I love my chickens, I Iove their eggs...

...but I especially love the blue ones.
They don't taste any different, and all eggs are beautiful, but there's just something about these.

They're laid by my gorgeous Araucanas, and range from pale blue, to an olive green to bright turquoise.

beautiful

Spring... it feels like it's been a long time coming

Finally the rain has stopped a bit. Well, it did rain yesterday, but we've had a few lovely days. It's given me a chance to do a lot in the garden, which has been totally wonderful ( if a little stiff making of the old body!)
So after a bit of hard work, it was nice this morning to just have a meander around the garden, with the camera,  and look at the signs of spring appearing.
When it's sunny like it is now, this is one of my favourite times of year. I'm not a huge fan of winter up here. It seems very long, wet and damp. I actually wish it did get freezing cold with a bit of snow!

I'm much happier when I can see signs of new life appearing everywhere.

Plum blossom

 Cherry blossom - about to burst open

Clematis, almost in bloom

Bluebells springing up everywhere

 And one of my absolute favourites... the fresias are out. As I sit here typing I can smell them!

And it's not only flowers. The asparagus season is just starting in my veggie garden. There are 5 spears almost ready for eating. Something ate the top off the first one - it looked like it could have been a mouse?? So I've covered the others as they come through and it seems to be working a treat. I LOVE asparagus.

There's some spring greens, which I actually grew this for the chooks! The garlic is also doing well, as are the Alderman peas which have been growing all winter. Oh and the potatoes are coming up beautifully too.  Apart from that I didn't plant much in the veggie garden, because I knew I was going to have to buy in some top soil or something as the beds are looking a bit low. So really, I just wanted pretty much empty beds at this time of year so it was easy to fill them up. This is a job for tomorrow or Tuesday as I need Lloyd ( who is away on a writer's course this weekend) to drive the jeep with the trailer on the back - I can drive forward with a trailer, but have never mastered reverse! It should be fun!

Oh, and my egg sign? What a raging success that's been! The eggs have been selling like hot cakes, mostly to people from our wee village which is lovely, as they could become regular customers. Already quite a few have said they'll bring the box back to be refilled, which is great. I hope they all like them. I've also met some lovely people. One old chap came to meet all the chickens with me and gave them a pat. Another lady and I swapped lemon curd recipes. It's been so nice.

So, in 4 days my lovely girls have earned enough  money to pay for their feed for the whole of this month! I had to go down to the verge this morning and rub out the "For Sale" part and change it to "sorry all sold out, more tomorrow" It felt really good!  What I've also realised is that I have to keep back some eggs for ourselves and enough to put down at The Acorn, for guests. It's getting really booked up now which is amazing. It's shaping up to be it's busiest year, ever!

All in all a lovely time of year!

Time to do something about all these eggs!

Yesterday Lloyd and I made a double sided blackboard sign, so that I could advertise the chookies eggs.
We found a old bit of wood and had soon jig sawed it to the right size. Then got a long bit of wood, sawed it in half and the 2 lengths became the 'posts' for the sign. A bit of hammering to join the posts to the sign part and it was done. All that was left was for me to paint it with blackboard paint and let it dry overnight.

This morning I got out my trusty chalks and scribbled out a sign. We put it down on the verge just outside the house and I crossed my fingers.
Then I went out for the afternoon.

When I got back Lloyd had sold some eggs!! Whooohooo.  The sign worked.

Here's both sides of it. ( yes, an artist, I am not.)

And with it just being chalk I can change things. Like if the price goes down all I do is rub the old one out! Or in the summertime when the veggie garden is going strong ( here's hoping this year is better than last year) I can add things to it like, courgettes and tomatoes?

It's 2 days since the sign has been out. Yesterday Lloyd sold some and today I have sold 4 dozen! I am cleaned out! Will have to make a quickie sold out sign  - or one that says sold out, more tomorrow!

wowser! That's the chook food paid for for 2 weeks :)

An overabundance of eggs!

We are being swamped with eggs!
Yesterday I made mayonnaise and meringues. I used up 6 eggs. Six eggs out of about a million didn't make much difference!

