Eggs Galore...."Ooh, Aah"

There are eggs galore here in Irish Grove.

"Ooh, aah."

With some forethought and a little luck o' the Irish, we timed our replacement pullets rather well this year. Since the hens take a much-needed break from egg laying in the late fall, we have a really tough time filling our regular egg orders. Let me tell ya, it can be mighty frustrating to have a barn full of chickens and find 2 or maybe 3 eggs in the nests each day.

And I always wonder if our egg customers believe me when I explain to them that the hens just aren't laying right now. Egg production is seasonal. The hens need lots of light stimulation on their pituitary gland in order to lay regularly. The short winter days just don't provide enough light to keep them going. We keep a light on in the barn to help counter that, but like everything else, artificial just can't compete with the natural.

Can I repeat that?

Artificial can't compete with natural.

Thanks.

Anyways, spring is the season for high egg production. Which is why we color eggs for Easter and not Thanksgiving.

We mucked through a month or so of little to no eggs as best we could, and I got to wondering if maybe the pullets (young hens) were gonna hold off until spring to start laying. But then, all of a sudden, we started finding little mini eggs here and there. Yeehaw, the pullets are laying!

Now, unless you've raised laying hens sometime in your life, you probably didn't realize that you can tell the age of the chicken by the size of their egg. Yeah, nature is all neat and tidy like that.

Sometimes.

Pullet eggs are tiny. So tiny, in fact, that when I found an aqua-blue pullet egg (from an americana hen that lays greenish blue eggs), Madelina argued with me that a Robin must have layed an egg in the chicken barn. I tried to explain to her that Robins don't lay eggs in the winter, and that most of them migrate South.

She wouldn't buy my explanation for one second. Stinker.

Pullet eggs will often have a little splash of blood on them as well. Mothers, I'm sure you will readily confirm that that first one is a tough one. (Sorry, guys.)

More seasoned hens lay nice large eggs. The size of egg you ideally buy from a local farmer, or at the store. These eggs are by far the most common egg we find in the nests. And it doesn't take long for a pullet to close the gap, size-wise, with her eggs. Maybe 2 weeks, tops.

But the old hens? The ones you should cull and sell as stew birds, but can't because you believe they've earned their retirement? The ones that are losing money beak over claw? Yeah, these old ladies lay an egg maybe once a week, if you're lucky. Even during egg season. But when they do lay an egg, they are huge, honker eggs. Huge-mongous eggs. The eggs that make it hard to close the carton eggs. Jumbo eggs.

And once in awhile......and I mean these ladies must be sitting on their eggs for a month or so.....they'll lay a super DUPER doozer of an egg--a double-yolker. And we call these eggs, courtesy of my Gramma Alice, "Ooh-Aah" eggs.

Why, you may ask? Please, you've just gotta ask me why, 'cause I can't wait to tell you.

Gramma Alica calls the double-yolked eggs "Ooh-Aah" eggs because when the hen is pushing the egg out she says, "OOOooooooooh", and when the egg is finally out she says, "AAAaaaaaaah".

Ha, ha ha ha, hoo hoo, ha!

I think that's pretty funny.

Here are some photos of eggs, progressing in size from pullet eggs to an "Ooh-Aah" egg. The photos don't do this subject justice, but I haven't added photos in awhile, so here they are:

The pullet egg:

The regular egg:


The "Ooh-Aah" egg:

As you can see, I am cooking platanos con huevos fritos for breakfast. In Panamanian that means fried plaintains with fried eggs. Yu-u-mmy!

My (delicious) breakfast is providing the perfect opportunity to prove to you skeptics out there (and don't think I don't know about you) that yes indeed, some eggs have two yolks.

Watch. And. Learn.

Here I go, cracking that "Ooh-Aah" egg you saw above:

There you have it, people. A double-yolked egg. An "Ooh-Aah" egg in the flesh, or pan, as it were. Ok, so I did break one yolk when I cracked the egg shell. But you can obviously see that the two yolks came from the same egg....just look at the egg white.

You better believe that with a breakfast like this one, I'll be muttering a few oohs and aahs myself.

Let's just hope there's no accompanying egg.

Mumble Grumble

Blogging hasn't been high priority lately, obviously. But this fall has kicked my butt and I hate to write negative posts. I prefer my witty, delightful posts about how picture perfect everything is, or the ones about how I solved some huge problem by the sheer force of my intelligence and charm.

