Egg Learnings

This is what my counter looks like with 2 days of eggs being washed.

Usually 1/2 the eggs don't need to be washed which is good because those last a lot longer than those that get washed.  The one that get washed are cleaned with bubbles in a egg cleaning bucket and washing solution.

I love the various colors of eggs but am a satisfied... nope, I need more darker eggs so I'm now on to chickens to give me variety of colors.

After they are washed and sorted by size, each egg is candled with this little box.  You turn off the lights, put the egg on the box, press that red button and look inside the egg.

I love to see the double yolkers.

I've been gathering eggs about 4-5 hours after they are laid and I've been noticing more and more of that white stringy thing (technical name is on other websites) on the end of the yolk.  I assumed that meant the egg was fertilized.  That's why you candle, to look for baby chickens in the eggs as you don't want to sell those to someone.  

Evidently, all eggs fertilized or not have that white string.  The more white string, the fresher the eggs.  So I've been finding more of the white string because these eggs are really, really fresh.  And I put them right in the fridge so I am locking in all that protein.  I had no idea.  

See this article for a great writeup on fertilized vs non-fertilized eggs.

So much for learning on the job....  now I know that the white stringy thing actually means fresh eggs.  Well, ours are really fresh these days!!

Tomatoes

It's going to be hard to do a Week 8 update without a camera.  

I'll have to get the flipvideo and see how that works.

The good news is that the tomatoes are ripening and I don't see evidence of blight.  I got worried when people kept telling me about it.  At the 5th person I went out to do a whole inspection of the garden.  So no blight that I can tell, however I do have some tomatoes with bottom rot-- which is not a blight, but rather a calcium deficiency.  I plant them in compost so they seem to do well with that but this can also be caused by excess water when the plants were young and blossoming and the blossoms then get too much water and not enough nutrients.  I haven't found a large number of tomatoes like this but ones around the same age of growth.. so ones that were likely blossoming during the heavy rains.  

The cherry tomatoes and early tomatoes are starting to ripen so there will be some tomatoes in the CSA this week.  In 4 weeks, we'll be calling these first tomatoes--- Boring!- but right now they are wonderful.   

What to do with a Dead Chicken

Kind of like the song, 50 Ways to leave your lover.

I've been running the farm as Mike is away and so far I'm 3 for 3.

3 days he's been gone, 3 dead chickens.

The first must have died of old age and it just fell over and died.  So that one went in the dumpster because it was trash day.

The 2nd was likely crushed by the meat birds in the storm.  It was a laying hen that got crushed.  This is also extremely common with birds in corners and extremely common with turkeys.  This chicken got buried in a shallow grave up the hill near the deer.

The 3rd today got shoved down a fox or a groundhog hole and covered with some straw.  This one might have been an injured bird that didn't make it from the fox attack 5 days ago when Mike was here... so this one might not count as a chicken death today.

So either I'm at 1 a day or I'm at something worse like an exponential curve.  Let's hope its not....

I'm happy to report all other 380 or so birds are still alive and quite happy.  I think they are happy that I'm the one feeding them as I talk to them and they talk to me.  They like singing as well and they don't care that I'm a horrible singer.

We will be getting turkeys August 5th.... Mike will be back to keep those alive!!

It's NOT our Farm that Smells

Oh my goodness.  I just turned on the AC-- not because it's too hot-- we have great breezes and we really don't need the AC on.

The AC is on because of the AWFUL smell of either a papermill nearby or someone who is turning sludge or turning up their field.

I came home this evening and watered the pigs and then as I walked away from them I thought it was the pigs.  They are a little stinky but they actually do a good job mixing up and composting their own straw.  So I thought, they need more straw.  But then as I kept walking and driving around the farm I realized it wasn't the pigs. 

Then I thought-- did something die?  I had to deal with my first dead chicken last night so I thought, oh gosh what's next.  (some of our birds are older and they just keel over and die sometimes-- it's normal).  So I drove around the farm looking for something dead.  I got down close to the ground to see if it was the compost pile or the meat birds.  No dice.  The compost pile does smell slightly but it smells like compost.  And the chickens were also fine.  I can't believe I leaned down to smell the chickens.....

Then Kevin says "yeah, Mrs W and kids thought the smell was our farm".  Kevin was swimming at their house today which is about 3 miles as the crow flies from our house.  So then I knew the smell was not our farm, but another farm or field that was just fertilized or manured.  Or I guess it could be a paper mill.  The smell is far to chemical smelling as I realized after inhaling it for 20 minutes..... ugh!

If you are in the group that still hasn't picked up your box this week.... just keep your AC on in the car and breathe deeply before you run to get your stuff.  I sure hope the rain that is coming wipes the smell out.

Green Akeys CSA Iron Chef Returns

We have one CSA Iron Chef.  If there are more of you out there then send in a picture and maybe we'll have to have a competition.  Mr CSA Iron Chef's main goal is to come up with a meal using only farm fresh ingredients (other than olive oil, etc).  His greatest challenge is to combine all the ingredients in one box into a meal.  I keep thinking that one week I'm going to make him up a box with all sorts of things and see what he creates.

Wow-- Check out this dish!  All with farm produce and chicken.

Squash, snap peas (hmmm- did he freeze them or did they just last that long as I thought snap peas were done 2 weeks ago?), fingerling potatoes and chicken.  

I believe 2 types of garlic were used as well.  One garlic type with the potatoes and another with the veggies.  He probably threw some shallots and onions in there too but I can't tell from the picture.

