Notes From Zone 4

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!

When we do morning chores, one of the things we do first is open up the hatch on the chicken coop, then jump back, quickly, because they are coming out, and coming out fast!

No matter how cold, these Icelandic chickens are out and about! I was speaking with a few other local farmers last night at the Hannah Grimes annual supper, many of whom had chickens that were refusing to go out in the snow and cold, and very few of their girls were laying. I’m so proud of these girls!

Too bad I’m at the weird stage of too many eggs for just us, but not enough to sell. After having to buy eggs at the store a month ago, I am so grateful for the eggs, though. I paid extra for the “cage-free, organic, buzz-word-feel-good” eggs at Hannaford for $4.50 a dozen, and they were awful compared to what my girls lay. I still had some of them left last week, because I would rather not eat eggs than eat those store-bought ones, and I finally cooked them up and fed them to the pigs the other day. They ate them, anyway.

My girls lay a medium cream-colored egg. I wonder how much I should sell them for?

Frank and I are considering making a trip to Iceland to get more eggs to hatch. We should sell some of the resulting roosters to local farmers, to get some of those genes into other flocks, both Icelandic and not. These chickens are used to short-daylight, and we had heard that they kept laying through the winter. Nice to see that it is the case! I love it when the hype turns out to be true.