Tying Up Loose Ends

The field is full of daisies.

There were a few past posts I left unresolved and a couple I'd like to update.

One was the mystery of the egg eating hens, which turned out to be a Blue Jay. My dad, being the resourceful farmer he is, solved the whole problem by painting golf balls the color of the hens eggs (a light brown) and keeping the real eggs picked up. End of problem. Someone else will have to ascertain why that worked for sure but my guess is that the Blue Jay doesn't like eating golf balls.

Another chicken and egg issue was my dismissal of our Cuckoo Marans' first egg as "nice brown but not dark brown". Well, I think they are listening and had a rather strong reaction to my criticism.

Just look at these beautiful eggs! The two lightest eggs are from our other flock of Domoniques.

But wait Girls-

Aren't you going a little overboard? Are they all double yolkers? I take it all back!

Our apple trees are all doing fine except for the Chehalis. When we built our little tree guards, we were thinking of deer. We should have been looking closer to the ground.

Wabbits! They chewed so much of the bark off that the poor tree couldn't pull through. We reinforced our cages for big and small nibblers.



Also, I realized I had forgotten to wax poetic about our first crop of raspberries so I will just let the picture speak for itself.



I ate half of them while still standing in the garden. Where was Buck?, I don't know...
I cooked the rest into a light syrup and then added olive oil and balsamic vinegar for an amazing salad dressing! Double Yum.

Oh and this dog

now smells like this.

Way to go Bruiser. I thought the first time would be the last time. Maybe he likes smelling like Peppe LePew. We don't.