Thoughts on the price of eggs…

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As you are aware I am back in the chicken egg business again.  To say that the business proposition does not make one wealthy is an understatement, but for the most part the sales pay for feed and scratch.

If I let myself start thinking on it, as I am now, I can get a bit perturbed.  Why you ask?  Well, it’s this way, if I sold my Farm Fresh, Pasture Raised Hen’s Eggs at the farmer’s markets over in Madison, I could get $3.50 a dozen for them.  If I lived in Connecticut,  like Red Bee Marina Marchese, I could get $5.00 a dozen!  As it is, I live here in N. Alabama in a tiny farming burgh and try to sell mine for $2.50 per dozen… but the potential customers scoff at the price.

Here is a recent example of what I am up against:

I finally spent the money to put up a sign on the main road to point potential customers to the Farmlet.  So after three days of not getting even a nibble… I got a customer!

The lady gets out of her car and carefully walks across the lawn.  She’s one of those heavyset ladies with the tightly curled and blue tinted hairdo that ladies of a certain age are all so fond of.  When she gets to the door and rings I open it and politely greet her.

She says, “How much foh yuh eggs?”

I say,  “$2.50 a dozen”

Upon hearing the price I see her eyebrows have shot up and she is now clenching the clasp of her handbag and holding it to her ample bosom.  After the momentary shock wears off she drawls, “That’s way moah the the stoah’s sellin’m foh!”

To which I politely explain that mine were after all laid yesterday,  my hens aren’t kept in inhumane conditions, if she tries them she will surely like them because they have far better flavor than what she will find at the grocery.  And finally, was she aware that the grocery store eggs can be well over a month old by the time she buys them?

She gives me a hesitant look, and I realize that I’m loosing her as a customer… so I quickly blurt, “If you bring me your carton back for me to refill it will give you .25 cents off of your next dozen!”

To which she replies “How much do ya’ll want for your eggs?”

I caved.  I told her, “For you $2.00 after the discount.”

At that, she pried open her handbag and peeled two dollars out of her wallet to hand to me.

I have not seen her again and its been two weeks.  Maybe she just doesn’t eat that many eggs?

Who can say?

In the meantime I have found an outlet for my surplus eggs!  I am selling them at the Farmers Co-op downtown!  So OK, I am still not getting rich, but at least I am selling all of my eggs now!   And that’s a happy thing!  “:<>

Here’s an update!

Yesterday the lady I told you about (above) came back to buy another dozen eggs.  This was nice!  But what made it spectacular was that she has reserved in advance three dozen for the 8th of August!

“Nah remembuh…” she reminds me, “… that’s three dozen on thuh 8th. of August.  I wanna send some home with mah friend who’s visiten from Nawth Caralina!”

I love this lady!

*  Click HERE to find out more information on the health benefits and differences of “Pastured” vs.  “Free Range” and “Factory Farm”  hen’s eggs.

Taking a break

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Today I went out to run errands and took my camera.  I delivered three dozen eggs to the Co-op in Huntsville (my first delivery!), went to Tractor supply and bought more chicken feed and scratch, paid for entirely with eggs sales I might add! Then it was off to buy the necessary items I needed for apple butter and green tomato relish.  My errands complete, I glanced down at my camera and set out to find something to shoot.

