Starts with H
Words that start with H include huge, or hefty, which are good words to describe one of today's eggs from the chicken flock. Normal "large" size eggs from the grocery store weigh approximately 2 oz, or 56 grams, and extra-large weigh 2.25 oz, or about 64 grams. Here's a fairly normal egg from our flock.
The tiny eggs we get from our silkies weigh about 1.2-1.4 oz (35-43 grams) which is classified as a "small" or "peewee" egg for commercial sizing (based on the USDA egg weights, which are similar to the Canadian egg sizing charts).
Today's huge, hefty egg came in at an amazing 3.1 oz (87.8 grams) making it the largest yet from our flock. I feel a bit sorry for the hen who had to push this one out!
Holy cow! errr....egg!
House
We still have quite a bit of snow around our house, as you can see in this picture. This is a view of our house through the grove of trees in the front yard. Although we've had some warmer days and some sunshine, it takes a long time for the snow to melt because we get a lot of shade from the trees. Some areas near us that have sun all day have no snow, which is weird for this time of year here.
Here's the path to the chicken "house" or coop. The path is VERY icy right now because we've had several freezing rain events and then melting, with freezing again, making the path a very compacted, icy spot. I have put some straw down in the front of the coop to stop me from falling on the ice.
The deck still has a lot of snow on it, as you can see on the steps in the left of this picture, and all the flower beds are still well covered with snow, although it's only about 6 or 8 inches now, compared to the 2-3 feet we might normally have in February.
Favourite
One of my favourite new additions to my house that I assembled and installed a couple of weeks ago is a new bookshelf in the kitchen to hold all my cookbooks. Now my cookbooks are all close at hand when I am actually cooking, rather than being in the home office. I have organized the cookbooks by category.
I am very fond of the rabbit and mouse bookends that I am able to use on the bookshelf. They are longtime favourites of mine as well!
A bonus favourite shot: Here is "mama" hen Whisp, a splash silkie, with her two young ones, who have grown into lovely little chickens. The little hen on the left is Buttercream, and the little rooster on the right is Willoughby. Whisp didn't lay the eggs, but she did incubate them, and the rooster (Wellington) to the left of Whisp is definitely the father. I suspect that the hen you can just see in the far left (her back and tail are visible) is the one who laid the eggs, since she is the palest of my red hens, and the eggs were definitely from one of the red production hens. The pale colour of the little ones leads me to suspect the eggs were hers, but I'm not sure. In any case, they have integrated quite well into the flock and are permanently outdoors now, rather than in the rabbit cage in my home office! Hooray for that!
3 comments:
...oh that poor chicken! Two of those and you could make a three egg omelet. Snow, I had forgotten what it looked like, there will be some no doubt when I return home. What an amazing cookbook collection. Thank Claire so much for sharing this week, I hope to see you again.
Hi Claire ~~ I too have learned that the grade A "averages" rwo ounces. To be very proper a dozen of grade A eggs should weigh at least 25 ounces. I really like your bookcase, it fits well where you pUT it. I'm li k e Tom, we've had enough this winter, two times,with a couple of inches each time. Our "nornal" is "one snowfall every ten years"
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You still have a lot of snow! Ugh. Hold tight...Spring is on the way. Or, so we hope.
The chickens are lovely...as are their eggs. Do you just fry up those little eggs? Or do you use them in recipes? I've never seen them so tiny. I think I would feel guilty eating them, they are so beautiful!
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