Quack!

(singing)

Our Pig Partner has a farm, E-I-E-I-O!
And on his farm he has a DUCK, E-I-E-I-O!

A big, fat, pigeon-toed duck who waddles around and lays huge, delicious eggs! Yummy!   She doesn't really have a nest, so she just lays her egg wherever she sees fit that particular day. It's like Easter all the time!  

Chickens: Out with the Old

After cracking my eggs into a hot pan beside some leftover steak, I did something I haven’t done in some time: I tossed the shells in the trash instead of putting them aside to feed back to the chickens. We raised this latest batch of leghorns from day-old chicks to full-grown, egg laying machines for the past 3 years. There were times when they didn’t lay eggs at all, and there were times when we had so many eggs that we gave them away or sold them for next to nothing.

Sometimes they had to take turns laying.

The girls have been getting tired over the last few months, however. We continued to feed them well, but production was way down. Mr. Farmer kept looking at the coop and thinking about ways to improve the setup for the next run. So, when we found an ad on Craigslist looking for older chickens, we decided to retire them to a farm where they will run free.

We aren’t very sentimental about chickens. Still, these girls have served us extremely well over the years, and leghorns aren’t very meaty anyway, so retirement just seemed like a better fit than slaughter. So stay tuned (do people these days even know what that means anymore?) for updates on the new brood, the new brooder, and the new chicken coop… all scheduled for Spring 2013!

Chickens: Dirty Eggs

It has been a very wet summer, and the chickens have not been able to dust-bathe, the poor things. They are dirty and ragged-looking. Their snow white feathers are thin, grey, and bedraggled. No matter how often we clean the run and coop, and no matter how much straw and grass we give them, we just can't keep them dry. As a result, with nowhere clean and dry to lay, their eggs are dirty, too.

I love dirty eggs! Little Miss Farmer has the job of feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs daily. Most days she brings them in, washes them right away, and leaves them to dry next to the kitchen sink. Some days, however, she leaves them in the bowl, still dirty, until the next morning. Sometimes, on those mornings, I can't help but grab the two least dirty eggs, dust them off, and have a treat of the freshest fried eggs ever. Unless you have tasted an egg that was laid yesterday (or today!), you probably wouldn't understand. I have a feeling that some of you do.

Some of Yesterday's Eggs

Cooking: Homemade Mayo

We are a mayonnaise family. When I was a kid, I couldn't put my finger on what it was about my aunt's macaroni salad that made it so much better than my mother's until I found that she made it with mayo- not, well, you know.

I always knew mayo was made with eggs and oil, and we have had chickens for years now. I have been avoiding making my own, however, because I kept reading horror stories about stiff arms for days and mayo that wouldn't set or would separate within minutes of coming out of the fridge. In short, I was chicken. Then one magic day I found that you can make mayonnaise in the blender! It is super easy! Even with full-price (not on sale, no coupons) vegetable oil, making your own mayo is about a third of the price of buying it. I will soon start buying my oil by the case for even bigger savings.

Look how easy:


In a blender, thoroughly blend:
1 egg
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
dash hot paprika
1/4 c oil

With blender still running, remove cover and add:

1/2 c oil

Once that is completely combined add:

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Let it blend and then:

1/2 c oil

That's it! I find the easiest way to get it out of the blender is to take off the blades, put the bottom into a wide-mouthed jar, and push the mayo into the jar with a rubber spatula. Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

NOTES: Yes, you can double the recipe, if you have a good strong blender. It will almost fill a standard mayonnaise jar if you do. You may need to use your spatula to help keep the blades running effectively, however. If you have a modern, $29.95 model blender (like one of mine is), you should probably stick to the small batches.

Substitutions:

You can substitute vinegar for the lemon juice. I tried this and Mr. Farmer preferred the lemon.
You can use any red pepper of your choice for the paprika. Cayenne, Old Bay, etc. all work great.

