every day is a good day
I can count on two companions when I am working outdoors, our dog BB, and Lucky, hen extraordinaire. BB has to be near where I am working. At times this can be a problem, as he loves bedding down in freshly made vegetable beds.
One thing nice thing about these companions is they keep their opinions to themselves. I can work in peace without them telling me I’m doing it all wrong.
2015 started with brilliant sunshine, a great way to start a new year. Early in the morning, Sven and his hen admirers are out at the edge of the property, scratching through the underbrush of a large cedar.
It’s nearly impossible to go through a day without learning something new. Maybe this is something you did not know: Chickens love bridges. A favorite bridge of the chickens here, is this bridge across the stream. It connects two of their popular hangouts.
Throughout the day, hundreds of crossings are made by the chickens. Even on a frosty morning like today, it is in constant use. Back and forth, back and forth, it’s rare when there isn’t a chicken or two on the bridge. At times they like to pause on the bridge and watch the stream flow below. Maybe they are thankful they don’t have to get their feet wet. Who knows, this may be the busiest outdoor chicken bridge in all of chickendom.
Below, you can see King Richard parading across the bridge.
So now, if you encounter a crossword puzzle hint that says, “What do chickens like?” See if the word “bridge” or “bridges” works.
Snow is dusting the surrounding hills. The morning grass is white with frost. King Richard’s crows carry a long ways on a bright, winter morning. The cold doesn’t deter the hens from laying eggs. Ruby is settled in a nest, getting ready to lay an egg. With daylight just three minutes longer than a week ago, the hens seem to sense that spring is coming. They are already laying more eggs.
MiAsa and her chicks are moving and scratching so fast, they are just a blur. It’s time to turn the compost and add more litter to it. In midwinter, a great feeding place for chickens is a compost pile when I turn it. It is full of worms and bugs. A compost pile is teeming with life. Manure and decaying plant matter provide a feast for bacteria and tiny organism, which provide a feast for earthworms and bugs, which provide a feast for the chickens.
When you closely examine a compost pile in midwinter, it’s amazing to see tiny winged insects teeming over the pile. Once the pile heats up, it provides a warm sanctuary for millions of creatures to flourish.
The tide has turned. The days are no longer getting shorter. In four days, the day will be a minute longer, and next Monday, the day will be three minutes longer. Bit by bit, the sun is returning.
Fitting for a momentous day like today, there was a pullet egg among the eggs today. A young hen has started laying eggs. It’s always a pleasant surprise to find these small, precious eggs.
Still on my hunt for fresh eggs in supermarkets, I checked the eggs at the nearest Safeway. The freshest were packed 7 days ago, so they are probably 9 to 10 days old. The least fresh were packed 37 days ago, supposedly “Farm Fresh Egg-land’s Best”! Five week old eggs don’t sound very “Farm Fresh” to me. I guess they were fresh on the farm when they were first laid.
The way to tell when the eggs were packed, is by the 3 digit packing date usually found on the side of the carton. You’ll see them on the photo above. They range from 319 to 349 on the Safeway eggs I photographed today. The 4 digit numbers before or after the pack date are the numbers of the packing plant number. For example:
You’ll often find the same packing plant number of different brands of eggs. For example, in the Safeway eggs, you’ll see that many of the eggs come from Briarwood Farms, even though they’ll have very different labels on them. It can be that different farms use the same egg packing plant, or the identical eggs get packed under different labels. Looking at the plant information, you can get an idea of how far your eggs have traveled.