From the Hen House: What came first? The chicken or the egg?

Well, here on the Funny Farm, it was most definately the chicken.  And we recently added a new member to the Funny Farm Flock.  She's the first of three little bantams that I've acquired from one of my co workers.  We're still waiting on the other two (They're having trouble catching them), but for now, we have Eleanor, and she is a new favorite on the farm.  She is a leghorn bantam variety, and because she's smaller, she lays these darling little pale peach colored eggs. But don't let her size fool you.  This little lady is an egg laying dynamo.  She has gifted us with an egg a day so far.  Of course it takes two of her eggs to equal a normal sized egg, but we don't mind.

My eldest son, Xander, was really excited.  That's him, in the picture, holding our first egg.  You would have thought she layed THE golden egg.  He was however, a bit disappointed to not be able to hear the "peeping" inside the egg when he held it to his ear.  But after he received a brief explanation of the "birds and the bees" of chickens, he soon replaced his disappointment with an eagerness to have his new egg for breakfast.  And me? I find it hilarious that I get so giddy with each new egg I find in the nest.  It's like I'm a kid again.  I can't wait to check the nest every morning, and I feel like I'm lining up little treasures on the refrigerator door. 

So now, we're anxious for the rest of our ladies to start laying.  I encourage them to hurry up every morning when I let them out of the coop, and I bribe them with treats, but they just ignore me and go about their day picking and scratching in the garden.  Now, if these little ladies lay like they're supposed to, we should be collecting at least 2 to 3 dozen eggs a week.  Whoo hoo!  I can't wait.  How fun will that be to gather all those eggs in the morning?  But then again, I guess I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch....get it? ha ha ha!!!!!

So until next time... Happy Farming !

Funny Farm Update: Spring....Funny Farm Style.

What a beautiful day here on the farm.  The sun is shinging, the birds are singing, and the chickens are rooting among the bluebells. This is absolutely one of my favorite times of year.  But this year, it has also felt a bit stressful.  Lately things have been so busy, and with the weather being so unncooperative, I have found myself falling further and further behind.  But I refuse to let it get me down.

I finally got the nesting boxes put in the hen house, and made a few more improvements to the coop.  I planted a beautiful white clematis to climb along the chain linking so as to make the run look a little more charming, and not so ghetto.  I'm looking for a style more in line of "Country Charm", not "Grapes of Wrath"....lol

The first of the raised beds has been built, thanks to Xander, my junior farmer in training.  I told him since he helped to build it, he could pick what he wanted to plant in it, and he said apples.  I encouraged him to think about some carrots, or zucchini instead, but he didn't seem too impressed.  I promised him an apple tree at a later date, and even told him he could help pick it out. That seemed to satisfy him for the time being.  In the meantime, I did manage to get more cilantro, chives, and peppermint planted.

But the best news of all is that the mess from the fallen barn is almost cleaned up.  It's been really time consuming and alot of hard work.  Most of the rotten lumber has been hauled off, and now it's down to more detailed cleaning.

We've also done something I thought we would never do. We finally made the move and hired a local lawn and garden service to help get the funny farm back into shape.  Over the past few years, certain parts of our suburbian acreage has fallen into neglect and disrepair.  The once beautiful beds and landscaping that we had worked so hard on, have become shabby and overgrown with weeds.  Things started falling apart during the summer of 2009 when Brad was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  At that same time, we had also adopted our first little guy, who was 2 years old at the time, and things were a bit chaotic and disorganized.  Well, Brad recovered, but the gardens did not, and little by little with the arrival of the other two little guys, and both of us working full time, the yard and gardens took a back seat and got out of hand.  So rather than break our backs, and let it stress us out, we decided to hire someone to help us get it back under control, so we can get back to caring for it ourselves eventually.

And I've never been happier.  What a relief and feeling of ease to be able to catch up on my baking and house cleaning,  all the while looking out the windows to see my beautiful gardens coming back to life.  I refuse to feel guilty about it.  How wonderful to be able to play with my boys outside in the sunshine without looking around and feeling that I should be edging or mowing, weeding or pruning.  Instead I can spend my free time playing with the boys, chasing chickens with them, and teaching them how to plant a garden.  I can sit in the shade and watch them play, and of course, get up and pull the occasional weed.  Yes things are looking up.... and life is good on the funny farm.

Until next time, Happy Farming.

The Latest Cackle from the Hen House: The Benefits of Free Range

Hooray!
Today was a big day for our little ladies.  Today was their first day going "free range".  I've been trying to coax them out of the coop for about a week now, but they always seemed to "chicken out" (no pun intended...lol)  However today, they took a leap of faith and "flew the coop" (Ok, Ok,  I know, enough with the chicken jokes.)  Wow, what a bunch of happy ladies.  They were absolutely loving it out there today.  Strutting around their new territory, peck, peck, peck.  It was so fun to watch.

There are so many benefits to letting your ladies "free range", but here's just a few:

Nutritious eggs:

Instead of those boring, grocery store eggs with the pale yellow yolks, you get instead: fresh, nutrient rich little gems that contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol• 1/4 less saturated fat• 2/3 more vitamin A• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids• 3 times more vitamin E• 7 times more beta carotene

How great is that?  Not to mention, it's so much more fun to gather your own eggs rather than make a trip to the store.  It's like your very own daily Easter egg hunt.

Chickens: Your very own free extermination service:
Chickens love to eat protein-packed insects, which works out well because they can serve as an organic pest-cleanup crew in your garden and devour all kinds of bugs on your property. They also love to eat weeds, and serve as post-harvest garden bed cleaners, potentially making your work as a funny farmer, much much easier.

Chickens are great little gardeners:The health of our food is tied directly to the health of our soil. Chickens perform multiple functions that can turn parts of our boring old yards into fertile garden patches. All that scratching and digging that comes to them so naturally, can help to create productive garden beds. They are experts in the mixing of manure with mulch to create fertile soil. They act as gas free, noise-free mini roto-tillers, that mix the top layers of soil with compost or other mulch to create a fertile soil which allows you to grow more produce in a smaller space and use less water, which is particularly useful to us suburbian funny farmers .

Chickens can work as a natural antidepressant.Yup, you heard right.  Ever hear of oxytocin, the love hormone? It's a stress-lowering chemical in your body that's unleashed when you hug someone you love, or even pet your dog or cat. And anyone who has raised backyard chickens would probably agree, the same effect holds true for our hens.  I love to just sit and watch them strut around and peck the ground.  And yes, they are my pets. Particularly one of my little ladies, A black Australorp named Verdelle, who likes to follow me around and peck at my jewelry and sparkly toenail polish.  There's just something therapeutic and charming about chickens roaming around my back yard.  So, hug a chicken.  I highly recommend it.
 
Now....If I could just get them to clean the inside of my house....lol 

Until Next time.......

Happy Farming!