Eggs in a tree

You've probably heard the saying,

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch."

Well, I have a new one for you.

"Don't lay your eggs in a tree."

Bad things can most definitely happen.

I looked out of the schoolroom window this morning and saw a chicken in our oak tree (see above photo). This sight alone sort of shocked me.

But, as I took a closer look, I noticed she was sitting on eggs and was clearly troubled because some had just fallen out of the tree and on to the ground

Duh???

Poor gal.




And I'd like to draw your attention to those yolks. Yes, those beautifully vibrant orange yolks.

I did not alter the coloring in any way in this photo. They are naturally that orange.

When you raise chickens on pasture, their yolks take on an orangish color. This is how you know if they've in fact been raised on grass.

I use to think that egg yolks were yellow. But, in fact, they are orange- or at least should be.

Who knew?

Here are some facts about the eggs that hens lay that are raised on pasture (from Mother Earth News):

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 TIMES more Omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 TIMES more Vitamin E
• 7 TIMES more beta carotene

With all of the food labeling that is being done these days, things can get a little confusing.

Did you know that the government owns the term "free-range" now?

They bought this term so that farmers now have to pay big bucks in order to label their eggs using this terminology.

That is why we have to say that our eggs are "pastured".

Not to be confused with "pasteurized".

You'd be AMAZED at how many people call our farm asking to buy,"Some of them there PASTEURIZED eggs." I digress. Geez.

Still trying to figure that one out. Not sure how one could pasteurize and egg if they so desired. I suppose then, that would be a hard boiled egg that would need a good shellin'.

Okay, sorry, back on task here.

But, what is even more troubling is the way that the government has defined what "free-range" even means.

From Mother Earth News in "Meet Real Free-Range Eggs":

""A statement on the American Egg Board’s Web site says “True free-range eggs are those produced by hens raised outdoors or that have daily access to the outdoors.”

Baloney. They’re trying to duck the issue by incorrectly defining “true free-range.” And the USDA isn’t helping consumers learn the truth, either: “Allowed access to the outside” is how the USDA defines “free-range.” This inadequate definition means that producers can, and do, label their eggs as “free-range” even if all they do is leave little doors open on their giant sheds, regardless of whether the birds ever learn to go outside, and regardless of whether there is good pasture or just bare dirt or concrete outside those doors!"

We say this all of the time around the farm, but farmers can't imitate a chicken raised on pasture.

They can try and stick whatever "free-range" label you want on the carton, but the proof is in the yolk.

A note from Farmer J on "molting"....

We're experiencing an egg shortage around here. Just in time for Thanksgiving.....yes!

Its not fun having people drive up to the farm store for eggs only to tell them "we're out".

"What? How can this be?" They ask.

Well, you see, doing things the "natural" way doesn't always lend itself to our convenience. You would never know that chickens go through a molting process as a grocery store goer based on its endless supply of white eggs that magically appear on shelves all year long.

Sadly, our faithful customers know that this is not the case as does our family who is use to eating almost a dozen eggs for breakfast. What can I say, we love protein!

Laney Rae wakes up in the morning proclaiming that she wants "Eggs Momma Eggs!"

Chickens don't always lay eggs every single day.....unless you force them. And Farmer J will have no part of forcing his feathered girls. He is quite the patient farmer.

He posted the following post on our farm website HERE- we are posting regularly on the farm blog now!!

I really loved that my man wrote up this here post, so I thought I'd put it on here too for a glimpse into the mind of a farmer.

“Brenham, we have a problem.”

Due to chickens being chickens and in their natural environment, exhibiting all of their chicken-ness, we are extremely low on eggs right now. This time of year is a rather difficult time for egg producers- not the chickens. They continue to do the chicken things that chickens do each and every day but their conversion of feed and sunlight are going through different phases. Let me explain.

This time of year, chickens tend to reset their bodies. The most evident is in their displaying of new feathers. This amazing feat performed by the chickens is called “molting.” Throughout the year, they lose their feathers in different sections, putting new feathers on as they go. This keeps them from losing all the feathers at once for this would cause serious protection problems for the chickens. Then, about this time of year (late October – November) they do the big molt. New quills start sprouting from all over and these amazing new feathers begin to form.

