when his mother goes on vacation), but she always builds up her rooster population again. FD will build a small coop in the spring, and we will start our own small flock. So for now we are stuck buying eggs. 😦 I drive more than an hour from here to stock up on eggs from the natural grocery store.
I have three roosters in there, and these new ones are so BIG. So I have decided to cull again in the spring. Science tells us that fertilised eggs have absolutely no more protein or anything than unfertilised. I have kept my big roosters because I will be incubating eggs this coming year but I looked at them yesterday and they are actually too big i think and my little white hens are having a hard time. I will have to think on it. I am glad you are getting chickens. You will look after them wonderfuly. Mites hate oil, so just stick their legs in olive oil twice a day and you will get rid of the mites. c
Thank you for the suggestion about the olive oil. Unfortunately, she and I have gotten to the point where I am not to discuss anything further regarding HER chickens, thus we will just get our own. I do feel for the chickens and roosters, but she’s right – they are none of my concern. 😦
at least you wil look after yours beautifully, you gave it a try, but in the end we only have control over ourselves, rightly so too or we would go mad trying to fix the world!
I was told by our local veterinary’s helper to put used motor oil on the perches to control the little buggers. So maybe if motor oil is unhealthy (IDK) olive oil on the perches would work! Just a passing thought.
Gosh, I didn’t know that about hens laying, or rather not laying in the winter. Today, you are my ‘learn-something-new-every-day’ location. 😀