Exciting news! I have added a couple of wheelbarrow loads of sheep-poo to the veggie gardens. Doesn't that make you quiver with excitement? Well, not me either, really. But it has to be done - the soil is nothing much more than sand. I'm a very average, lacadasical gardener, who tends to chuck occasional bursts of intense energy at it when either the current book is struggling, or I am overcome by sudden wave of fear about feeding ourselves. The results are fairly patchy! Still, so far we are managing to eat, sometimes far to much. In all of this the chooks have been a lovely steady supply of eggs, probably because unlike the plants I would have real guilt if that suffered neglect. The downside of this is eggs, which also the upside. In spring and summer however people wonder around trying to give away eggs with a rather hopeless optimism. And to add insult to injury one of my best mates has left the island (temporarily) TRIED TO GIVE EGGS BACK. It was nearly the end of a beautiful friendship! :-). Perhaps we could have a tourism drive where we lure politicians of various stripes over here to help the island economy... and sell eggs. I think people would fly in from all over. Only given Australia's penchant for regulation, the eggs would probably have to be grown in batteries, health checked and packed in standard sizes and have little inspectors checking for hard-boiled ones...
On other news... the wind isn't actually blowing right now.
If you were serious about your problem of an occasional surplus of eggs and not just kidding around you might be interested in this article http://www.preparednesspro.com/safely-preserving-eggs
ReplyDeleteSally Wu
Oh it's serious all right. My chooks - isa brown cross hiline, are lovely steady layers, they live in a mobile ark and so far have not got sick or bored with laying or broody in the last 3 years, but I am the exception to the general rule. A lot of people keep chooks, of all sorts of breeds and all sorts of conditions - which means they have spring/early summer masses of eggs and none in winter. My egg-numbers are such that we tend to get around 20 eggs a week, and use something like 8-12 on average (what this means is we'd just be scraping at one less chook - but less than 3 is not good socially for them I believe. Of course some weeks we use a lot, and some weeks hardly any. But it means we usually have a spare dozen to 18 eggs every 2 weeks or so, which I hadn't thought worth trying to preserve, as we, ourselves, are never short. Usually it is easy to give them away, and there are a long list of people in Winter or Autumn or holiday time delighted to have extra eggs - just not in spring! I will go and have a look at the site, though. I have a friend who might be very grateful! Thank you.
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