Gone Broody

Finally one of the hens has gone broody! We have been waiting for this.Hopefully we will not be ordering chicks anymore and this girl will be hatching eggs for us. I found her in the barn in a dark corner on a huge pile of eggs.I'm guessing she is laying on 12+ They are spilling out from underneath her. She has been missing for some time now, I guess she wanted to run off and start a family! So I moved her and her eggs (forgot to count them) into the chick box and gave her a nice cozy spot to sit and hatch them out. I love watching her, She is so gentle with her eggs. If one spills out she will gently tuck it back under her.Don't get to close though! She is very protective of them and will puff her feathers up, make squawking noises and tries to go for your hand lol

I will candle them tomorrow to see if they are all fertile eggs.

Best Strawberry Rhubarb Pie ever!!

Yes! Almost time for Brad's famous Strawberry Rhubarb pie! There truly is nothing better.Good thing he only likes making the mini pies otherwise I would be in trouble lol. We sell these adorable little mini pies at the Trinity Market on Utica Ridge road in Bettendorf. This year we will only have a limited number of pies due to our busy schedule. unless you contact us and let us know you would like one made. You will be in heaven! They are the perfect deep dish size for yourself or to share. Our rhubarb is up and growing fast so It shouldn't be long!
Surprisingly Brad is an amazing pie maker. This recipe has been passed down from my family and from my Great Grandmother who owned a bake shop. Sadly I cannot bake so it has now been passed down from my Mom to Brad lol.

Oh on another note, Be sure to come and try our Buttermilk squares which are out of this world amazing! Also a family recipe and just plain sinful. They are dangerous to have extra's around here because I eat them all hahaha.

Goats a Silly creatures

I think out of all the animals here on the farm,The Goats would have to be the most entertaining animals. They are so Silly.The babies are fun to watch as they hop around almost as it they were dancing.



You could watch them for hours as long as you had some good obstacles for them to play on!

They Love making silly faces

And I have to give the little pot belly pigs some credit too. They are hilarious,They can't bend their bodies so when they play they will just run around and move in circles, It cracks me up! and They like to smile.

Egg production is up!

Yay for spring,Our egg production is up! The hens dropped off laying dramatically this winter as expected. We were only getting around 7-10 eggs a a day out of 100+ hens!
We were a bit worried, but now that the weather has warmed up egg production is up!
We are now getting around 3 dozen a day.
Hopefully we gather more than that this summer as we have around 75 young hens that aren't laying yet. And we just ordered some more chicks. Easter Eggers, We can't wait! We will have a very unique egg color variety this year.Super dark chocolate brown eggs mixed with regular brown,white,pink,blue,and green! It will make gathering the eggs even more exciting!

Spring is early

Ok so spring came a bit early for us this year.This is the earliest we have gotten anything in the ground. 

 Maybe It's because we have spring fever and couldn't wait to dig our hands into the dirt.
 The smell of the moist dirt was pure happiness.There is no better smell!  

It was so perfect yesterday so we decided to do a dirt test with the tiller. The dirt was perfect! Not to wet and nice and crumbly. So we thought what the heck might as well till up the whole garden while the ground was dry and the weather was nice. It took most of the day.My day was spent watching brad and sitting in the dirt. I was just soaking it up! Felt good to be so close to the earth,That's what I've been waiting for.So to my relief we have beets and carrots planted. Hopefully they are ready by market day this may! 


                 Checking everything over

                                 The last of the tilling.

             Loading the seeder with beet seeds

Seeding the ground.OK I know the rows are crooked lol. A lot of other growers are very careful to get perfectly straight rows. But that just doesn't matter to us I guess.All that matters to us is that those beets will be fresh and that no chemicals will have ever touched them.

 

                Next on the list to plant Is our lettuces and Kohlrabi.Hopefully It's a dry spring!

Chick-n-Salad

                                              A salad for the chickens from last nights leftovers. 

I love giving the chickens scraps, and watching them scratch around at them, and fight over the little bits of salad leaves. This is my daily kind of entertainment around here. I don't watch much T.V, No housewives or Jersey shore, And I don't go shopping much or go to the movies. I get free healthy entertainment from watching my animals. Watching chickens almost memorizes me.There is something very,very relaxing about   watching them peck around.

And I had to get a picture while I could of our beautiful Americana rooster. Unfortunately when we bought the Americana's we got all roosters.So no colored eggs for us. But I do enjoy these guys though,They are nice to look at!

Giant weird egg

This is the weirdest egg.
The pictures don't do it justice to how weird it is.
And It's a really big egg too (poor chicken ) This thing is as big as a duck egg.

When I went to gather the eggs this mourning It was like this egg was staring at me lol.
I noticed it right when I walked into the chicken house and said "WOW".I was almost kind of scared to pick it up because I though it was one of those rare soft eggs that you sometimes get. But nope it was a regular hard egg just weird.This egg has wrinkles and ridges all over it. Like frank-en egg lol.I bet it's double yolked!  

  Now I am going to wonder what chicken layed this egg.

This is as far as the carton will close!

The weird egg amongst our already jumbo eggs.