The mayonnaise was a very simple recipe.

Five egg yolks.
2 teaspoons of dijon mustard 
and a splash of white balsamic vinegar.
Olive oil and/or canola oil

Whisk the yolks, mustard and vinegar together, then slowly add a wee bit of olive oil, whisking all the time. Keep adding small amounts until it begins to get thick. Then you can be a bit more liberal with the adding! Basically keep adding and tasting until it tastes as you like it. Season. ( I actually use a mix of olive oil and canola oil)

Next the meringues, to use up the egg whites. 

I have a fail safe recipe.
5 egg whites
250g sugar
oven up to 180.

Put egg whites in a bowl and whisk until soft peaks. Add the sugar in 3 batches making sure each lot is well whisked in before adding more. It should be glossy with fairly stiff peaks.

Put baking paper on a tray and place the meringue mixture any way you want. Sometimes I do one large meringue and make a sort of pav. This time I got out 2 trays and made 8 individual meringues.

Put into oven and immediately turn down to 140. Cook for 1 hour checking to make sure meringues aren't getting too much colour - if they are turn down the heat a bit. After an hour turn off oven, but leave meringues in until completely cooled. I can guarantee that this will work every time!

 

 In hind sight these were far too big. They are on a large dinner plate! However Lloyd and I managed to eat 2 each. I thought I was going to be sick!!

Today we decided to pickle the rest.

So we boiled up 30 eggs and peeled them, and let me tell you, it's not easy to peel 30 incredibly fresh, hard boiled eggs.  Some of them are rather less pretty than others!

Lloyd made up a huge pickling brine which had a lot of ingredients in it.  White wine vinegar, cider vinegar, (about 2 litres in total)  golden syrup, honey, brown sugar, pickling spice, toasted black mustard seeds, fennel seeds, star anise, ginger, red and green peppercorns, one small onion finely chopped, lemon zest, the juice of a lemon and half a t-spoon of salt. Bring to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes and allow to cool.
He did it by feel, but I have to say it smelt absolutely lovely. It's a sweetish pickling brine.

Once it's cool put the eggs in jars (with room to move around a wee bit), cover with the brine and voila! In 2 weeks time, lovely pickled eggs.
 ( as an aside there was FAR too much brine, so we've bottled it and will use it for the next batch.)

Thirty hard boiled eggs, not the prettiest thing in the word!!

 

And here they are, in all their glory. I think a smaller jar of these, would actually make a rather nice pressie!

My lovely girls

They're laying up a storm. I think most days we were away they laid 12 eggs for Danielle and Rob and today they did the same for me!
Since I got the lavender araucanas, and King Bertie ( who is a pure bred lavender araucana)  was dad to a mixter maxter bunch of 5 girls who are the spitting image of black araucanas, I have green eggs. Well they vary from a sort of khaki colour to a bright turquoise. I adore them. Just before we left there was also a new, small pure white egg. This may well be one of them as there's leghorn mixed in there somewhere!!

I think I'm going to have to make a trip down to the local dairy and butcher to see if they would like any to sell as this is just too many. The sign I made last year is too small and is invisible from the road. I suppose I could make a bigger one..

It's been so busy since we got back. The Acorn is getting a lot of bookings and I really wanted to give it a 'deep' clean  - like moving the cooker right out and cleaning behind it  - sort of clean. I did it this  morning and it took blooming ages, and totally exhausted me! I must still be in holiday mode. Then I mowed the lawns - well half the lawns, I couldn't face the full almost 4 hour job. Dealt with 5 loads of washing - where did that all come from?? Then pretty much collapsed in a heap.
I really want to get planting my veggie seeds and get them started in the potting shed, however they are always SO far behind the seedlings I can buy in the local garden centres. Also the centres are now selling a huge amount of heritage veggies - so I'm in a bit of a quandary! I think what's thrown me is the shocking summer we had last year where all my hard work basically gave us nothing! Decisions, decisions! I'l probably do a bit of both!

I am loving the green eggs.