Once it starts, there is drastic growth each day. It is rather amazing how these animals are made. However, because during the molting process all of their energy is going to putting this new plumage on, their egg production virtually becomes non-existent until they are done. Not all of our flock is molting right now. I would say about 60% of them are. These are the main contributors to our lack of eggs.

This leaves the remaining 40%. When fall comes, we begin having shorter days. Right now we have about 11 hrs of sunlight. Chickens are very finicky animals and feel they need 14 hrs of sunlight to ovulate at optimum production levels. The chickens that are laying currently aren’t laying an egg a day like they normally do. I hoping that they are laying at least every other day, but there is no way to tell with a flock as large as ours.

So, what to do? This is what we are asking ourselves. We can’t do anything about the molting. This is a natural occurrence that chickens go through. I don’t believe in forced molting that is performed in commercial industrial models. The chickens are starved from food and water for several days until the process stops. They start back up laying eggs once food is introduced again. These chickens look terrible with extreme loss of feathers, which I guess they feel they don’t need since they are packed inside buildings in tiny little cages.

For right now and for the sake of keeping things “natural” around here, we will just live with the molting part of chicken-ness. The shorter days can be remedied. It would be easy to put lights in the house and plug it into the wall for a couple hours a day after the sun goes down but their house moves everyday since they are out on pasture, so that just won’t work. This is where solar lights will come in handy. We are currently figuring out a way to run some lights off solar polar. I feel this will greatly improve production from the non-molting chickens. We’ll see.

All of this is to say, “Please bare with us”. We try to allow our animals to live in the most natural environment possible, which leads a lot of time to natural processes out of our control. We have 400 new layers that should start laying in a few weeks. Our hope is that they will greatly fill in the gaps.

Thank you so much for your support of our farm. Honoring God and His perfect creation, being caretakers of it everyday, and producing healthy food for families is our passion and we are so thankful for families and individuals that allows us to do this everyday.

And here they are......

The chicks arrived safe and sound yesterday morning. We received our phone call from the post office at 6:30 am. 

Jason took off after them. He and Aunt Debbie unpacked all 400 chicks & 50 guineas and dipped their beaks into water. You do this to teach them how to drink and also show them where their water source is. Theses chicks just hatched 2 days ago this was their first drink of water and bite of food. 

They will stay in our brooder house until they are a bit older. The chicks will need to be able to tolerate the weather temperature and little better before we can release them.

These are Cornish Rock X and Red Broilers. They are strictly meat birds (broilers). 

Just to give you an idea of how quickly chickens change, here is the first batch of our egg layers that we received in April. These are the chicks that pictured below in the cute little boxes. They are out on pasture and beginning to lay beautifully. Its amazing to see them change from baby chicks to beautiful hens (and a few roosters). 

Madness!

Its amazing how quickly life can become crazy. In our case- this happened with just one phone call this morning.

Farmer Jason went from driving around the pastures collecting soil samples to now preparing for 400 chicks (and 50 guineas) to arrive in the morning! Aunt Debbie and I had big plans of putting up a picket fence around our store and new landscaping (darn goats). But, as life on a farm goes, we must shift gears and lend a hand.

The chicks weren't due until next week so we weren't planning on getting ready for them until a few days before they were scheduled to arrive.

They will arrive at the crack of dawn at the post office in the morning. We will go pick up the chicks packed neatly in cute little boxes and turn them loose into our brooder house.

These chicks are Cornish Rock crosses and Red Broilers. The purpose of these birds will be strictly for meat. They will be ready for butchering in 8-10 weeks.

I'm so excited to finally have our very own pastured poultry. We will process (butcher) these chickens ourselves on our farm. In the state of Texas, you are allowed to process up to 10,000 birds on farm as long as you sell them directly off your farm or at farmer's markets. Jason says we will butcher 9,999.

We shall see. Either way, "there a comin' ".

Our hen had a bean.........

A kidney bean to be exact!

Jason collected the eggs this evening and brought in this cutie pie of an egg! We've had tiny ones like this before, but never this color.

Folks, I think we have a new layer on our hands.

In a month or so, we should increase our eggs by a gazillion. Well, not really a gazillion. I tend to over exaggerate sometimes. But, we will go from getting around 20 eggs a day to hopefully 300 eggs a day.

