The Golden Fruit

A riddle for you: In a marble hall white as milk, lined with skin as soft as silk. Within a fountain crystal-clear, a golden apple doth appear. No doors there are to this stronghold, yet thieves break in to steal its gold. And another: A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.

It’s an egg, of course! 

When I was a young girl I wanted to raise chickens so I

ordered 500 baby chickens from a catalog. They came

 and in three days they all died. I was disappointed 

but determined. I ordered 500 more baby chicks and 

would you believe, they all died within 3 days too? 






I gave up on raising chickens but I never did figure out

 what I was doing wrong. I was pretty sure though that

I was either planting them too deep or too close together.
I’m pulling your leg with that old joke--I have kept chickens for fresh eggs since I was about



nineteen years old. It seems like there has always been a flock in my life. A contented \

clucking in the chicken pen, delighted squawking when an egg has been laid, and yes, even 

the noise of a rooster indicate that all is as it should be in life. 


My first chickens were white Leghorns that we bought for a dollar each. They had been 



cage chickens sold when they were past their peak laying time (these were about 18 months
old) and they had no idea of how to roost, scratch or do any other chicken-y kind of thing. 

Their claws were so long they curled back and their combs were huge and floppy. After a 

few weeks in their new home they learned to scratch in the dirt, to nest in boxes and their 

claws quickly wore off to a more reasonable length. They laid lots of eggs, defying the logic

of the commercial breeders that they were not economical to keep.


It wasn’t long before I wanted brown-egg hens, so we added big plump Rhode Island Reds 



that did not lay as well, ate a lot more but were calm and gentle, something that could not

be said for the Leghorns. As years passed we raised many other varieties—Buff Orpingtons, 

Araucanas, Americaunas, Domineckers, Silver-laced Wyandottes, White Rocks, Golden 

Comets and others. I love getting different color eggs; some years our egg basket would be 

filled with white, buff, blue, green, brown, tan and even lightly speckled eggs. Who needs 

to dye eggs at Easter when they come like that straight from the hens?


I have heard many superstitions about eggs and chickens over



the years. For example, did you know that some people will put an egg shell in their
coffee grounds when the coffee is perking? They claim the coffee tastes better
that way. Others will bury egg shells next to certain plants in their gardens
to provide more calcium for the growing vegetables. One lady told me that
witches will use empty egg shells for boats and go sailing around in them, so I
should always break a hole in an egg shell in the shape of a cross, or crush
the shell, to prevent that from happening. 
Finding a double yolk egg means either someone you know is getting
married soon or will be having twins.  It
might also be interpreted as a sign of good luck coming your way, or financial
improvement in your life. An egg with no yolk at all is very bad, however—a
certain bringer of bad luck.



This year we'll be getting baby chicks again, I

 think. Our hens are three or four years old 

and slowing down. What kind will we get? I'm
hoping for some Aracaunas, and maybe a few

Barred Rocks, and some Golden Comets. 

We'll see!













For more chicken riddles, check out this older blog post!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed 
without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Abundance in the Gardens, Abundance in Storytelling

 The gardens are booming right now. The new hens are already laying and apples, peaches and grapes are hanging heavy. ready to ripen in a few weeks. It feels like the garden of Eden here right now, with fresh fruit and vegetables there for the picking, flowers in bloom and beautiful, clear, dry weather for a change.

This is a fresh load of tomatoes picked by Larry this morning. Lots of pink ones in with the reds and yellows. I think we only planted 4 pink tomato plants, but they are sure doing well.

Today is salsa-making day. I have a few hours to spare from working on stories to do the salsa and make some dill pickles--the cucumbers are coming in with a vengeance now. The old vines revived when the weather cooled and the second planting is beginning to bear. Always, of course, the gardens peak when I will not be here to process the bounty. Such is life.

We eat tomatoes three meals a day at this time of year, and in between meals too. Sliced for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, sliced for dinner and eaten whole in between. Such richness!

This morning I prepared a country breakfast, complete with fried potatoes, bacon, eggs, tomatoes and fried apples. The apples were amazing. These were some golden delicious that had been around so long the skins were wrinkled--but they were still sound. I cored and sliced them, leaving the skins on. Then I heated oil in my cast iron skillet, added the apples and stirred them quickly to prevent them from sticking to the pan (that's important--hot oil and stirring to coat the apples with the oil). I let them cook a while, then added cinnamon, honey and vanilla. My oh my. I've never added vanilla before but you can bet I will always do so now. They are delicious.

