Eggs for Education

Our photo for "Eggs for Education" program. Thought we should start saving for college by selling eggs. Here is one of our pretty girls relaxing in the cool of the afternoon with her leg kicked out. She likes to lay like this...lol.  I just love to see her in the sunshine, the gold in her feathers is so pretty, it shines and sparkles. We've got tons of farm fresh brown eggs for sale.

 

We've got tons of farm fresh brown eggs for sale. Got to laugh, hubby says that he is going to fix up the yard this year, well the chickens are unfixing it up for him by making dust bathing holes.

Laying down on the job!

Our girls are really laying down on the job! They have not laid well in weeks. Most of our girls are molting and looking pretty shabby......LOL.....Is that where the scrapbooking and rubber stamping industry came up with the term Shabby Chic?

If you don't know what molting means, it's when a chicken's feathers fall out and new pretty fluffy ones come in, it must be stressful on the body since they don't lay many eggs when they molt.
I found these 3 chicks resting high up in the pine trees, they were safe from our beautiful red foxes that like to hang out around our place.

We actually had to buy store bought eggs last week, we got the jumbo ones from Meijers and they were the size of our normal sized eggs that our hens lay. The price of feed has really increased so these girls had better be getting back to work in the hen house to earn their keep!

A little chicken humor for you. LOL

Moe

Weigh in day

Today was weigh in day for our chickens, two of them were 1 lbs 3 oz, and the rest were all around
3 lbs, 8oz. So they are looking pretty tasty......eeerrr, ummmm, lol. I mean looking good  ;o)
They will be fully grown and ready to go the week of May 24.

As for names so far we have

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken Noodle Soup

BBQ Chicken

Fried Chicken

Chicken Salad Sandwich

They are enjoying their time in the sunshine and fresh air. Though it's been a bit frosty in the mornings, they are doing well. The hens DO NOT LIKE THEM! lol. We had them in the yard next to the girls nesting boxes and they were screeching at them.

We even weighed some of  our hens and they all tipped the scales at OVER 5#.

Off to bake some gluten free/corn free bread.

Moe

EGG-cellent

So everyone laid an egg and at bedtime there was an extra egg in the nesting boxes.

Things that make you go HMM........lol.

Someone obviously laid a second egg, a tiny second egg.

We have yet to crack it open to check it out. I'm curious.

More to come on this one.

Have a great weekend!

Moe

Chicken Foot Soup

We finally got the chicken feet out of the freezer and cooked them up. It was a family affair and lots of fun. Well worth it too.

The feet add such a wonderful flavor to the broth.

Here is a link to a great recipe.

Made a batch on Sunday, it was yummy.

After church I walked in the house and said "I smell feet!! Chicken feet that is......."

Click here for the gluten free recipe Chicken Feet Soup.

Then used it to make Jasmine Rice, I took 4 cups of rice, 2 cups water and 2 cups of the very think (like Jell-O) broth and added some parsley to the rice cooker and it was wonderful.

Here are some fun pictures from that experience. As  you can tell I am new to blogging as my pictures are not showing up like they should!

I am peeling skin in this pictures.

A chicken foot up close and personal.

Chicken is done! YUM!

Well I thawed out one of our farm fresh chickens from the freezer and baked it today. I added just a touch of salt on the skin and baked for 2 hours at 375 degrees. Store bought chicken is not going to happen in my house again after this!  This meat has FLAVOR! It reminded me of the rich taste of a Butterball, only we did not add anything to these chickens besides water, good quality feed, a few fruits and veggies here & there and lots of love! Here he is.

This was really good, but I think the legs were cut in the wrong spot because they almost touched the top of the oven.....lol. Though this breed of chicken is very tall, so that might be why the legs were so long. He was 4lbs 8oz. Pretty good size.  DS kept wanting to tell me the name of the chicken, and I kept saying "I don't want to know!" We each grabbed a fork and dug in......lol....no plates either just forks.

Now when I go out to the chicken tractor I keep seeing fried chickens walking around and even a few with those cute little white chef hats on! lol.......think of the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Farm Fresh Eggs for sale

Yesterday was our first trip to the farmers market. We sold out of farm fresh eggs within minutes. It was our first crop of eggs with the proceeds going to winterize the coops. We are already gathering eggs for next week. A homeschooling mom came and bought 2 dozen, she has 4 hungry growing boys! She made a donation to our coop project too. Thank you Chris  :O)  We had not really thought far in advance when we got all the day old baby chicks that winter would someday come........lol.  Winter will soon be upon us, so much work is needed to be done.

We are thankful for some Michigan friends that have been saving egg cartons for us so we don't have to buy them. 

We got a free watermelon while at the farmers market, our son helped a man load up his produce after the sale and he gave him a watermelon! So we came home with $ and a free $4.00 watermelon. Not a bad day.

Our first EGG!

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" Luke 13:34

I like what Barnes' Notes on the Bible has to say about this verse. I think we need to heed this in our every day life. "We should be on our guard against crafty and unprincipled people. They often "profess" to seek our good when they are only plotting our ruin. Even those professedly coming from our enemies to caution us are often also our enemies, and are secretly plotting our ruin or endeavoring to prevent our doing good."

Yet, in the end we must remember that "The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down." Ps 146:9 AMEN to that!

This is our girl Xtra Crispy, we are pretty sure she was the egg layer, she was very worried when we took the egg away. She was searching all the nesting boxes and pacing back and forth.

Crazy Mamma

We call this one Crazy Mamma, all the kids think it's is mean looking and are scared of it. She/he reminds us of the Looney Tunes cartoon with Tweedy Bird, remember the episode where Tweety drinks a potion in the laboratory and becomes Dr. Heckle and Mr. Hyde.......lol. We don't know if this is a rooster or not, but it's funny looking.