So, our little kidney bean egg is a good indication that we have some new layers on the farm.

Is this not the cutest little egg you've ever laid eyes on?

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

I know it is a bit late in the day, but we've had an exciting mother's day out here on the farm.

We have 10 PIGLETS! This is our first litter of pigs. Lucy is a mama.

She started delivering yesterday evening while I was out collecting eggs and continued into the wee hours of the morning. My sister, brother-in-law, and niece, Ava, spent the night with us and were here to witness this too! We were up until 1:00 a.m. chatting and checking on piglet status. How fun!

Farmer Jason missed it all. Poor guy! I feel so bad when stuff like this happens. He has been looking forward for this day for weeks now. Dang! Farm drama likes to creep its head up when he is not around. I think they know that the less than adequate farmer (myself!) is filling in.

We also had another small batch of chicks hatch. This hen is beautiful!


Seriously, this was an exciting mother's day! I not only received an iPod nano, I now have a whole litter of piglets. They are the cutest! I was sure that pygmy goats were the cutest baby animals, but I might have to rethink that statement.

Laney Rae took 6 consecutive steps today. Any day now she will be walking. No exclamation point here. Sure, I'm excited for her. But, that means my baby will be vertical. And once they go vertical, its a fast and furious race.

I have nothing profound to say- not that I ever do anyways. I'm a simple gal.

I love being a farmer's wife!

I love being a mommy to two amazing girls!

I love farm life!

I feel so blessed today.

Oh Stinky Day!

***Please read below for a complete explanation of photo. I promise this has nothing to do with cauliflower nor cabbage.***

My house reeks!

But it's all good because we've been harvesting cabbage and cauliflower. I picked a cart full (a gut cart full to be exact) of cabbage and cauliflower yesterday.


Obviously we won't be able to eat 10 heads of cabbage in one week. My house would permanently reek if that were the case. So I decided to freeze them in vacuum sealed bags. I blanched them in boiling water for 3 minutes and immediately cooled them off in ice cold water. We froze cauliflower last year, but this is my first year freezing cabbage. We will see how it does. I'm not expecting it to be crispy like lettuce when it thaws out, but definitely good enough for soups saute-ing.


We are still enjoying the corn and okra we froze last year.........that is all that is left from last year's garden. Yummy! It is nice to have a freezer full of frozen garden veggies and planning your meals around what you have on hand. Once we butcher our cows, chickens, and pigs we will cut down on our grocery bill even more.

Last night I had my first experience with an egg-bound hen. Bless her little heart. It was awful.

I had noticed one of my favorite hens walking around all day long kind of funny. Well, I went to pick her up and felt an egg hanging out of her hiney hole. Or cloaca in hen terms. The egg was stuck and dangling in mid air. I felt terrible for her and had no clue what to do.

I called farmer Jason and he hadn't seen this before either. My mom was here (thankfully!!!) through all of this and said that she remembered something about putting warm water around the 'area' to help loosen things up. So, being the research junkie that I am, I looked it up. Apparently egg binding is very common in birds but extremely serious. I found all sorts of remedies that you could try. 'Try' is the keyword here.

I opted to get some olive oil, warm water, syringe, and gloves (a must when touch a bird's hiney hole) to massage that little booger out. It worked like a champ. The egg popped right out. I put the traumatized hen in a crate on our porch so that I could keep her calm and separated from the rest of the flock overnight. I didn't want a rooster to get her while she was recovering from this. Can you imagine???

This morning we released her back out into the open. I was so proud of my awesomeness in massaging an egg out of the hen's hiney hole and I wanted to capture a photo for all to see of my rescue project.........the hen smiling, not the latter region.

We looked all over the farm for her, only to find her dead.........stiff dead. She must have died right after we released her. I'm betting she had an infection of some sort from her hind parts being exposed.

Or really, she might have had a heart attack at the sight of a rooster coming to 'get' her. Really, this could totally happen. I didn't know this, but chickens are notorious for having heart attacks in highly stressful moments.

I'm opting for the second cause of death just to make myself feel better.

