What a way to start the new year. Miss Hillary laid an egg yesterday and one again today. Hurray, we’re back in the egg business. (Not that we sell them.) These are the first eggs we’ve had since Oct. 31. That was a long dry spell.
Henrietta and Chicken Little are still loafing around, eating food but not providing us with any eggs. I can’t tell if they’re on vacation or if they have permanently retired. They’re lucky that I’m an urban farmer, not a real farmer, or they would have gone into the stew pot by now.
Meanwhile, I have my eye on another hen. Hope to acquire her soon so we’ll have enough eggs in 2012.
I didn’t expect to have any more harvests for 2011, but I managed to squeak out one final harvest. So here is my real last harvest for 2011, plus the first two eggs of 2012. I didn’t get around to photographing the harvest, but I baked the yams and made a Williamsburg Lodge orange cake with sherry icing with the oranges. It’s a dense cake with pecans and raisins from a colonial recipe from Williamsburg, VA.
FRUIT
1 lb 8 oz oranges, navel
VEGETABLES
0.5 oz ginger root
1 oz parsley
2 oz potatoes, blue
1 lb 9 oz yams
TOTAL PRODUCE 3 lbs 4.5 oz plus 2 eggs
I just added up my year’s total harvest for 2011. I managed to get 234 lbs, only 10 lbs more than last year despite the addition of the community garden plot. I probably spent between $1,600 and $2,000 on the garden, mainly on new infrastructure for the new plot that had to be replaced due to changing garden rules. I managed to use all of the metal trellising at home. I’m saving the vinyl-clad wire fencing and redwood bed borders in hopes of a new community garden closer to my home, but that new garden is probably several years off in the future.
Visit Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others are harvesting or how they’re using their harvest.
Lou Murray's Green World 
Congratulations on having the egg production return. We are down quite a bit right now because of the winter darkness and because one of my hens was injured about a week and a half ago and has quit producing while she is healing.
LikeLike
Congrats on your eggs and a nice end of year harvest!
LikeLike
Thanks, Robin.
LikeLike
Glad you are back in the egg business. Your cake sound delicious.
LikeLike
Norma, yes the orange cake was wonderful. I may post the recipe.
LikeLike
Congratulations on being back in the egg business. Miss Hillary needs to have a talk with those other hens!
Nice Harvest! I haven’t had a harvest since October, but there is a tiny patch of sickly spinach out there, so maybe I should pick a couple of leaves……just because 😉
LikeLike
Annie’s Granny, so happy you’re online. I just picked a few leaves of spinach from my tiny, sickly patch. They are going into a salad tonight along with some spindly carrots, a passel of snow peas and some nice lettuce.
LikeLike
Yay! congrats on the eggs. Same here too, our girls are just starting to ramp up again thanks to the increasing days! Happy New Year!
LikeLike
Claire, I figured with all of your hens that you would never be out of eggs.
LikeLike
Hurrah, Miss Hillary!
LikeLike
Whoohoo for eggs. I’d love to have chickens, but I’m just not willing to take care of them all the time. In the winter I just wouldn’t go out to deal with them when the weather is bitter cold. My asthma would get me. And travel would be a pain.
LikeLike
Daphne, don’t forget having to deal with all the chicken poop whether or not they’re laying. But it completes the circle of life in my garden since their eggshells and droppings go into my compost pile, and they get some of the worms out of the compost bin.
LikeLike
Congrats on the eggs! 🙂
Lynn
LikeLike
Thanks, Lynn.
LikeLike