Wait...?? Who's blog is this?? Sorry....I confused myself with someone else.

Reality is I'm a farmer now, and I'll be damned if farmers don't bitch and moan every once in awhile. So here it goes...

This year's corn harvest dogged me for weeks. It went anything but smoothly, and I was grumpy through the whole dang process.

The weather didn't cooperate at all, raining every other day for basically a month or so. Now I know talking about the weather isn't that exciting for most people, but weather is to a farmer what a moody boss is to the low-level worker. You gotta follow their lead, but you never know what they're gonna throw at you, and most of the time you don't like it.

This harvest season, the weather tossed us a nice mix of rain, mist, cold, some more rain and mist, and suprisingly little wind. Which means we were harvesting wet corn off of wet ground on cold, dark, and yes, wet days.

So what's the problem?

Well, wet corn means that we have to pay exhorbitant charges at the local grain elevator to dry the corn down to 15% moisture. 15% moisture is the level at which corn can be shipped and/or stored without risk of sprouting or fermenting. (Although fermented corn doesn't sound so bad...ahem.)

Thanks to the wet fall, our corn didn't dry down in the field like it could have. We were harvesting our corn at about 23% moisture. Shall we do the math?

The elevator charges $0.07/bushel to dry corn one half of one percent. (Yes, you read that right.) So that means $0.07 to dry it to 22.5%, another $0.07 to dry it to 22%, etc. etc. When you add it all up, we paid $1.12/bushel to dry the corn down to 15%.

I understand that they have to recoup their energy costs, but to the tune of $1.12/bu? Youch. When you're making $4-5.00/bu on the corn, that's 25% of your profit right there. Today's corn prices are at $2.95 or so. Take a smooth buck off of that and we're talking a 35-40% loss.

Wet land means that the oh-so-heavy equipment like the combine, grain wagons, tractors and semi trucks are driving around our farmland and compacting the crap out of our soil. Soil compaction is horrible for the health of the crops, prohibiting the flow of nutrients and water and causing all sorts of terrible problems with run-off, weeds, etc. In a no-till system like ours, soil compaction is your number one enemy. We don't have the option to moldboard plow the land to break through the hardpan, as they call it.

We had a semi truck and a tractor get stuck in the mud. That's how bad it was. And there are huge ruts everywhere, which I can't look at without getting agitated.

Wet, unpredictable weather causes one more major problem....you never know when you're going to be able to harvest. For three weeks, I could go nowhere, do nothing, see no-one. I'd have my boss at Atwood take me off the schedule because I thought we'd be working. Then it'd rain. I'd put myself back on the schedule, and Mark would show up to work the combine for a few hours.

Sometimes I'd think, "The ground's way too wet to harvest today", so I'd go to my exercise class or run to the store. Upon return, I'd find that Mark had been working for over an hour, the wagons were all full, and I still had to connect the tractor to the auger, lift the top off the bin, etc. The constant set-up, catch up, take down, set-up again was exceedingly frustrating.

Needless to say, I was swearing like a sailor by the time we got it all finished. But finish we did. Thank God for that.

Yeah, farmers complain a lot. We do. But if your schedule and your success was dictated by and determined by something as unforgiving and unpredictable as the weather, you'd complain too.

We're a sorry lot, we farmers. You'll just have to forgive and excuse us when you can. And when you can't?

Deal with it.

Busy-ness

Before I catch y'all up with what's happening around here....about stuff like the corn harvest, cattle wrestling, future plans, and just my regular ramblings about extremely interesting and pertinent farm stuff, I gotta finish working on this grant we're apply for. The deadline for applications is Monday, December 1 at 4:30 p.m.

Yeah, 4:30 is relevant. We need all the time we can get.

*huff and puff*

It's a SARE farmer/rancher grant. Two other local farmers and I are applying for money to conduct research trials using a cover crop and no-till techniques to control weeds in organic systems.

I'll fill you in on the details later, but you can check out SARE at: http://www.sare.org/

And you can read about what we want to do at: www.rodaleinstitute.org/no-till_revolution

But for now, I'm off and running.....

We're Famous!

Ok, not famous. But we did make the local newspaper.

About 2 weeks ago, I received a call from a man with a heavy accent who stated that he worked for the Freeport Journal Standard and wanted to interview me about the farm. I asked him how he heard about us, and he responded that he had found our information on the new Local Foods Directory put out by the University of Illinois Extension Office of Stephenson County.

