KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Tag: processing and preserving (page 3 of 3)

what to do with 100 eggs: baking, boiling, gifting, and selling

February 5, 2014 / / Comments Off on what to do with 100 eggs: baking, boiling, gifting, and selling

so, what do you do with 100 eggs?

what a great question! and a “problem” we did not realize we would ever have until just recently. since we get between 12-14 eggs a day, we certainly have a surplus! currently, we have 14 dozen eggs in our refrigerator… and you can imagine the space that they take up.

our delicious, orange aurora eggs, waiting to be scrambled for a yummy brunch!

our delicious, orange aurora eggs, waiting to be scrambled for a yummy brunch!

of course, one of the ideal solutions to this “problem” would be to sell every dozen for a profit, but since we  haven’t established a customer base yet that isn’t an option right now.

the following is a list of some things we’ve been doing with our eggs to lessen the load. i suggest trying all options if you have a surplus!

  • boil them! i boil a dozen every few days and we take about 5 or 6 (between us) to work every day for breakfast in the car or an easy snack.
  • bake with them! jason has developed a delicious german pancake recipe (recipe forthcoming) that uses 4-6 eggs. he has also made spaetzle and i often make a delicious breakfast casserole that has sausage, veggies, and cheese (recipe forthcoming).
  • give some to the dogs! since we have so many, we don’t need to be stingy about the dogs getting a few eggs throughout the week. whether they are cooked or raw, the dogs love them and it makes bridey eat her dry food all the faster (without eggs she sometimes walks away from her food before finishing up). and bolt gets his eggs with the shell and all!
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these are all of the eggs that i have thus far blown out for gifts or for future art projects.

  • blow them out to save the shell! i have blown out around 30 so far, to save as gifts or for utilizing in future art projects. when i blow them out, i usually do a lot at once, and i time it so that i can use the eggs for baking or feeding to the dogs soon after.
  • invite a lot of people over for a meal! jason’s family was in town last week and it felt great to use 14+ eggs in our scrambled egg brunch. it’s also a great feeling to feed our own healthy food to those we love. i think we’ll have to have more people over for brunches in the near future…
  • give some away, for pete’s sake! we’ve given away dozens of eggs to our family, neighbors, co-workers, and friends. not only is doing this rewarding because you are giving, but there is a chance that a few of these friends or co-workers might just want to purchase your eggs from you after realizing how how delicious they are!
  • freeze them! we’ve not done this yet, but i’ve learned that freezing eggs is a great way to preserve them (if you want to store them longer than 3-6 months in the fridge). just make sure that you have cleaned the eggs first so that when they freeze–and inevitably bust through the shell a slight bit–you don’t have contamination issues on your hands.
  • and last but not least… get creative!!! look up new recipes, make up your own recipes and experiment as much as you can with ways to cook eggs. think about it… with a surplus of delicious, hearty eggs, what time is better than now to dive into the new, fresh, and creative?

.:.

wind egg, fairy egg: the smallest and most amazing egg in the world!

January 27, 2014 / / Comments Off on wind egg, fairy egg: the smallest and most amazing egg in the world!

something amazing happened to me the other day. i’m so excited about this that you would think that i happened to lay my own egg! (that will come some day, but not yet!)

here’s what really happened:

i was collecting eggs in the afternoon and i found an amazing, tiny egg snuggled in the nest box with the other standard and bantam sized eggs. at first i thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. but i quickly realized that there was in fact a tiny, darker egg laying in the nest box with the other eggs.

