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.
Hey, I was also at the Hannah Grimes annual meeting! Small world — just found your site and I think it is wonderful. Let me know if you’d like to contribute any recipes or articles to my weekly online magazine, The Heart of New England (www.theheartofnewengland.com). And, do we know each other? — Marcia
We sell a dozen eggs, mostly large but with an occasional medium-size egg, for $2.50 a dozen.
I marketed the medium eggs to dieters and those watching cholesterol etc., telling them that the eggs already have lower cholesterol and more omega3’s etc. but they are a nice “optical illusion” because on a plate they look like a full order of eggs sunny-side up or whatever, but are really less. In our “supersize me” mentality world, that’s better for us. The logic only fails in baking, where many of the recipes call for large or x-large eggs and you have to use more of the medium sized eggs.
We still have lots of eggs too. Make angel food cake with lots of whites—and homemade stove top pudding with the yolks 😀 Yum!
Our chickens picked up in their laying recently too. We don’t have Icelandics, but have Buff Orpingtons, Easter Eggers, Turkens, and crosses of those with our NH Red Rooster. And they do come out in the cold as well (they go hang out with the rams and lay eggs in the hayfeeder). I’m actually not a big egg eater, but when I do eat them, I want them to be GOOD. Angel food cake is a wonderful idea. I’m getting overrun with eggs right about now…