Rain, rain, you can stay!

I am grateful for the rain. I have learned, living on the farm, not to complain about the weather. And I do try, to not complain that is. It is easy to say, "I hate the rain!" because I don't enjoy getting out in it. I don't like getting all wet or lugging the kids around in it. HOWEVER. Rain is a necessity, and a blessing. The grass is getting greener. Trees are budding. The Bradford Pears are blooming. The hens are laying. It is SPRING officially as of last Friday! Hurray for Spring at last! Today is Thursday, and we have another busy day. This afternoon Ash is staying after school with his teacher (his choice, big surprise! he adores his teacher) and Allie, John and I will arrive at 3:45p for his conference. This morning Library Storytime is at 10am, and before then I need to drop off more to Goodwill and also another recyclables load. I have a tendency to line up the recyclables bags in the garage in between my SUV and John's truck, and it drives John nuts as he can't hardly get to his truck for all the bags. So I am trying to take whatever I have whenever I drive into town. I also have my egg deliveries. One stop is a lady at the Library, so that's easy, and then I have two other stops that are on the way to the Library. Our dental hygienist and also the salon where I get my hair done. My hairdresser, and her daughter who is also a hairdresser, buy eggs from us. And one of their clients just started getting eggs as well. I just drop them all off there and they pay me, then the client comes and picks them up from there. Our hens are in full production mode, which happened quite abruptly a couple of weeks ago. I think while we were dealing with Allie's illness and the hospital? Anyway, I wasn't prepared for it, customer-wise. We had only been getting maybe 15 a day instead of over 30. Then John was off all last week and couldn't unload any to his hospital co-workers. The salon has offered to find more customers for me, they say many clients ask about them if they hear them talking about the fresh farm eggs they get. So I think I will take a couple extra dozen there today to see if they want them. On Tuesday we had 21 dozen in the fridge! Yikes! Good thing we didn't do our weekly shopping until yesterday, after John took 7 to the hospital and I took 6 to the Chiropractor. John and I have been in discussion over what we want to do with new baby chicks and the future of our egg production. We have decided, as of now, that we will order new baby chicks to arrive first of May. But only 25 (the minimum order). Then, when they are in production, by November, we will cull the 45 or so we have now. (We will band their legs so we know who is who.) A chicken starts laying eggs around 5-6 months old. Then, when they are around 18 months old, they go through their "molt" where they lose their feathers and grow new ones. This lasts 2-4 months. During this time they do not lay eggs. Of course they eat just the same. Haha. Then, when they start laying again, their production declines. So it doesn't make economical sense to keep chickens past 18 months old. Anyway, now that you have all had your chicken lesson for the day, and I hope you are paying attention as there will be a short quiz at the end of the blog, my point to the whole story is we are getting burned out on washing/storing/selling 18+ dozen eggs per week. That is DOZENS. As in over 210 eggs. A week. Some of you may remember the Infamous Chicken Massacre that occured in early December of 2007. It happened a few weeks before I started blogging, but I think I emailed about it. Maybe not though, I was pretty traumatized. Anyway, a mink got in our hen house/yard and killed almost the entire flock, I think we had around 40? I can't remember specifically. But it only left 8 hens and 1 rooster. It was horrendous to walk down to collect eggs (they had JUST started laying) and come upon that scene, straight out of a horror flick. Didn't even eat but one, it just slit their necks. I called John at work in hysterics, two friends came to help me clean up before Ash came home from preschool, and I cried my eyes out for days. We trapped it a few nights later, and I had the pleasure, yes, I said PLEASURE, of putting a bullet in its head. And John worked on making a Fort Knox of a chicken pen! Well, my point to this story, and there is a point, LOL, is that at the time my mother-in-law said to me, "Maybe you didn't need that many chickens anyway. You don't want to have to fuss with cleaning and getting rid of all those eggs!" I was still heartbroken though to lose my first farm animals. (I do have a tougher skin now.) And 8 hens was a good number for just our family and to also have a dozen or so extra a week to sell or give away. Then, Spring came along and we wanted more baby chicks, and John thought 75 was a good number. Of course not that many survived, but here we are almost a year later with around 45 and back to the amount of eggs I said already. I told John the other night, "Your mom was RIGHT!!!!" lol So now the task of telling my customers that come next Fall, we won't be selling eggs anymore, that we are downsizing. I hate it in a way, because I have pride that our farm is producing a product that people love. And I mean LOVE. My egg customers gush about how good they taste, how much they appreciate that I do this, etc, etc. They love these eggs and I know will be so disappointed when I don't have any more to sell. They are only $2 a dozen, and as one customer told me, she was paying over $4 a dozen at the grocery for a "farm fresh, cage free, free range". (I have no idea the price of eggs at the grocery, as we haven't had to buy any in over a year.) But when I take a step back, I know this is the right choice. The burden of washing/storing and then coordinating the distribution of this number of eggs is too much and barely covers the cost of feed/water/electric, and through the winter months we come up short by a long shot. So! I wasn't intending on blogging about all of that this morning, my main point was to get on here and share a link to a blog I enjoy. I will be adding the link to my sidebar list of blogs I follow, but wanted to share it in a post. This is a guy I went to high school with. His posts are not too lengthy, and it feels like he's just talking right with you, not preaching at you! I enjoy reading them. http://chrismcalisterblog.com OK, I hear Allie-B on the monitor! Here we go!