The Glorious Egg and The Beautiful Hen

Eggs are a wonderful food. A perfect food. Hens work very hard to lay an egg. Under more prefect chicken conditions, they lay an egg every 26 hours.  Hens lay according to light hours.  When there are less light hours to the day, they'll lay less.

Hens don't lay so well under stressful situations such as heat.  It's just so hard on their cute little chicken bodies when it's hot. You can use fans, misters, put ice in their water and use sprinklers, but when it's hot....it's hot.

Hen's also don't lay when they are molting. They don't look so pretty when the molt.

Eggs don't need to be washed or refrigerated. . . . at least as long as you don't wash the egg.  If you wash the egg, you'll be removing a God-given protective coating called a bloom.  I've read somewhere that commercial egg producers - dip the eggs in lye or wash them in a chorine bath.

It's not to difficult to have a few of your own hens in your back yard. Really, it's not.

Hens have personalities. They can be very endearing and sweet. They love to eat just about anything in a yard without fences. Yesterday ours ate a newly planted raised bed with little cute lettuce starts. Oh well. They were happy.

Hens also love goat's milk. See here.

Goat Life - A Farm Update

Just a little farm goat update. A pleasant surprise. Indeed. It might not mean much to you, but to us it means a ton.

We've bred all our girls except our "babies" who aren't really babies (born in March of this year).  I've been watching for signs of heat cycles which generally come close to every 21 days.  When a doeling reaches 90 pounds, many goat farms start breeding that doe.  We like to have a bit more weight on and breed at 110 pounds.

When does (girl goats) kid (have their babies) it's a good thing if those babies have other babies to "grow up" with - babies that are close in age.  So, we were really hoping and praying that the last two does would go into "heat" near each other so we could breed them and have them give birth pretty close together - thus baby goats (of similar age) hanging out together.

Yesterday, we knew Posey was clearly in heat and so we put her in the breeding pen with Samson for a date.  We'll do that two days in a row - and often twice in a day - the morning and the evening.

I've been watching closely for Plum to come into heat and for some reason have not noticed a heat from her.  Today, it happened. Plum - was in a "silent" heat. After Posey finished her date, we put her in with Samson and voila....if the girl didn't stand still so Samson could have his date.

So, we'll see...here's hoping they do not come back into heat and both girls will deliver together 150 days from now.

Ahh...farm life. Never a dull moment.

Storm in March of this year,  pushing and pushing. It's such a wonderful time.

Storm's baby born. I'm trying to give him colostrum.
 As you can see, I'm quite the goopy, bloody mess - but full of joy with this new life.  

Coffee Bean Caramel (in a jar)

New Fall Flavor - Coffee Bean Caramel
We recently introduced our new fall flavor caramel - Coffee Bean Caramel.  Fresh goat milk and Fair Trade French Roast coffee beans cooked to a creamy sweetness and bottled up in a little jar - perfect for pouring/spooning over brownies, ice cream, crepes, apples (we have apples at our farm now) and lots of other ways.

Our very popular Salted Caramel. 

All our caramels are great holiday gift ideas. We'll even ship.  Our caramel has a 12 month shelf life and once opened refrigeration is suggested.