Score! My friend Margaret Larson, Extension's Director, worked hard to get the local foods directory printed in response to an increasing desire to support local producers. The directory hasn't been out much more than a month, and I was impressed by how quickly I had been contacted by someone who had found us through it.

But then I began to wonder how this reporter dude had chosen us over the many, many other interesting and varied farms listed in the directory. So I asked him. He said he was starting a new weekly column titled On The Farm, and I was the first person he contacted. He just picked us....no special reason, really.

Well, after chatting a little on the phone and again noting his thick accent, I asked him if he minded telling me where he was from. "Well, it's funny you ask," he replied. "I'm from Ireland."

A-ha!!

"Now I know why you picked us," I laughed. "It couldn't have something to do with the fact that our farm is named Irish Grove Farms, now could it?" He chuckled and admitted that yes, that might have had a little influence.

Just goes to show that we should never underestimate the importance of a name.

We had a nice 3 hour visit where we grilled him on every detail of his life. And then at the end, we let him ask us a few questions as well.

This is what came of it: Making the Move to Organic

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Monday Happened

Phew. Thank goodness it's Wednesday. 'Cause a few days ago, we had a Monday. And boy, what a Monday it was.

It's corn harvesting time, and it's been a tough season. We had an incredibly cool and wet spring, followed by a wet summer, a month-long dry spell in August, and then a return to rain, rain, rain ever since. The corn harvest started over a week ago and should take us about 4 to 5 days to complete, yet we're barely half-way there, thanks to this wet weather that won't go away.

I knew Monday was going to be hectic. I had a full schedule that started at 5:30 a.m., which included getting the kids off to school, harvesting corn all day, and work at Atwood from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. But Marcel had opened the lid on the bin for me, bless his heart, before he left for work and I was thinking I was sitting pretty.

It was cold, mind you. The temperature had dropped to the high 20's overnight, and that means the tractors must be plugged in to keep the diesel fuel warm. I was pretty confident farner Mark would start combining at about 9:30 or so, so I was planning on plugging the tractors in at 8:00, and even thought I could run to the store for some milk and bread before we got started. Just as I was brushing my teeth, at about 7:45 or so, I heard a knock at the door. Yep, it was farmer Mark, ready to get started.

"Well, yes, of course I'm ready to go," I lied, "I was just getting ready to go out and connect the tractor to the auger."

"Well, okay then, I'll get started." replied Mark. "I'll need a few more wagons out there in a minute or so."

Assuring him that yes, I'd get everything moving, I called my mom in a panic and told her I needed her to get Armando fast. Then I ran and plugged the tractors in. Maybe they'll heat up in the 10 minutes or so that it'll take me to run the wagons out to the field, I thought.

I thought wrong.

When I tried to start our John Deere, a huge, troubling puff of white smoke billowed out of the exhaust pipe as the motor slowly chugged, chugged, chugged....and nothing. Chug, chug again.....and nothing. Then I jumped over to farmer Bill's tractor that he had lent us. His tractor chugged a little more enthusiastically, but wouldn't start either.

The tractor motors wouldn't start, but unfortunately my motor was going strong, and the muttering and grumbling started tumbling out....

"I can't believe I didn't plug the @^*&#% tractors in earlier."
"I wish Mark would've called me and told me what time he was starting this morning."
"Where is my mom to get Armando?"

Well, Mom did show up pretty quickly and got Armando, and I quickly called Marcel to ask him what I could do to speed things up. At this point, farmer Mark had two of my four wagons filled and I was getting really behind.

Marcel told me to wait 10 more minutes and try again. So I did. But this time the starter motor was really sluggish, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I wore the battery out. I called Marcel back in 10 minutes, grumbled at him pretty good, and had him listen to the motor. "Yep, you're gonna have to charge the motor," he told me. Which incited some more whining, swearing, and general gnashing of teeth on my end. He walked me through the process, and after another 15 minutes and another full wagon of corn in the field, the tractor started.

Hallelujah, we're in business.

I quickly pulled the tractor out of the barn, got it in position to hook up the PTO to the auger, and quickly found out that the auger's arm that connects to the PTO was frozen. It should usually slide back and forth pretty easily to help you slip it over the PTO on the tractor, but this time wasn't moving an inch.

So now I'm really cussing like a farmer, folks. I call farmer Mark on the cell phone and, with much embarrassment, told him I couldn't get the auger hooked up. My thoughts at this point were going downhill fast, and consisted of some really mature things like, "I'm such a girl," and "God, I'm an embarrassment to myself and this whole family," and other nice things. Can you tell I was a little more than frustrated?

