18 July 1957 “The New Hens Are Laying”

As some of you may recall, I have had two batches of chicks this year. My first batch were hatched at the end of January. I placed some in an incubator and some under my broody hen. I hatched a few of my own chickens eggs, but I had also ordered some French Copper Maran eggs. They lay a dark chocolate egg and are much sought by chefs and egg connoisseurs.

Well, these first batch of chicks, containing the Marans, are now finally old enough to lay. Some how I was lucky enough that all the eggs that were hatched turned out to be hens. This almost never happens. We simply thought we would eat any roosters born, as we already have a lovely Rooster who guards our flock.

Here is a shot of two of the Copper Marans. The hen in front we at first thought was a rooster, as her comb is a bit larger and we thought her feathers showed a potential for a rooster tail. But the other day we saw our Rooster, “Roostie” doing his husbandly duties with this one. We know realize she is, of course, a hen.

  Here we see Roostie with three of the marans, my Blue Cochin (she and her sister who is a Splash Cochin will soon be going to live at my MIL with some other chickens I gave her). And you can see one of the blue Orpingtons we hatched as well.

I was aware that the Marans had begun to lay yesterday when I gathered eggs. Here you can see the deepness of the color compared to the blue/green of the Ameracauna egg and the lighter Orpington standard brown egg.

 Here is a close up of the intricacies of the color. You can see it is a spotted egg. The deeper shades in the spots will eventually be the entire dark color of the egg. They darken a bit as they lay and then towards the end of the year lighten up.

I have another batch of chicks that were hatched about two months ago and they are happily living with this flock. We are having a very good and happy farm like summer around here.

I would also like to apologize for my laxness of late in my posting. I have finally got to the final push of a large project. I have been literally emptying, organizing and trying to set up our two story barn building. A few years ago two houses an and apartment were emptied into the barn as well as various old papers and photos of family. As we now have our home on the market it has finally given me the push to get to it. I have been spending about 8 hours a day simply cleaning, sorting, organizing and making various trips to our local dump which also has a swap shop for donations. I am finally getting to a space useable and certainly more appealing to the eye.

I plan to return to daily posting and think I will make my news become a weekly event. I hope all are willing to wait it out, as this week is also our court date with our tenants. I cannot wait to get that over, though there is still a 10 day period after that they they are allowed to stay in the house (Putting us into August). On top of that I am having showings of our home, as I am acting currently as our own real estate agent. And I have been giving myself time to enjoy the summer as well, with bike rides to the beach and town. Swimming and enjoying fires and of course playing in the gardens.

I hope all are having a lovely summer thus far and thank you for being patient with my rather busy summer. What are any of you working on this Summer? Any big projects or plans or simply fun? Maybe you hate the Summer or the traffic if you live in a tourist areas, as I do, share with us I love a good Summer story.

Happy Homemaking.