The Hen House Winter Blues

You might think that eggs just happen.  And most of the time they do. Give those hens a home, food and happy thoughts and you will end up with golden-yolked eggs.  But every winter, our hens decide to go on strike and stop laying eggs.  As the daylit hours lesson, so does the laying of eggs.  On a crisp day in October, I can walk out of the barn looking like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket full of goodies.  One week later,  I stagger out looking like an addict without her fix.   So begins our "egg withdrawal period" which can stretch from one week to two months. Let me tell you, things are not the same around the breakfast table during our winter "egg famine".

It has been 10 years since my husband and kids first came home with half a dozen chickens from a farmer down the road who had too many.  (The hens were the first of many "surprises for mom" that required food, water and a place to live.)  We were excited  as we waited for that magical first egg to appear.  As we sat down to our first breakfast of our own golden-hued scrambled eggs a few days later, we finally felt like we had arrived...that we were no longer farmer wannabes but were real "living-off-the-land" farmers!  The eggs were beautiful; the brown, white and blue eggs were worthy of a page in a Martha Stewart Living Magazine. The best part, though, was the taste - mild and unbelievably fresh  and well-worth waiting for.

Every winter when our hens stop laying, I tell myself and my family that I will not buy "fake" eggs.  But in the end, pancakes with fake eggs are better than pancakes with no eggs at all. So in disguise, I sneak down the aisle past the milk and butter and grab a carton.  I rush them into the house and into our own BirdSong Farm egg cartons before my family sees.  But it never fools them.  The eggs we have to buy from the store really do taste like cardboard in comparison...and smell terrible, too!  Our hens are free-range and grass-fed which means they can roam through our orchards, pasture and garden eating seeds, grasses and bugs.  Believe it or not, that makes for healthier and better tasting eggs than the feed store pellets.  (Store/factory eggs can be thirty days old or more and the nutritional value diminishes a little each day.  So when you eat an egg of questionable age from the store most of the nutritional value could be gone as well as the flavor.)

What sets off the Hen House Winter Blues?  Nature and stress are usually the culprits.  Hens only lay one egg per day and they lay according to the number of hours of daylight in a day.  Egg factories keep chickens locked inside with a light on 24/7.  We choose not to keep a light on in the barn all night long.  We prefer to run our farm and raise our animals naturally, which means that, for the most part we trust the cycles of nature and believe they have their purpose.  No midnight oil in our hen house!  Hens can also be stressed out and quit laying.  Cold weather, predators, or even a playful puppy can cause them to stop laying.  On top of the shortened winter days and the cold nights, our hens have had to put up with "Bear", our one year old English Springer puppy.  He loves the chickens, but they don't love him.  His joy in life is seeing how many feathery things he can get to fly out of his way as he comes careening around the corner, sending chickens flying like pins in a bowling alley.  He loves to chase them just long enough to let them know he is there, then he's off to find another playmate. 

We have been given the following advice to cure our hens of their winter blues:
*Put a heat lamp on them at night.  We tried that once and ended up with a firetruck careening down our driveway, but that's another story for another blog...
*Feed them scratch (corn), but not too much because it is like candy to them.
*Put fake wooden eggs in their nest boxes to give them a hint.  I am using my onyx and marble eggs from France and Italy instead.  So far they're not impressed.
*Warm their water, or better yet, give them warm milk (and cookies too).

Winter will end and spring warmth will come again.  Just as reliable as the change of seasons, our hens will begin to lay again.  In the meantime, I will feed them candy, keep the bears away, and whisper to them of longer days ahead.  Let's hope it works soon.

Dewey and Loneta

I learned gardening from my grandparents, Dewey and Loneta Worthington. They grew up knowing the dirt and how to coax delicious potatoes, tomatoes and corn from it. Not only did they teach me how to grow, but their family dinners taught me how real food tastes - a tomato, juicy and warm from the garden; freshly picked green beans and flavorful baby potatoes; and strawberries sweeter than any picked up at the store. They composted before there was a word for it. They were "green" before "green" became a political and social maneuver.

Dewey and Loneta were born on homesteads in Missouri. Raising most of their own food, or trading for what they didn't grow, they learned early on that hard work and integrity go hand in hand. Hard work came in the form of daily chores - feeding the livestock, cooking meals over a fire, planting and harvesting fields and gardens, sewing their own clothes. Integrity came in the form of helping others, no matter how many hours of daylight they had already worked.

As teenagers, one of their first dates took place at a spot in the road called Birdsong, Missouri. It wasn't much more than a post office and a dirt road, but it was a place where a lifetime of unconditional loving began. That unconditional love for family made me and my children feel safe on their farm as a child and it continues to guide my family today.

In 1998, as we began our dream of owning a small, family farm, BirdSong seemed an appropriate name for my family's attempt at farming, organic gardening, being a good neighbor and loving the good life. As I wake up to the cacophony of roosters crowing, doves cooing, and wild birds singing, it seems a good name, indeed, for this wonderful place! As Dewey would say, "now this is livin!"