The chickens are laying those little pullet eggs; they're small and dense with deep yellow yolks. I missed our good eggs and was impatient for these new hens to start laying. They obliged me by starting a full month before I was expecting them to. Good girls!

Back to the kitchen with me. Tomatoes are sitting in hot water so I can peel the skins and make salsa. Then I'll take a while to work on stories for the Inland Waterways Festival in Marietta, Ohio tomorrow, and then I'll start a batch of pickles. While those are sitting in salty ice water, I'll be packing for next week's trip to Elkins, WV to teach Appalachian storytelling for the Augusta Heritage Series. This will be a full, fun day--especially if my cousin Les in England calls and we can talk about my trip to England in September.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

More Babies

But these babies are real turkeys--really!

At the feed store, bronze and white turkey poults mix it up.

Aunt Kate (the new Aunt Kate to baby Cadyn) carries the babies home.

In the carrier; someone is mooning us!

Mirror image?

These two are exploring their new home.
And finally settled down for the night.

Chickens! Eggs!

I forgot to add this in the updates last night: the chickens are laying! and not just a few eggs, either. We're not getting about 13 eggs a day from our hens. It is sooooo lovely to have fresh eggs again.

Most of the eggs are the small pullet eggs, but one hen started laying by laying double-yolkers. Grandson Clayton got to have one of those for breakfast and he was amazed because he'd never seen one before.

Some random things about chickens, if you've never had any or are just starting out with a flock:

• you can tell when they've laid an egg because they will cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-CLUCK-cluck-cluck-CLUCK--well you get the idea. Very contented, happy sound.


• they like to lay where other hens have already laid. So it's a good idea to keep on egg in the nest to encourage them to lay, if you can spare one. some people use marble eggs, others use those white china doorknobs. I leave an egg, since we've got plenty.
  
• Leghorns lay year-round, with minor breaks. Other breeds mostly take some time off to moult (that is, grow new feathers). They look pretty pathetic during the moulting process, bedraggling around minus feathers here and there.


• Leghorns are nervous and flighty, and noisier than other chickens. The old-time heavy breeds are quieter and calmer--but they eat a lot more than Leghorns and don't lay as many eggs during the year.


• Leghorns aren't worth dressing out for meat, the heavy breeds are, so it's a trade-off. any chicken over about 6 months old will be too tough for frying. I liked to can chicken because it was very tender and easy to use. But it's been a long while since we've dressed any out.


• Chickens lay fairly well for about 5 years if they're cared for. After that, what do you do with them? I know what I do: I call Swap and Shop, the local radio show, and give them away. Someone always comes to get them.


• Chickens need 14 hours of light a day to lay. We keep a light in the henhouse year-round.


• Chickens like a lot of water. We have a water warmer for winter months so their water doesn't freeze.


• Chickens also need grit. Ours get some naturally by pecking around in their yard; I also bake and give them crushed eggshell. You can give them small creek gravel or buy crushed oyster shell at the feed store for grit too.


• Eggs keep better if they're not washed because there is a natural protective coating on them. But these days people worry about stuff like Salmonella so it's probably safer to wash them and keep them in the fridge.


• Fresh eggs are good! But you already knew that.

The Turkeys are Here!

Six of them: 5 Great White and 1 Bronze. The bronze ones are beautiful to look at, but hard as all get out to pluck--they have black pinfeathers so cleaning is a chore. Uh...yeah, these will be dinner eventually.

We used to raise 15-20 a year and sell fresh birds at Thanksgiving. I'm not ready to get back into that business yet, but I have missed having fresh turkey on our Thanksgiving table. With luck, we'll have it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's day and a few other random times. I may even do as I did in the past, and can some of the meat. It's ready to use quickly to prepare meals when it's been canned.

Right now the little guys are in the house, waiting to get a little older and the temps outside to warm up again before we put them in the turkey house. They are very quiet, much calmer than the baby chickens were. It's fortunate that I'm off work for a while so I can get them off to a good start.

Ultimate Recycle

Chickens need calcium to make eggs with strong shells.

Chickens need grit in their craws to grind their food for digestion.

Chickens lay eggs with shells high in calcium.

Chicken egg shells can be crushed to provide grit for the craw.

So there it is: the ultimate recycle.

From the chicken to the table and back to the chicken.

The shells need a little processing. Giving "raw" shells to them can cause chickens to peck at fresh-laid eggs in the coop. That's not good. The reason they will do this is that with raw shells, there are bits of egg white still clinging to the shell and the chickens can develop a taste for it.