Both my lavender araucanas are laying, and yesterday there was a third green egg in the nesting box, which means that one of the black araucana crosses is also laying lovely green eggs. In fact, in the egg cupboard we only have green eggs! I was so hoping that when the 'Al-Blacks' started to lay they would lay green eggs as well. King Bertie was their dad and I'd read that they carry the egg colour of the dad, but I had no idea if this was right or not. In their case it would seem it is. Result.

These three are so small that they slip through the holes in the egg cupboard.

 It looks like we won't need to buy any eggs this year either. In the 6 years that I've been keeping chickens we've not had to buy a single egg. Some of mine seem to lay all winter. Now we don't have enough eggs to give away, like we do in the summer, but we definitely have enough for us.


This morning we had another successful Alpaca mating. True Glow came up to 'say hi' and Cocoa lay down for him this time. He also had a 'spit off' with Vienna.
In the world of alpacas, if the lady alpaca is pregnant, she doesn't want anything to do with the man alpaca and will spit at him. As a rule of thumb, you do a couple of spit offs after mating and if the lady spits both times you can fairly safely assume she's pregnant.
It's not fail safe and you can have a vet test done, but the spit off is free so we're going with that!!
Lloyd and Richard made a new boudoir for the lucky couple, and it worked a treat! The smaller the space the less the poor man has to chase the female!
I considered lighting some scented candles but they managed just fine without them.

Edna laid her first egg!

And it is absolutely miniscule - only slightly larger than a quails egg but perfectly formed.

I thought she was going to lay soon as a couple of days ago she was sitting on top of Maude when she was in the nesting box laying her egg. Maude was completely unfazed.

Edna's sister Mavis hasn't laid anything yet, so perhaps it won't be long now.

The chickens are doing amazingly. Up until today I had 10 laying chickens - some of which are 4 years old now and more often that not I was getting 9 or 10 egg a day! Now there's 11 laying. Good old Edna.

 This is Edna, she's a beautiful Silver Laced Wyandotte

 And Mavis, her sister, a gold laced Wyandotte.

Here's some of the other's having a wee snack, King Bertie's bottom, Elizabeth and Gertrude.

Two days worth of eggs!

white eggs!

When I first got chickens about 4 years ago I bought Minorcas and they lay white eggs, so that's all I got. As time's gone on I've got lots more chickens of different breeds, and they all lay various shades of brown eggs. My minorcas are getting on a bit now so they don't lay as regularly. I haven't had a white egg for a really, really long time, but yesterday and today there was a lovely white egg in the nest! I hadn't realised how much I'd missed them!

Next on the egg list are blue ones! 

Now, all my araucanas ( blue egg layers) turned out to be boys, King Bertie is a very happy boy, as all his brothers went to Ms Lottie  a couple of days ago (thank you!!) so he now rules the roost, in his incredibly calm way. Ms Lottie has 2 araucana babies and if one or both turn out to be a girl I can have them! I'm waiting with baited breath!

Keep your fingers crossed.

I know the one on the far left looks pink, but it is pure white - honest!

Oh and still bathroomless...

Still warm...

Even after 4 years of keeping chickens I still find it exciting to collect their eggs, even more so if they're still warm. There is something really comforting about holding a warm egg in your hand on a cold ( well, as cold as it gets!) morning.

This is Gertrude's egg. Buttercup and Abagail are also laying. Good girls.

We got a double yolker!

I collected the eggs yesterday and one of them was our biggest egg yet - it was just over 100g. Huge!

We thought it would probably be a double yolk and it was. So we had scrambled eggs for breakfast.

We've had torrential rain over night, I checked the rain gauge and it said 110mm since yesterday - that's a lot. We were woken up during the night by howling gales and rain. I was worried about the Freds, but when I checked them this morning the big ones were all ok and still munching away. Whew.

My chickens, on the other hand, are absolutely soaked. They will shelter in their lovely house all day when it's raining but at roosting time they will all come out and sleep up the tree. Creatures of silly habit!

It's a cinema day today - off to see The King's Speech with NandS.