Here are the results of my afternoon off…

The Bunker

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I truthfully don’t know what this is… so if you do then please do tell!

~~~Want to see these in color?  Just say the word! ~~~

Wuthering Heights

To get in and take the pictures I had to slip by a gate and hoped that no one would notice me trespassing…

This was awesome to see.  The chimney in the background was massive, and what remains is easily over 15 feet tall. Imagine how impressive it was when first made!

Alabama is full of old ruins like this.  It is impossible not to turn a corner or pass through a field and not find something that remains from back when.  My sense about this site is that the original stone chimney was built in the early 1800’s.  The brick is also quite old, but I have no guesses as to its age.

It will be fun to try and find out more about this site and its history.  That it saw the Civil War is certain!

Some words on graveyards…

It does not matter where you go you will run into a graveyard.  Many in the strangest of places.  There is even a small family graveyard in front of the Madison Square Mall, sandwiched there between the parking lot and Highway 72.  Grave sites are very sacred here and rather than disturb them, they just build around them.

So today I found this one, and strangely, a road runs through it.  Situated out in the middle of a cotton field it is quite old, pre Civil War,  and surprisingly well cared for.

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Born 1839.   Died 1861.  This Gudwife was only 22 years old when she was laid to rest…

Isn’t the work on this gate lovely?  I think it amazing that it is still standing after all these years.

Well friends, it is late and I need sleep.  I will post more tomorrow when I get my apples prepared and my apple butter on to cook!

As always, I value your thoughts.  “:<>

My Summary of Summer…

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We are having the most perfect fall morning.  You know…  the one where the sky is just the right shade of blue, the sun makes everything shine, and the air is cool and clear.   I open the windows and breathe in deeply…  Thinking of Summer’s demise and the official start of fall the Equinox that will not arrive until “…03:09 (or 3:09am) Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on September 23, 2010…” officially speaking.  And that brings me to…

My Summary of Summer: or how I learned to survive and enjoy it in spite of the drought.

Yee-gads, what a summer it has been!  With fall preparations right around the corner I take these few moments to share with you.  So here it is.  The truth of it.

We’ve lost, gained, learned and grown, in our knowledge of gardening, critters and bees.  However, we found out essential things along the way.  For this is the importance of our lessons after all… that we have indeed learned from them.

Lessons such as:

  1. Hawks gotta eat.  We lost one Buff Polish rooster and a Guinea Hen to the hawks this summer.  We were very sad about it but out of 35 beaks we consider the losses minimal.
  2. Chickens don’t like snakes.  Well really, we knew that, but what we didn’t know was that they would actually chase them off the property!  Amazing to see!
  3. When vegetable gardening you need to plant about four times as much as you think you will need.  Why?  Because you need enough for you and the little squirrels and voles that love to nibble the bottoms off of every tomato, pepper, and bean within their reach.  You also need enough to feed all the squash bugs and tomato horn worms, and any other insect that comes by to dine!  And this is important… you need enough to share with the neighbors who graciously put up with the noise and flies that your menagerie will produce (no matter what you do to combat them)!  Although a dozen eggs now and again goes a long way to keeping them from complaining!  ;D
  4. Murphy’s Law – If there is a draught and you fix the pump and get it going, then the rain will come… in buckets and torrents!  AND  If stops raining again, then you will surely dig up the electric line that was buried shallowly in the soil and end up running a very long extension cord out to make it run again… yes REALLY!
  5. Bees, if properly housed and protected, can be quite self-sufficient and really need little else from me.  I pretty much leave them alone, they have plenty of their own stores to eat, are healthy, and show little evidence of dreaded intruders such as hive beetle, veroa mites and wax moths.  In fact, it would seem that my chickens do a very good job of breaking the cycle of the hive beetles, and I have seen no evidence of mites or wax moths.  Bees are very impressive little critters!

All in all I feel that difficulties we faced were minor, the knowledge we have gained was invaluable, and this winter will allow us to do quite a bit to be more prepared for next spring and summer!

Things we need to do between now and next spring are:

  1. Build the geese an outside hut for sleeping in.  Right now they are being shepherded into the barn each night.  They need a little home of their own!
  2. Build a cold frame for starting seeds.
  3. Build a potting table (done!!!) with an old kitchen sink in it.  It will be useful for transplanting seedlings into newspaper cups and placing picked fruits and vegetables up off the ground so the chickens can’t peck them.  Oh the sink?  Well that will be a good place to wash the soil off of everything before I bring it into the house.
  4. Build a garden bench to sit and rest a spell while I contemplate work that needs doin’,  to look at all I have accomplished, and to take  a moment now and again to be grateful for all I have been blessed with!

Were you blessed this summer?  Perhaps you might take a moment to write a comment and share your blessings with other readers?

I hope so!

Lynda

P.S.  I’ve a bit of humor to share with you before I close.

 

WHAT’S ALL THE COMMOTION ABOUT?

Why, its Lil’ Bit on the prowl!

Now…  how could you possibly be afraid of that?

Conversations over the fence

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Remember the cartoon in the Sunday paper by Don Keane called “Family Circus?”  If you do, you will recall that often he would show Billy’s day by tracking it in dotted lines across the illustration.

Well, when I watch my geese and their antics each day I think of Family Circus.  You see my acre of yard is divided across the back into three sections with gates to access each section.  I move the geese from section to section on a three-day rotation, because no matter how much I love them, let’s face it, they are very messy creatures!

The third section is the chicken yard and it has a gate into the pasture behind us.  Now this is the fun part of their week!  They can chase the chickens, invade their run to raid the chicken food, go out into the pasture and run and honk to their heart’s content.  Often when I look out my dining room window I will catch them lined up along the back fence looking in at me.  If they notice me looking back they will begin to honk loudly and carry on to entice me to come say,  “Hey!” and chat awhile.

But it is the early morning on chicken yard days that is the most fun!  I let them out of the barn and lure them to the chicken yard with a scoop of grain for breakfast and a clean bucket of water to chase it down.  Then, it’s off to the pasture to run and visit the neighbor on the other side.

They love my neighbor because she feeds them only her choicest weeds over the fence and she will stand there and talk to them for up to 15 minutes or more.  I assume the conversations to be about the weather, weeds, and other topics of interest to a goose, but I can’t be sure…

Whatever it is they discuss I sense the geese are never ready for the conversation to end so soon, because they always begin to honk and chatter when she leaves them to go inside…

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*  In researching the Family Circus I found out that the dotted lines are actually called a “Billy Path.”   FUN!

For more information on Family Circus, or just to satisfy your curiosity if you aren’t familiar with Billy, you will find it here:  http://www.familycircus.com/