I'm very sad about her dying because last night as I was saving her cute little life, I envisioned her being my best good hen friend. I even named her last night. 'Snowball' was going to be totally devoted and loyal to me and rest upon my shoulder as we strolled around the farm from that moment on. We bonded in the cool night air as I delivered this egg out of her. But, now she's dead. RIP......Snowball. I didn't even get a picture of her to remember her. It was either a picture with her and the egg craziness or a picture of stiff dead Snowball. What's a girl to do?

In other news, one of our cats had kittens. Tinkerbell had a litter of 7 kittens. The tomcat is also orange so it wasn't a mystery to us as to what color the kittens were going to be. They are ALL orange and so cute. We plan on giving them all away in 6 weeks so if you need or want a kitten let us know.



Dolly, our other cat that is a calico tabby, is off having her kittens somewhere too. We haven't been able to find her today so I'm pretty sure she is having hers too.

That's all of the farm news for now. We've been living out most of our days outside. I have been falling behind on the inside duties of keeping a home. I'm really trying to find balance. It really leads me to wonder what in the world the pioneer women did who had to tend to the garden, prepare all 3 meals of the day, laundry, shuck corn, grind flour, fetch water, sew tablecloth dresses, etc, etc.

Wow, what a woman, what a mighty good woman.

Farm Happenings, and a lot of it!

I'm back! Last week was a whirlwind- a good kind of whirlwind filled with lots of exciting things.

April, 2nd- We survived the morning o' chicks. Jason promptly received a phone call at 6 am from the post office and off he went. And off I went straight to the coffee press to get into the java groove.

....Chicks in a box....

He arrived with boxes packed neatly with chicks. We unloaded them, dipped their beaks, and showed them where their food was. They are doing great! We've lost a few here and there, but that is to be expected with 300 chicks.

....Jason unloading the chicks....

....the brooder house....

If you are wondering what the purpose of these birds will be, the answer is for eggs. Jason has plans to build a ginormous egg mobile that will follow behind our cattle. The purpose of this is to help cut down our fly problems and to fertilize the pastures.

After the morning o' chicks, I headed off with some dear friends of mine- Shauna Maness being one of them- to Warrenton for a fun day of antiquing, chatting, eating, chatting- you get the point. I was one of four girls who went and the only one that wasn't expecting so you can imagine there was lots of chatting and eating! Shauna and I go waaaay back. I met Jason through her and will be forever grateful. I'm so thrilled for her and Brandon and cannot wait to see them as parents.......in Texas!! Yee Haw!

I had such a blast. I found a few cool things. I will post pictures of these later. There is also a very interesting purchase I found pictured below from a later trip to Warrenton with my hubby.

I was one blessed girl. I went antiquing to Round Top and Warrenton a total of 4 (FOUR) times!!!!! That is an amazing perk to living in Brenham.....one of the many perks (blue bell being one of the others). I told you I've been a busy gal!

April, 4th- We celebrated Laney Rae's birthday with friends and family. I had a very low-key party. I'm NOT really a fan of having enormous parties for first birthdays. We had a very small group out to the farm, grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, and did the rest of the stuff that all good birthday mom's do- smash the cake and open presents. The picture below really sums up what it is like being the birthday mom of a one year old.

....Me, admiring the gift. Laney Rae admiring the curly ribbon....

April, 5th- Bib received another friend!!! Our other female goal, Louise, had her kid. She is a female that Kaylyn named, Bambi. She is absolutely precious.

....Bambi....

I have to say that baby goats are the most precious baby animal around- bar none. I've never seen another animal look this cute from birth. Bib and Bambi seem to be doing really well and are experiencing new life together.

....Bib and her momma....

....Friends....

....The baby Daddy....

Also on the 5th, Jason, me***, my mom, and Kaylyn made the last and final trip to Warrenton.

Jason loaded the truck down with chicken coops. I always love the looks we get as we are loading our truck full of coops. Fancy women dressed in straw hats with giant beaded necklaces around their necks wearing sunglasses as big as their entire face pass by with perplexed looks written all over them.

One lady asked me,"What are you going to do with all of those coops?"

I know she was expecting me to say something ultra creative since we were smack dab in the middle of the creative capital of Texas. Something along the lines of "use it for flower pots" or "organize shoes" or "make a magazine rack" or "paint it really funky and make it into a cat condo" or "jewelry box".