Egg, mayo and 'cress head' sandwiches

MMMmmmmm!

Home made mayo ( the long way!) home grown eggs and 'cress head' . Lunch. Delicious.

The Sunday Creative

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This week’s prompt:

Abundance

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Abundance: from the word Abundant meaning more than enough: amply sufficient

Right now there is one very obvious subject matter for Abundance.

I have 9 chickens. Each day we're getting 8 eggs. 

I love it!

Don't you love all the colours.

Who would have thought making pasta was so much fun!

Lloyd and I were attempting to follow Jamie Oliver's pasta recipe but we sort of changed it a wee bit too. Ours was far too dry so we added some milk. We did the food mixer part but it didn't really work for us. Then we used the Kitchen Aid with the dough hook and much hilarity ensued. The bowl wasn't on tight enough so it sort of came flying off. We actually have it on video - honest - but it's too embarassing to post.

Anyway we did manage to make some pasta and I have to say I totally enjoyed it! We made double the recipe so will freeze half. Lloyd has just said he rather likes it hanging from the drying pulley, but it's probably not that hygienic to leave it there for any length of time!

(My Lovely Husband - who just walked past and laughed his head off when he saw this!)

 fab use of a drying pulley!

Once the pasta was made we ventured out to the veggie garden and got the last of the broad beans - there are actually loads!

In the middle of the beans was a beautiful, perfectly formed, ducks' nest. Aha, so that's where 2 of the ducks keep disappearing off to. I took the eggs in and put them in a bowl of water ~ they all immediately sunk straight to the bottom so they're fresh. I felt a bit guilty taking them away.

Lloyd is just about to start cooking the pasta...

 MMMMmmmm
Now, if only we could make our own flour...

Egg Glut

As I type this we’re having a power cut. I’ve no idea how long it’s going to last, but we’re so self sufficient here it’s not a problem. Only real downer is we can’t flush the loo, as we’re on rainfall water and it doesn’t get to the house without a pump. We’ve seriously considered buying an old diesel generator because we get a fair amount of power cuts – especially in winter – but we seem to manage so well we’ve never bothered.

Anyhoo! We have an egg glut. These are just the eggs from the last 3 days – and we’ve been eating them, selling them and giving them away. Tonight we’re going to make pasta. Homemade pasta and broad beans from the garden, some herbs and a bit of parmesan. Yum yum..  Can you freeze home made pasta I wonder? If so we’ll make a lot. When the power comes back I’ll do a bit of research.

Also on the egg front, Hoppy the duck was in sick bay again for 10 days. She’s much better now so she’s out and about with her pals, but the good thing from her being there is that she got into the habit of laying her eggs in the wee house part. So I’m getting a fairly regular supply of duck eggs, which is nice. I hope she keeps doing it.

Even though things are warming up outside, especially today where it’s a humid damp 20 degrees ( so feels hotter) I’m still not going to plant basil in the herb garden just in case we get a cold snap. So I planted some in a pot and we’ve got it in the kitchen. If there’s one herb we go through it’s basil. We both love it. I’m hoping this lot will do us until I can go mad with it outside.

( power back ~ we were the only people affected! It was old fuses blown out at the road. Lovely Top Energy men came and fixed it - we gave them a dozen eggs each so we're all very happy!)

I'm rich!

well..ok...not quite, but I have made my first $20 from selling eggs. I am the Donald Trump of Ohaeawai! ( only with better hair, female and without a tower. That's just for starters, I'm sure there are many more non-likenesses I have to Donald Trump...thankfully!)

Well happy though.

Also Hoppy has had her first lot of antibiotics. Only 27 more lots of finely crushing a miniscule tablet, adding water, syringing it all up, traipsing to "Duck Sick Bay", lifting whole sick bay up, getting the bed part out, getting Hoppy out of the bed part, holding her as best I can while Lloyd puts the syringe as far down her throat as possible, watching while some of the liquid gets spat out, putting syringe further down throat, putting Hoppy back in bed, putting bed back in sick bay, putting sick bay back together. Joy. I'm not even sure she appreciates it, poor wee thing.