This week more potatoes--- they are large white fleshed potatoes.  The name of the potato-- not sure because my veggie marker ink wore off the marker and I never got around to writing the potato names in my little book (I figured why take the time when I have these cool markers in the ground).  I'll have to look through my records and see what I bought and match them up after.....  :)

We are HOPING!!!!  for rain so we went outside tonight and picked 45 lbs  of potatoes till it was too dark to tell the difference between a potato and a rock. (yes, I weighed the potatoes after picking them)

Let's all do a rain dance as we need some rain and I am tired of watering.  I'm glad our well is done and we can water, but a nice rain would be so much better.

The Color Ranger chickens are processed and in the fridge/freezer!!!  This is the bird we'll grow from now on as it is fabulous.  They are all around 3.8-4.5 lbs.  Flat price of $15 each.

We will have a batch of cornish cross in 2 weeks.  Those are the same kind of chickens you buy in the grocery store but they also have a much better taste when grown on pasture.  Lots of white meat on the cornish cross whereas the color rangers have less white meat.  

This dish was made by a CSA member with the swiss chard, onions and eggs from Green Akeys Farm!

Swiss Chard and Chorizo Frittata with carmelized onions topped with asiago cheese!  

Looks fabulous and gives me some inspiration!!

Guess what I saw in the garden today?  A few red cherry tomatoes!!!  Not enough for next week but they are turning RED!!!  Yippee.....  This Frittata needs some tomatoes.

Week 7

Week 7-- oh my goodness over 25% of the growing season is over.  I know we say 20 weeks of veggies and eggs, but with our temperatures it may be more like 24 weeks.  We'll play out the last weeks and see what we've got!

I didn't get a video of the beans-- but the beans are growing.  There will be 2 varieties of beans you'll get tomorrow.  Yellow wax beans and Royal burgundy beans.  The burgundy beans will turn green when you cook them.  Thanks to CSA members for agreeing to come pick up on Thursday rather than Tuesday.  The beans just needed 2 more days to be perfect for the first picking and by next week they'd be too big.  I am a fan of having you try the vegetables at all the stages of life.  This is why you got baby zucchini one week and this week you'll get bigger zucchini.  You got green tomatoes last week and you might get green tomatoes again next week as they are still not RED!!!  ugh-- but the good news is that there are A LOT of green tomatoes.  So the beans you must also try when they are small and thin.  

I keep missing harvesting day and pickup day due to work travel-- so Mike is left with all the work of picking the beans.  We could wait for the beans to get bigger as then you don't have to pick as many to give to folks as they have more weight.  But then that's the point of a CSA.  You'd never get these succulent beans in a grocery store because it is a lot of work to pick them so small.  But for 1 week, you get them nice and small and then they'll be growing so fast that we'll have a hard time keeping them picked.  So enjoy the various stages of the veggies- it's a wonderful food experience in my opinion.

This week we hung shallots and the first batch of onions to dry.  The garlic has been drying for almost 3 weeks so time to cut off tops and trim off roots.  

This week's variety of garlic is Russian Red Garlic from Johnny's- I bought the organic bulbs.  If you happen to look at the link and see the price per head of garlic and choke when you see it costs $5 per bulb for planting stock, then you'll be in the club with Mike.  I think he nearly fell over last October when he saw the bill for the garlic he planted.  However once you taste the different varieties of garlic, you get hooked.  And this year I'll save 5 lbs for seed stock for next year- so that's like saving $100!!!  And that's just 1 variety.  In that yellow basket is 11 lbs of garlic.

Below are the shallots and onions ready to be hung up to dry and the garlic ready to come down and be cleaned up.  So now I'm also addicted to garlic, shallots and onions in the same way I am with tomatoes.  Do you know how many varieties of garlic, shallots and onions there are?  Oh so many, so many....

I think we may just turn into a salsa CSA---  We've made salsa 2 times in the past week but still with store bought tomatoes.  But soon you'll have tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalepenos, cilantro and other peppers to make fresh salsa.  All you need from the store is a lime.

For dinner on Monday night we cooked pork chops and then had salsa and chips as our side dish.  Then the leftover salsa was put on the top of scrambled eggs at breakfast with chips.  Yum!

Don't forget that the herb garden next to the CSA pickup is pick your own.  Lots of herbs and I think they are pretty well labeled.  Parsley, sage, thyme, basil, dill, oregano, tarragon, etc

And more dill, cilantro and basil is across the road so please help yourself.  As it is picked, I just sprinkle more seeds into that space.

We are ready for meat sales.  Chicken processing is this week for the Red Rangers.  They look fabulous.  Mike is also taking orders for pork.  It's not pastured pork this time,  just plain old pork as the pigs lived and ran around inside the barn most of their lives.  The next batch we'll put on pasture as we've now learned enough about what they need.

Lambs and ewes were separated this week.  Below is a clip of the pasture at night and the sound of the babies calling for mama.  It can sound sad but keep in mind that some of these babies are almost 80-90 lbs and almost as big as their mothers.  The mothers need a break before the ram comes in October.  Most of these lambs will also be available for meat sales soon.  

Beef is available in October/November but Mike needs to ultrasound for ribeye marbling.  I had no idea that's how you checked to see if a grass fed cow was 'ready' to be good to eat.  Now I know.  

I love our hens and they love me (or so I think).  These ladies were far away from their house.  I thought they just wanted to come see me as they do on occasion but I wasn't 'listening' to them properly.  They were coming up to me to say, "Hey lady-- there is a problem with our water supply-- could you please come fix the hose?"  I figured that out an hour later when I went to gather eggs.  I have to remember that the animals do talk to you and to listen to them.   (and to think I still haven't turned vegetarian--)