Since we killed the egg-eating hen, I've been collecting about sixteen eggs a day. The trade network is not capable of absorbing this many eggs. Berry man is all out of berries, until the new crop that is, and so he has stopped getting eggs. Bread man stopped a while ago (darn it - he really is a fantastic baker). I still have a couple of regular cash customers, but they collectively take only about four dozen eggs a week.
Luckily, eggs keep well. I'm sure that more customers and trade opportunities will pop up. Just yesterday, I was talking to a guy about trading my eggs and possibly meat for his wildcrafted morels. Hope that pans out.
I've also started milking. Just a little. Xana is still a complete butt, and will not jump up on the stand. And since she's a first freshener and feeding twins, she doesn't have a lot of milk left over. It's kind of hardly worth it, wrestling her hairy ass up on the stanchion for a scant cup of milk. But I have to do it, just as training for her. Sooner or later her twins will be weaned and then I will want all her milk.
Iris, on the other hand, is giving me a generous quart a day, and this is less than two weeks after her baby was born! Most people wouldn't even start milking so soon, but Iris has a serious case of overproduction. Her baby can't begin to drain her abundant udder. If I left her alone, she'd naturally downregulate to suit his needs. But I don't want to let her do that: I want to keep her in fairly high gear so I can get to making cheese!
My garden is producing too: weeds. I gave up. I have nice beds of weeds. If search diligently, I can find enough baby spinach and radishes among the weeds to make a decent salad. That's just going to have to do. I don't have time. Except for tomatoes! Bibi helped me plant fifteen tomato plants, and I WILL weed the tomatoes. Swear.
Most of my vegetables this summer will be coming from the kale fairy, just like last year. She's the nice lady who traded me for eggs all last summer, and this summer is trading for a kid (of the caprine variety, not the human variety). I call her the kale fairy because last year she showered us with more kale than I've eaten in my entire life before - not that I'm complaining. I adore kale. My husband - well. Let's just say he's not quite such a fan of kale as I am. This year she promised us she would plant a little less kale and a little more other stuff.
As a matter of fact, if I remember right, she said she'd have our first delivery ready in the last part of May. Maybe I should get in touch. I'm about ready for some kale.
2 comments:
Have you tried listing your eggs on Craigslist? In my area, quite a few people do that.They don't get a lot of money for them, but at least the customers come to the farm and you don't have to burn gas to get them to the consumers. You might even be able to place an ad that states that you would like to barter eggs for whatever things that you could use.
Another good use is to boil them, mash them and feed them back to your hens.
I have to laugh because I'm giving advice about what to do with too many eggs and I now have 4 quail eggs that I am dying to do something with but there aren't enough to make an omelet!
yes, I use craigslist all the time. That's how I found my customers. I think around here a lot of people keep chickens. There seems to be a general overabundance.
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