It may not feel much like spring the last few days, but the chickens certainly know what season it is.
Instead of the few eggs a day we were getting in the winter, the hens are now giving us about 3 dozen per day. That’s full capacity for our little flock.
Every year when this happens, we have to figure out how to spend our springtime egg jackpot. Not long ago we had customers practically begging us for eggs. But nowadays, when everyone who owns chickens suddenly has more eggs than they need, demand goes way down.
But there’s no danger of eggs going to waste. We have plenty of loyal customers, and we eat our fair share too. Our dog Ginny gets them in her diet too.
Now is the also the time to freeze eggs. It’s also a good time to bake and freeze egg-rich goodies, like pound cake.
In a worse case scenario, we can feed them to our pigs. That’s what the pigs are hoping for, but it isn’t likely to happen.
Meanwhile we’re brooding two dozen chicks who we’re hoping will contribute to next years spring eggsplosion.
It’s a great time of year.
By the way, y’all should go check out Laura’s post on her always entertaining Applewood Farm blog. Her chickens not only ramp up production this time of year–they also hide their eggs.
Hahaha I made pound cake the other day too! Can’t think why. Mind you, I think I am going to go easy on the sugar next time, it was far too sweet
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Neither of us eat many sweets. Cake is a pretty rare thing around here. But pound cake is a good (and delicious) way to put away eggs for later.
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How nice that the chickens are gearing up production in time for Easter egg dying! I’ll be buying an extra couple dozen this weekend. It’s one of my favorite traditions. If I ever find a workshop, I’d like to try my hand at Pysanky.
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Eggs go well with Easter. How enticing all those Spring eggs must have been to the folks unable to eat them during Lent. It makes sense that they’d not only boil them to save, but also that they’d decorate them in anticipation of their Easter Sunday egg-feast. I thought this post on Lazy Penguins was interesting: http://lazypenguins.com/traditional-easter-food-for-every-country-around-the-world/ Notice how many of the traditional Easter foods include eggs.
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Bill, every thing that has life knows that Spring is here or very close to being here. Spring flowers are starting to bloom, trees are starting to bud, and grass is starting to grow. I think that I’ve stated before that this is my favorite time of the year. Before we know it Spring will roll into summer and heat will be the issue. Chickens are like any other animal. They will reward you from their joy of seeing Spring arrive. I’m sure they are happy about being able to get back to scratching around in the dirt. It is their favorite pass time after all. Today I’m going to work on the irrigation system for Terra Nova Gardens and maybe a little on the sweet corn planting area. Terra Nova Gardens is starting to clean up really nice. Spring clean up always looks so good before the weeds start trying to make a come back.
When does your market begin? Ours doesn’t begin here in Nebraska until the latter part of June or first part of July. Cold weather greens are not a big seller here so it’s not worth the effort to grow them for the early market. The warm weather vegetables will draw more of a crowd and then perhaps the people might buy some greens as an after thought. More and more people in my neighborhood are growing their own tomatoes but still there are many that don’t for me to give them away.
Have a great dry Spring planting day.
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Our market opens the first weekend in May. Hopefully we’ll have some cool weather veggies available: asparagus, lettuce, kale, collards, etc.
I’ve been complaining about the wet ground delaying planting but it might have been a blessing in disguise, as it’s turned bitterly cold here and tonight’s forecast low is in the 20s! Now I’m worried about the plants I did manage to get into the garden. March is just going to do what it wants to do!
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Eggcellent!
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Eggzackly.
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Lucky you!
And just in time for Easter coloring
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As I mentioned in response to Linda, eggs and Easter go together naturally. 🙂
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Nature just knows when to turn on the production. 🙂
I’ve never thought of freezing eggs. Do you have any tips?
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To freeze eggs, just crack them and put the eggs in a freezer-ready container. You have to break the yolks. Only put as many as you will want to cook at one time into each container. Some people freeze them individually, then put them into a freezer bag so they can take out as many as they need when they’re ready to cook them.
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Thank you for the tips! I’m going to give this a try.
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OMG – Love your post. Just saw a guest post you did over on Survey of Christianity so I thought I’d come on over and check out your site. So funny so I had to sign up to “follow”. Have a great day.
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Welcome. Glad to have you visit and hope you’ll find some things of interest here.
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Yup, I’m in the same position, but they seem to be selling just fine. I guess I have a fairly consistent clientele at the farm stand. I had Laura’s problem last year when my old flock were escaping all the time – I am still finding the occasional stash of eggs – usually by stepping on them !
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So far ours are moving well too. This time last year we ended up with more than we had uses for.
This afternoon I found 24 eggs hidden in a corner of the coop. I didn’t know ours were up to that when I typed the post.
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How do you freeze your eggs? Curious. I had to purchase some at Thanksgiving when the girls went on strike and I was none too happy!
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There may be other ways to do it, but we just crack them and put them in freezer-ready containers. You do have to pop the yolk. Just make sure you freeze them in batches that are the size you’ll want to cook when you thaw them. Some people freeze them individually then put them (frozen) into freezer bags so they can take out as many as they need when they’re ready to cook them.
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Thank you!
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Eggsplosion here too. With today’s eggs I’m planning to make and freeze a lot of lemon curd. Great stirred in yogurt.
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Sounds great! We’ve been putting away a lot of eggs lately. This is the time of year for that!
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