Add-ins:

Make your own gourmet mayo! Add a teaspoon of garlic powder, dried dill, or horseradish at the beginning of the recipe.

Chickens: Fart Egg

(Apologies to my mother, who does not like the word "Fart"... I will use "wind egg" from this point forward; I promise.)

Little Miss Farmer has been on chicken/egg duty for the better part of a year now as part of her chores. She is getting bigger now (12 years old, nearly 5 feet tall), so her responsibilities around the house are increasing. I'm sure she doesn't look forward to feeding the chickens each day, collecting their eggs, then washing the eggs. The egg washing alone can be a fairly unpleasant task, especially when the coop gets dirty. The other day she was rewarded for all her hard work by finding an unusual egg - a "wind" egg.

We have had an unusual egg or two before (such as this one, without a shell), but I believe this was our first wind egg. It was so tiny in comparison to the extra-large to jumbo sized eggs we get most days from our leghorns. Little Miss knew right away that this egg was special. She showed it to all of us with great excitement (egg-citement?).

Naturally we had a full photo shoot before we broke the egg open to see if she was right. We took pictures with other eggs for size reference and pictures of them in her hand. Finally, once Little Miss was convinced that the event had been sufficiently documented for posterity, we broke it open.

I think that is under-developed enough to call a wind egg.

Surely enough, Little Miss Farmer's suspicions were correct. This egg was clearly underdeveloped. It was so small that I didn't even see the point in dirtying a pan to fry it in. So I put it in the microwave, and it exploded in under 20 seconds.

The End.

Cooking: Pickled Eggs and Beets Has Been Updated

See Referenced Post (now edited): HERE 

My father loves pickled eggs with beets. He has enjoyed them my whole life, and I have seen his eyes light up on many occasions when he was presented with a jar. So once I secured permission from my mother (apparently his current diet restrictions are for sugar, not cholesterol), I prepared a jar just for him at Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, I have also observed my father storing his prized pickled eggs on top of the piano for months and months, not in the refrigerator. I have never encountered any recipe that states that they are shelf stable after opening, so I decided to take measures. To help protect my father's health (and quite frankly my reputation as a cook), I increased the amount of vinegar in the recipe. In fact, I doubled it. That particular batch had a 1/1 ratio of water and vinegar, which should help slow down bacteria growth. I also put the jar in my parents' refrigerator myself, rather than presenting the jar and giving him a choice of where to store it. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, as always, and returned to our respective homes.

About a week later, I received a nearly unprecedented phone call. My father was not calling to give me some family news, but instead to tell me that he had just enjoyed the best pickled egg he had ever tasted! After what I estimate to probably be about 50 years of pickled egg tasting experience, I can safely consider him a connoisseur. Therefore, I am permanently altering my recipe to the 1/1 water/vinegar ratio that pleased my father so much.

Christmas Pickled Eggs
(Left: Beets & Right: Italian with Green Dye Added)

Cooking: Pickled Eggs - Italian Style

Pickled eggs are the stuff of legend. Some call them bar food. Some call them Amish/PA Dutch food. But almost everyone who has tried one has a strong opinion on them one way or the other. For those like myself who don't care for the pink, rubbery, beet variety, a friend of our ours recommended a variation something like this:

• 18 Hard Boiled Eggs, Peeled
• 1 Small Onion, quartered and sliced thinly
• 1/2 cup Vinegar
• 1/4 cup White Sugar
• 1 cup Water
• 1 tbsp Salt
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and scored
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp whole peppercorns

Place 18 peeled, hard-boiled eggs in a 1/2 gallon jar (I keep old pickle jars). IMPORTANT UPDATE: ONLY USE GLASS JARS! TRUST ME! Add sliced onion.

In a pot, place vinegar, sugar, water, salt, spices, and garlic. Bring to a boil and allow to boil for a full minute, stirring at least occasionally, until the salt and sugar are dissolved.

Pour hot liquid over eggs until half full. Shake the jar to mix, then top off with the rest of the hot liquid and cap.

