My Egg Basket Runneth Over.

Wasn't I just whining about the lack of production in the hen house?  Well, shut my mouth.  It seems that Spring is in the air and in the nesting boxes, if nowhere else.  I am now averaging between 18-24 eggs a day, plus my 3-4 duck eggs.  Egads.  Unfortunately, one of my better egg customers is no longer - he had a little black market restaurant going on and got ratted out.  Poor guy.  I may have to start making angel food cakes commercially.


I've been putting off dealing with my egg-eating hen, but I think I will have to look that problem in it's beady little eye this weekend.  She is setting a bad precedent and will have to ... go.  Bunny the rooster is turning into a little jerkmo, too.  Sigh.  I am about to be rooster-less again and it's not necessarily a good thing.  I find that, when there is no rooster to rule the roost, so to speak, the old girls start to go around beating up on the younger girls.  Way too much drama.  Perhaps it would be better to line up a replacement fella before Bunny hits the bricks.  Something to mull over at o'dark thirty.


I've been making small inroads into the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to garden and barn.  So far - two raised beds have been cleaned out and are almost ready for planting (onions and beets this weekend).  Only six more to go!  I have to transplant a blueberry bush - I must have hiccupped when I planted them originally - one is way out of place...  I need to move the hoops to the new lettuce/pepper/eggplant bed and get more rebar.  I am also rethinking the cukes this year.  I usually put them at the end of the bean bed, but I may build a small raised bed just for them.  Or plant them in containers.  As always, I need not only a Plan A, but B, C, and D to be safe.  More seeds will be started this weekend, along with a start on the poultry housing clean up - the main Duck Hut needs cleaning out something awful.  And I do mean awful.  I know that I will need a full weekend for the chicken coop, but I think I can squeeze in the individual small huts and coops in Duck Village when I have an hour or so.  I also need to get ready for my order of meat chicks that will be arriving sometime next week.  My system has been fine-tuned and (knock on wood) has worked well the past few years - raise them to a feathered stage in the brooder; move to the small coop with screen door and lamp until they get most of their feathers (and hopefully, the weather warms up); then out to the hoop house with electric poultry netting and freeish-ranging until they are off to freezer camp.  This means setting up the brooder condo (goodbye clean laundry room), cleaning out the small coop, sprucing up the hoop house, testing the energizer battery, locating the netting, blah, blah, blah.


I'll try for pics this weekend if progress is made.  Even if progress isn't made.  It's not always a pretty business, is it?  But, Heaven help me, I love it.