Today was the day. The day we’ve all been looking forward to. (or at least I have been) the day that my “pretty birds” laid their first eggs. Three so far. Slightly irreggular granted, but it’s a huge leap for mankind (me at least) in their quest for space travel (I mean self-sufficiency)! It’s so eggciting! :-)

There they are in all their beauty. Gorgeous specimens of eggs at their best, unless of course you enter fried eggs, omelets, quiches, soufflés, eggs in cakes, cookies and so forth and so on, into the contest. Delectable delights. All brought to you by the incredible edible egg–that being the “farm” fresh variety, not the poor substitutes commonly called eggs found in your typical giant superstore.

I found one this morning when I moved the pen, and then two more after Baxter and I put the recalcitrant Turken back into the pen. (Baxter is eggtremely good at catching on to things like this. This time all I said (in very conversational terms) as I was talkin to the dear dog, on the way to get my shoes on, was something like “Baxter we’ve go to go get that chicken that’s out.” He latched right onto the “chicken out” part and tore out the door, raced over to the pen and, by the time I reached it, had the hen pinned down in a convenient location for me to pick up and put back into the chicken tractor! I think we ought to get some sheep. (But I’d rather have a Jersey dairy cow))

So anyway, I guess that means that I’d better change feed over to an egg laying ration. And put some wood shavings in the nest boxes (I’d left them bare for the starters, because they were all sleeping in them. But now they’re roosting on top of the nest boxes–a much better place in my opinion–so now I could put bedding in there.)

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We’ve also picked some blue berries, canned some pickles, and a few green beans. For my gardens not doing so well, we’ve still gathered considerable bounty from thither and yon. We’ve been blessed by many generous people.

Here’s some cucumbers waiting to be made into pickles:

And here’s the fruit of about an hour and a half’s labor for five people:
The blue berries were hard picking this year, the place we go to lost over 80% of the berries to the bad hail storm–this is their second bad year in a row. Hopefully not their last year, but Mrs. Cook was saying that two bad years in a row means it’s time to quit.

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Well I’d better get back out and check on my chicks again. I just moved them out side into the big pen yesterday afternoon because they were getting too hot in the garage. My total death loss is four so far–more than I’d like but it seems to be somewhat typical.

“Talk” to y’all later,

Matthew