Allow the jar to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 3 days.

Now- Isn't that much better than those freakish pink-purple eggs?

Pickled Egg Options

Cooking: Pickled Eggs and Beets

This was my first try at making pickled eggs with beets. This is my own recipe, based on a few others I have seen, as well as some conversations with friends who said I should put in "a dash of this and a swig of that". They came out perfect!

• 18 Hard Boiled Eggs, Peeled
• 1 cup Vinegar
• 1/4 cup White Sugar
• 1 cup Water
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Pickling Spice
• 1 Can (15 oz) Beets, drained (save juice!)
• 1 Small Onion, quartered and sliced thinly

Place 18 peeled, hard-boiled eggs in a 1/2 gallon jar (I keep old pickle jars). IMPORTANT UPDATE: ONLY USE GLASS JARS! TRUST ME! Add sliced onion and the beets (but not the juice).

In a pot, place vinegar, sugar, water, salt, pickling spice, and the juice from the beets. Bring to a boil and allow to boil for a full minute, stirring at least occasionally.

Pour hot liquid over eggs until half full. Shake the jar to mix, then top off with the rest of the hot liquid and cap.

Allow the jar to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 3 days.

YUM YUM YUM! (If you're into that sort of thing...)

UPDATED 12/19/10 - Full Details HERE

Cooking: Smoked Hard-Boiled Eggs

You can smoke lots of things to make them yummy. When we heard smoked hard-boiled eggs were an option, we just HAD to try it! You can't taste them on a blog, I'm afraid. But if you like snacking on eggs, then you would like these. The smoke flavor is subtle, not overwhelming.

We partially boiled the eggs before we smoked them. Basically we covered them with water, brought the water to a boil, and instead of boiling for 10-12 minutes, we took the boiling pot off the heat and let it stand for 12 minutes. Then we drained and rinsed the eggs in cool water, broke the shells (to let the smoke in better), and placed them into a nylon stocking to hang in the smokehouse. We hot-smoked them for about 2 hours (though I have heard that as little as 45 minutes is plenty).

The result was fully cooked, slightly smoky eggs for snacking, deviled eggs, or egg salad. Yum!

Eggs - Sharing the smoker with the chickens

Chickens: First Egg (No Shell!)

Commercial egg producers pay little attention to the soft, semi-transparent first eggs laid by their chickens. After all, even if these odd little wonders could survive the harsh machinery and sterilization process, without that smooth, white(or brown) shell, they just can't sell them. So what interest could they possibly have in them?

One of the coolest parts of being a farmer in a suburban setting is the shock factor. So many city-dwellers have no idea where their food comes from, and most would rather not know. Still every now and then you encounter one of these exciting moments where you can shock and amaze without terrorizing and disgusting your audience. These moments are pure magic. The no-shell egg is a great showpiece for the "Really? I didn't know that!" set.

**********************

I did a search on "shelless eggs", and for a moment became very excited because there was next to no information on them. For one brilliant moment, I was sure that I was about to compose a blog that would change the agricultural world forever.

Then I realized that "shelless" wasn't a word.

However, when I searched for "Eggs without Shells" I found that I might just have the coolest shell-free egg photos on the net. And your reward for sticking with me through this rambling post is that you get to see them.

"Shelless" Chicken Egg

Mr. Farmer Squishing Soft Shell Egg

No Shell Egg Squish
(and Accidental Dish Detergent Endorsement)

PS- For those of you who found your way here looking for "What do I do if my chicken lays eggs without shells?" here is your answer:

Don't worry about it. Chances are that your chicken, like mine, will start wrapping her eggs in shells in no time. If not, then you've got a defective chicken, but they are very rare. The third possibility is that your chicken might be sick, but probably only if she was previously laying normal eggs. In that case, better to analyze all of her symptoms before making any quick judgements... but a little extra calcium in her diet wouldn't hurt.