But, instead, I answered her,"We are going to put chickens in them."

"Oh, really?" she exclaimed as if that were a new concept. She probably would have been bored if I would have answered that I was going to make it over into a funky cat condo.

This, my friends, is a gutting cart.

It was one of my Warrenton Antique's Fair purchase. I didn't know it was a gutting cart. I thought it would be a great garden cart. See the opening on the end? Can't you just imagine me shoving dirt off the end of it into the flower bed? And the little table shelf up on the top- can't you imagine me potting a plant with my dirt resting below? I was so excited about this 'cart'.

Apparently this was used in a pork processing factory to carry guts off. I found this out as we were loading it up. It doesn't sound near as cute as a gardening cart. But, oh well. I'm sure we can find a good use for it out here. We got a great deal on the 'cart'.

April, 6th- Uncle Durward and Aunt Debbie came home yesterday. We love it when they come home. The farm feels complete with all of us being together.

Aunt Debbie is an incredible lady and a gardening machine. I can't even take credit for the garden looking this great. I have loved getting work alongside her and learn from a garden pro!

We've been doing lots of work out in the garden last week and this week. Really, the garden in general is an ongoing process. We still need to get some more things in the ground for the spring and summer. Last year we had an abundance all at one time so we are going to do a few different rounds of planting.

We had some perfectly poo-filled hay and made compost hay out of it to help keep the weeds down and the moisture in. It has helped tremendously and makes the garden look pretty.

.....Potato Patch.....

.....Onion.....

.....Herb Garden.....

April, 7th- We just got back from taking photos of the girls in the wildflowers. That was exciting! Crawling and photography don't work well together. I can do sitting up or walking- but crawling not so much.

Check back for the final product soon!

Meanwhile, the pigs have been lounging around a lot more with it warming up while we've been working harder and longer outside. I'll leave you with Dudley, our male pig.


***I still can't figure out the proper use of 'me' 'my' or 'I' in a sentence. Especially when referring to another person and myself. It gets me every time. Is there a nifty little rhyme to help or a rule I should follow. See sentence with the *** for an example and help a sister out!

I do not guarantee the proper use of words, sentence structure, or spelling. After all, this is a farm blog. Right?

New Life

To kick off the week of Easter, I wanted to share with you some news that just hatched on Yonder Way.

We had chicks the old school way!

This hen has been sitting on her eggs for 21 days straight in her nest in a coop in the barn. The only time she has gotten off of the eggs is to eat and get a sip of water once a day. That's it!

I really think this is one of the sweetest things I've seen out here. This precious mama hen sitting day and night on her eggs- keeping them warm, anticipating the chick's arrival, and now protecting them under her wings. You wouldn't even know there were chicks under her at times.

Oh the imagery that brings to mind with the picture of our own Mighty Protector. There is no better place to be than resting in the shelter of His mighty wings. I've never understood that picture that is so often talked about and prayed for until now.

When we are under His wings we are protected from harm, there is comfort, it is our only hope for survival, and we completely disappear.
She has 18 chicks under her if you can believe that! Hens do this to keep the body temperatures up on their newly hatched chicks. I'm naming her 'Patience' because after that, she has more patience than probably anything I've witnessed.

This hen hatched 4 chicks a few weeks ago. Three of them made it. It will still be a while before we can release them out with the rest of them. We still have to watch for hawks and other predators. Jason went to move this batch from the barn to this cage, and the momma hen went 'ninja' on him. These hens are brutal when it comes to protecting their young.

Our bluebonnets are starting to come up. I can't wait to get pictures of the girls in them. I love them! This is a small patch that just popped up this week.

Here is a picture of life as a free-roaming chicken out here on the farm. Not bad!

Our piglets have to be some of the happiest piglets around. They get to live their days out on acres of land filled with a creek bed and.........

an ALL-YOU-CAN-STAND-BUFFET! We started these piglets when we got them on 100% organic grains specifically formulated and freshly milled for pigs and their nutritional needs.

I'll leave you with a picture of one adorable piglet. This little guy is my favorite piglet of all! I love his cute little floppy ears. He is a Duroc piglet. He does need a name though, so I'm open to suggestions. Let the contest begin!