Mark came over, tugged and pulled, and finally pounded the ice out of the auger arm. We got the tractor hooked up, and I have to admit I was relieved to see him struggle with it and felt a little vindicated in my wimpiness. He went back out to combine some more, and I made an SOS call to farmer Bill....."if you're home, could you please come and help me for a little while?"

Just as I pulled up to the auger with my first load of corn, Bill showed up. Mark was pretty much waiting on me at this point, so Bill's help was going to be a godsend. I tugged and pulled and hung like a monkey from the wagon door that is soo hard to open, and finally started unloading the corn into the bin. And as the corn flowed out of the wagon, the relief flowed out of my body. Bill helped me get a handle on my Monday, and am I ever grateful.

I just hope we finish the corn harvest before another Monday comes around.

Oh, and Bill? Could you clear your calendar, just in case?

Yes We Can!!

It is a new day. A new country. A new world.

Oreo is on top of the world.

We did it!! We did it together.

And the whole world celebrates.

Beginning right here in Irish Grove. Hooray for President Obama!!

Lining Up to Vote

Well, Election Day has finally arrived! What a relief!!

No more campaigning, no more lies, no more sleeze and smear, no more pandering, and no more 'gotcha' journalism. ('Course, in my opinion, if you get 'got' by the journalists who are clearly playing the game you signed up for, then who's fault is it?)

Election day on the farm is like election day everywhere else. It starts out pretty normal, with a morning stretch, a little breakfast, and a few laps around the barnyard. But then the last minute preparation begins. Time to get in line, go to the polls, and cast our vote.

You may recall that here in Irish Grove we've got some pretty civic-minded animals. They were very active in the primaries. And even though some of their candidates didn't make it through that process, they've pretty much thrown their weight behind one side or the other.

Of course, Lucero was always a McCain supporter. As he makes his way to the polls, let's see what he has to say about this historic election.


"Well, as you know, I'm a (racetrack) veteran, and we veterans stick together. The hard work and sacrifice that comes with defending the (winner's) flag bonds us in ways unimaginable to you petty civilians. Like John McCain and I say, "Farm first." Plus, Obama wants to redistribute our wealth. Ain't no cow gonna eat my hay."

Chip and Oreo, on the other hoof, support Obama. And they are getting ready to vote as we speak. I wonder what their thoughts are this morning.


"Todaaay is a day for the history books, and we are so proud to be among millions of goats voting for O-baaa-ma today. We want to improve the pastures for all faa-arm animals, not just for ourselves. And once in awhile, you know, you just go-otta eat a few bitter burdock leaves or bite into that thorny raspberry cane. It's painful, but necessary. We must keep the graaass healthy for everyone. Short term saa-acrifices for long term gains."

The other animals are getting in line to vote as well. Although your guess is as good as mine as to who they'll support.

The chickens had supported Huckabee, but he went the way of the possum. Flat as a pancake in the middle of the election super-highway. Think they'll support the Republicans anyways?

Of course, the cows wanted Hillary to win. She was going to shatter the glass barnroof that has enslaved the female bovine world and reduced them to little more than calf-makers.

They're obviously still a little peeved that she isn't the Democratic nominee.

But will they switch parties? I mean, could they find something in common with Sarah Palin, who doesn't want their daughters to know the real reason the bull is being so nice to them? Then again, there is that glass barnroof thing. Hmmn.

Unfortunately, Irish Grove isn't immune to the election-stealing tactics so common these days.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I noticed some illegal voter registration a few months ago. The goats were hosting a get-out-the-vote rally, and they added every single farm animal to the registration rolls.

Including the chicks,


and the calves.


Um, I'm sorry, but don't those voters look a little young? Quick, someone call the media!

And then there was the familiar, yet despicable voter intimidation that rears its ugly head every 4 years. Seeing as the farm animals can't read, some of us took to a more time-honored, old-fashioned way:

"You're gonna vote McCain or I'll......"

Shudder. You don't want to know the rest of that sentence. Trust me.

Oh, and I forgot one thing. Don't forget the hispanic vote this year.


That's right. Our own wonderful farmer, Marcel, is off to vote this year for the first time ever!!

Woohoo!!

Yes, good and bad, Irish Grove is like a little cross-section of America. And off we go to the polls. With pride, dignity and hope. To vote in the new leadership of our great country. May God help us all.