Morning in the Vineyard

As we listened to the news last night on the criminal charges filed in food safety case against egg producers in Reuters Iowa and saw the stretches of building on top of building where their hens are kept for production, it gave us great joy and pride that our eggs are from truly pasture-raised, free-ranging hens. This morning, our laying ladies greeted the day in the vineyard area, keeping the vines insect free, the grounds well fertilized and themselves well-nourished and healthy. This is how every egg should be produced. 

Crazy Egg-Production Ladies

Now that the cold has set in, the ladies' production is up. We are getting close to two dozen eggs a day even with the short days of sun light. We are so happy that they are finally behaving and saving their eggs for us. With all the extra eggs of late, look for some yummy egg recipes to come your way.

Eggless Sadness

We bring you sad news on our saga to break the egg-eater habit. Our ladies had discovered how yummy their eggs are. They have now developed into egg eaters. If we are vigilant with multiple checks throughout the day of their nesting box, we are lucky to find 3 eggs from our 48 egg layers, but most days we are down to 0. We have checked with all our resources on how to break the habit. They have an abundance of calcium in their feed. We filled empty egg shells with mustard but they eat it gone – shell and all. We put golf balls in their nest so to learn it hurts to attempt to break it. We invested in a $300 nesting box that rolls away the egg as they lay them (which we catch our smart girls walking back and forth and craning their necks to reach the goods).

 

As a last recourse, with heavy hearts we even snipped the ends of the beaks of those we caught with mustard on their face to attempt to detour them. We even separated those that we have caught from the others to see if we would have eggs at the end of the day but we are afraid that the hens have modeled this bad behavior and it is now learned by all of them.

 

Our options now are to either run a petting zoo of eggs eaters or to cull the clan and start fresh with a new flock.

 

We will take on the deed next week and will plan when best to order new chicks. What it does mean is no more eggs this year. We are so very sad to share with you this news.

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Spaghetti Squash – God’s Gift to the Low Carb Diet

Best treat this week in your CSA box? The Spaghetti Squash! Why? Because you cut it in half lengthwise, scoop out all seeds, submerge in boiling water for 20-25 minute (until fork can easily pull the squash into strand), then drain and run cold water over squash to stop cooking process. Use fork to scrape the cook squash out of its rind, fluffing and separating the pulp into spaghetti-like stands. YOU NOW HAVE A VEGETABLE PASTA SUBSTITUTE THAT IS BETTER THAN PASTA!

A house hold favorite recipe is George Stella’s Anaheim-Shrimp-Scampi. (This recipe works well to substitute in chicken vs. seafood as well)  We highly recommend his recipe book ‘George Stella’s Livin’ Low Carb’. All his recipes are winners.

Zucchini Start

Excitement of new greens -- the zucchini is here!

Smoked (Grilled) Zucchini

Slice zucchini length-wise
Spread with butter
Sprinkle with salt
Drizzle with balsamic vinaigrette
Top with shredded Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Add to the smoker with the chicken for last hour or place on grill until tender

Smoked Chicken
Rub chicken with olive oil, sea salt and rosemary
Place in smoker for about 4 hours

Sweet Mama

This sweet mama hen has been our brooder- wanting so badly to hatch her eggs. When the baby chicks arrived, she moved out of the nesting box to lie next to the fence that separated the big girls from the little ones. For two weeks, she spent her days and nights pressed up against the fence so to be closer to the chicks.

 

This week we let her in with them. She is so good -when we open the door to the hen house in the morning, she moves to put herself between them and the draft. They all nestle around her so sweetly. We have caught a few sleeping on her back and we love it when she walks around with them on top of her. She is such a good mommy and the 50 baby chicks seem very happy to have been adopted.

Save the Date!

New arrivals this past Saturday - 62 new baby chicks: 36 meat birds and 26 exodic brown-egg layers. Pictured are those that will be with us for a long time.

We plan to be processing the meat birds on Thursday, June 26th. Any CSA family member who would like to partake in on the fun is welcome to join us that day to assist in the process. Otherwise, plan on bringing the whole family over after 5:00 pm. There will be celebration food and drink, kids can swim and people can pick up their two chickens.