IMG_1178

the wind egg, laying on top of other standard eggs. you can see that the wind egg is darker and much smaller!

having never seen or heard of this before, i clutched that little tiny egg closely, being sure to cradle it in my hand until i got inside and placed it somewhere safe.

later, i used a technique that my mom taught be years ago for preserving beautiful or interesting egg shells: blowing out the egg. this technique allows you to preserve the egg for many, many years!

the procedure is simple, really. you use a safety pin to poke a small hole in the bottom of the egg (a couple millimeters across) and an even smaller hole in the top. then you proceed to blow into the top hole so that all of the contents of the egg are blown through the bottom hole (be sure to save the egg for using in a recipe or for scrambled eggs).

as i was blowing out the egg, i saw that there was no yolk inside, and the egg white seemed a little murky and did not look very delicious. so, jason did some research about the tiny egg!

he found that such small eggs are often called wind eggs. they are commonly a shade lighter or a shade darker than the hen’s usual egg and they are usually a hen’s first attempt at laying. these little eggs do not include a yolk because, well, they are not really an egg, actually. they may have an egg shell around them, but they could not support life as an egg should.

they are usually made when some portion of the hen’s reproductive tissue breaks off (no harm to her, though) and her body thinks that the tissue passing through her nether-regions is the beginning of an egg. so, her body slaps a shell on that baby and sends it on out into the world.

these eggs are also called fairy eggs, and i can see why: what child wouldn’t want to believe that a fairy had been playing with her chickens! in the past, these eggs were called cock eggs, and because of their size and the fact that they aren’t viable, people originally believed roosters had laid them.

how amazing! an amazing history for an amazing little “egg.” i will certainly forever cherish my little wind egg, and keep it as a reminder that there is always true magic that nature has to offer us!

.:.

sweet potatoes: jewels of the soil

January 20, 2014 / / Comments Off on sweet potatoes: jewels of the soil

we have been eating so many of our sweet potatoes this winter, both baked as warm, delicious snacks, or made into my delicious sweet potato ginger soup.

this fall, we had a sweet potato yield of about 12o pounds. this is more than we expected since, frankly, we didn’t really know what to expect because this was our first time growing them.

the recommended planting dates for sweet potatoes in our region are may 15-june 15 and our plants went in the ground on june 11, 2013. the 100+ plants were given to us by my father, and jason planted them 3-6″ deep in two of our raised beds. each plant was 12″ apart within rows, and 36-42″ apart between rows.

the first harvest day: halfway harvested and halfway to go

the first harvest day: halfway harvested and halfway to go

within a few months, the vines went crazy and flourished. we had a small issue with a groundhog who was trying to munch on the vines, but jason dealt with that effectively.

since the average number of days until maturity for sweet potatoes is 105-135 days, we decided to wait until the later end of that spectrum, hoping for larger potatoes. i harvested the first half of the sweet potatoes in mid-october and jason and i harvested the other half together at the very end of october.

jason, placing freshly dug sweet potatoes in a box

jason, placing freshly dug sweet potatoes in a box

since the first frost of fall was on october 22, we cut all of the sweet potato vines off at the ground the night before to make sure that the frost wouldn’t run into the ground and damage the potatoes. this meant that the potatoes sat in the ground for about a week without their vines, which is not a cause for alarm. still, the sooner you harvest the potatoes after cutting off their vines, the better.

i harvested the first half on a harvest day, according to blum’s farmer’s and planter’s almanac. i also encountered a black widow while i dug up the vines, and learned later that black widows love sweet potato vines more than many other hiding spots. be aware while digging up your potatoes of all kinds!

the first harvest: a bushel of potatoes waiting to be cleaned and sorted

the first harvest: potatoes waiting to be cleaned and sorted

neither day that we harvested was sunny, so we did not leave them outside in the sun to cure. instead, we wiped as much dirt off of them as possible, sorted them by size (keeping the tiny potatoes for bolt to eat as treats), and stored them in our guest bedroom/farm room.

sweet potatoes sorted into crates

sweet potatoes sorted into crates

our harvest, stored in the farm room

our harvest, stored in the farm room

 

 

 

 

 

 

we’ve stacked them in multi-tiered, open-air crates to help with the curing and drying process. currently, 3 months later, most of the potatoes continue to store well and we intentionally choose the iffy ones to use first when cooking and baking.

we are proud of our first sweet potato crop and in 2014 we plan to plant even more sweet potato plants than last year! this year, when may comes, we’ll be ready to get those plants in the ground even earlier!

.:.

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