My little farm does not look like it belongs on the cover of a country magazine. My chicken coop is not all fancied up and my barn needs painting. My husband will tell you that I have way more animals than I need, they don’t all have names and they aren’t necessarily the prettiest. Heck, there are even some critters that come just for breakfast before moving on. Keeping animals is not necessarily cheap, although it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, and it’s hard work. Things breakdown, there are weeds to contend with, and animals die. So, if farming sounds so gloomy, why do I have animals and what have I learned from them?
I enjoy Easter, for many reasons, one being family traditions. It’s a time to gather as families and enjoy good food, and fun activities…like coloring Easter Eggs! I remember when I was a little girl we spent one Easter at my grandma’s home. We colored eggs, the old-fashioned way. My grandma must have had a ton of onions stored in her basement. She collected the dried, brown onion skins which we wrapped around uncooked eggs. We tied thread around them to hold the skins in place and then hard-boiled the eggs in a pan of water on the stove. The result was beautiful yellow eggs with brown marbling. The most memorable part was just spending time with my grandma. Coloring Easter Eggs with my kids was always a fun time, albeit a little messy maybe, but a time filled with laughs and giggles and ah’s as they created some awesome design on an egg. We experimented with different store bought and homemade coloring kits. A favorite was always drawing pictures or writing names on the eggs with a wax crayon before dipping them in the egg dye. The wax repels the coloring and your drawing shows up easily on the colored egg.
I would like to share three easy, home-grown methods of coloring eggs. I can’t take credit for coming up with the ideas, but I have tried them and they were fun, easy, inexpensive and I was pleased with the results. Start with white or light colored hard-boiled egg. To make peeling easy with even the freshest of eggs, I hard-boil my eggs in the pressure cooker on high for 9 minutes, then quick release and run eggs under cold water.
To pressure cook, put eggs in a steamer basket with 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar.
Technique #1) Dump 1/4 cup of rice into a zip lock bag. Add 15 – 20 drops of liquid food coloring and mix. Put a hard-boiled egg into the bag, zip it shut and gently toss your egg. This seems like it would be a good one for young kids, and not real messy. Once desired results are achieved, remove the egg from the bag, set it on a paper towel for a few minutes to dry, then wipe of any excess rice. The result is a kind of fun textured pattern on your egg. You might have to add additional food coloring if you do more than just a few eggs, but they dry quickly and then you just toss the ziploc in the garbage. Not a lot of dirty cups to wash.
You can even mix your colors following the directions on the back of the food coloring package.A fun textured pattern.
Technique #2) This is a variation of the shaving cream, food coloring tie-dye effect. Spread some whipped cream on a cookie sheet and add some drops of food coloring.
I used several drops of blue, green and yellow food coloring.
Swirl it gently with a fork. Don’t mix too much or the colors will combine and you will end up with muddy colors.
Roll your eggs through the colors and then set on a paper towel to dry. I let mine dry for about 1/2 hour, then rinsed off the whipped cream. The result was beautiful, pastel, tie-dyed eggshells.
Roll to achieve desired results. Don’t over do it.
Technique #3) Onion skin dyed eggs. Wrap a raw egg in the outer layer of onion skins and secure with thread or twine. Place in a pan on a stove and boil for 20 minutes or until hard-boiled. Place in cool water and remove onion skins.
I had a purple onion and a brown onion. The result for both was yellow colored eggs. The brown onion had brown marbling and the purple onion skin had some blue marbling.
I know that some chicken owners are lucky and have hens that do all the egg coloring for them, but for those of us who don’t, I hope that you give some of these fun egg coloring techniques a try. Let me know of any fun egg coloring techniques that are a tradition in your family. Above all, have an enjoyable holiday with family and friends!
My mom tells the story of when I was a toddler, we went to the park. There, of course, was a lake at the park with lots of ducks. I had a bag of popcorn which I was evidently sitting on the bench thoroughly enjoying. My mom suggested that I share some of my popcorn with the hungry ducks and my response was, “No! I no like ducks!”
Trimming a chicken’s beak, toenails or spurs can be intimidating. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if they could tell us when something hurts, but since they can’t, we tend to be a little reluctant to do the trimming for fear we might cause some pain or discomfort. A chicken’s beak, and toe nails, and a rooster’s spurs are all made out of keratin, a fibrous protein structure. That is the same thing that our hair and fingernails are made of and we know that cutting our nails doesn’t hurt, unless we get too close! And just as our hair and nails continue to grow, so does a chicken’s. Hopefully, through most of a chicken’s daily activities, they wear their nails and beak down naturally and don’t require any intervention. A chicken’s scratching in the dirt, looking for bugs and seeds, help to wear down their nails. You might have noticed a chicken wiping their beak on the ground as if to clean some dirt off. This act will file down a beak and keep it in check. A rooster’s spurs on the other hand grow out the side of the leg and are sharp, pointed and often used in disputes with other roosters. They do not touch the ground and so it is harder to keep them filed down. Spurs can grow to be quite long and get to the point where they interfere with walking, or injure a hen when mating. That’s when it’s time to intervene.
It’s all in your perspective.Some would think this is a mess, an eyesore, a hazard. Others would just think tetanus! I rescued this tangled mess of rusted barbed wire and transformed it into a beautiful home decoration for my nephew’s girlfriend. I hope she loves it!
Grapes were a favorite fruit of my boys as they were growing up. We always had grapes. About 6 years ago I decided to plant a couple of vines and grow my own grapes! I did my research and selected two seedless table grape varieties. They were dormant, bare-root vines that I planted in the early spring after I could work the ground. To support my vines I put up four green T-posts and strung welded wire fencing. My grape trellis is about 5’6” tall and about 8’ long. I didn’t really expect any grapes the first year, but I didn’t expect one of the plants to die either! The following spring I planted a champagne table grape. It is a smaller grape and pretty sweet. They make very tasty raisins.
I started my hobby farming with chickens. There is no better way to start your journey with hobby farming and healthy living than with chickens! Chickens are animated and fun to watch. They can be very pretty, when not molting, they are not difficult to keep, AND they give back. That incredible edible egg! Just look at the size of the egg I got this last summer! Yes, it was a double yolker! I was hoping for three yolks, but it was not to be.