To avoid this problem, bake the shells at a low temperature for about 15 minutes. The baking will make the shells more brittle and will completely cook any remaining egg in the shell.



Once the shells have been baked they can be crushed easily into little pieces and fed to the hens.

They love it! I like it because the shells get used and my chickens are happy.

A win-win situation.

Surfing Chickens

Up close and personal! The leghorns are the most intrepid of the flock so far. They will approach without fear, and they love to peck at my rings.












Granddaughter Hannah with a new friend. Hannah is also fearless. Pigs and chickens faze her not at all. She gets right in there with them. She and Haley have named a few of the hens and can actually tell them apart. That's more than I can do.







The heat lamp makes a cozy glow in the coop. That's a good thing since today was blowing snow flurries and cold, cold, cold.











I did a little websurfing and found these online places to learn more:

How to raise a flock of hens in your own backyard. Help from other folks, information, links and lots more.

Want to know more about the many breeds of chickens? Go here. There are many there I have never heard of. Apparently, however, my Wyandottes might be Silver-Laced Wyandottes. Who knew?

You can find more general information about raising chickens on this site.

The more you learn, the more you want to learn, but why not go for the ultimate learning experience:

A chicken videocam! Watch the drama unfold before your very eyes! Oh the heartbreak, the egos, the greed and deception. All for you on the ChickenCam.


If the cam doesn't strike you as funny, maybe these chicken jokes will.


Or how about Chicken tractors, anyone? (this is not a joke, really)

One place to get baby chicks: McMurray's hatchery. I bought from them years ago and it was nice to find that they are still in business. I think I prefer buying my chicks at the feed store, though. Less stress on them, or at least on me.

Home Sweet Home, if You're a Hen

I have more pics but hughesnet was being slow again last night (will it never end?) and only one would download.

Here are the girls in their new home in the coop. As you can see, they'd already knocked over their chickie feeder.

We set up the larger feeder for them instead. Almost like they were saying 'you've got to be kidding, that thing's for babies.'

With the weather turned chilly again, we put the heat lamp on for them, and kept their old box in the coop as a familiar place to huddle if they get cold. It will be nice to see the weather turn warm for keeps, but that's a few weeks off.

The coop has solid plywood walls up 4 feet, then oak planks that have small gaps betwen them for air flow on the top 3 feet. There is a trapdoor under the roost for easy clean-out. Last year at the FFA auction we bought a replacement set of galvanized nest boxes--the ones I was using were about 50 years old and had rusted out.

We also have a hanging feeder for them that holds 25 pounds of feed at a time, and a 5-gallon waterer with a warming base so that the water will not freeze in winter. There is a timer that we use on the lights when the chickens are older to be sure they get the required amount of light to lay: 14 hours.

Larry did a thorough cleaning after the old hens left, washing down all equipment and walls with bleach water, and tossing lime on the floor (and apparently some on the walls!).

Chickens need grit for their craw so they can digest their feed. We give them a little pan of wood ash and sprinkle it in the coop too, keep it smelling fresh. Wood ash is good in the chicken yard too, if you keep your hes penned as we do. Our pen is about 8' x 20' long, 6' high with chicken wire over the top to discourage hawks. Every varmint, it seems, wants to get into a chicken house!

We also save egg shells and toast them, then give them back to the chickens. You can buy oyster shell and use that instead--the calcium in both helps make the shells harder when the hens are laying, and provides some grit too.

Growing, Gangling Peeps, and Solitary Confinement

The peeps are growing fast. They're not quite to the gawky teenager stage, but their wing feathers are growing in. This week they graduated from the big tote to the box from the new hot water heater. we cut the bottom out of the box and set it on a plastic sheet so that clean up will be easy (I hope).

The screen on top of the box discourages those who think they can fly out--they're already trying out those new feathers.

The little one below is in solitary because the others were pecking at her and made a raw place on her back. I put liquid band-aid on the wound and we separated her so her wound could heal. but she hates it! She spends all day pacing in front of the screen, crying to be back with the others.

I tried putting her back in with the others after the liquid band-aid dried. What happened? They immediately started pecking her again and she, poor thing, hunkered down and just took it. Who would think chicks could be so vicious? But this isn't unusual--I've raised several broods over the years and the weakest one is often attacked.

My hope is to get this one healed and strong so she can rejoin the flock. That may not be simple because there is a tendency to attack any bird considered a foreigner. I am gambling on the screen wire being enough of a divider to protect her while allowing her to remain familiar to the rest of the birds.