Meet Our Flock.

Meet our feathery friends! We have a variety of chickens, ducks and two geese on our farm. They are surprising delightful to work with. Their anticks make us laugh often. We have one duck who has taken to following me around as I rinse and refill the duck “ponds”- little swimming pools. Her objective is finding extra worms or spiders or bugs that may be cooling off under the pools. Her name has become Fisher in honor of her fishing for worms every morning. She is a highlight of my morning. Most of our chickens and ducks do not like to be held but will follow us everywhere around their yard. They have a good size yard to explore but do not get to explore the pasture as we have coyotes that have taken off with a few. So, to protect them, they have an enclosed yard that they happily scratch, peek and dig for whatever delicious morsels they can find. Occasionally, they flap up and over the fence to the front yard to graciously help me till up my flower gardens in search for something yummy. If only they would till up just the weeds and not the flowers!

Meet Our Ducks.

We gather eggs from our hens (chickens, ducks and yes even our geese) daily. Because our ducks like to find nice muddy areas to lay, we do clean them up a bit while trying to keep the bloom intact. The bloom of an egg helps protect it from bacteria entering the porous shell. Washing diminishes this protective layer and shortens their shelf life.

Farm fresh eggs are not limited to chickens, ducks and geese have amazing eggs as well. Duck eggs are excellent to bake with in all sorts of cakes and goodies that need extra volume from the whites. Duck whites froth up stiffer more than chicken eggs I have found. I have also found I like egg casserole better with goose eggs not only due to taste but texture as well. The taste is rich, hardy and smooth while supporting a slightly fluffy dense casserole that holds any kind of ingredient you put in without letting it sink to the bottom. It has been a fun journey so far learning about and working with our feathery friends. We still have much to learn but that is part of the journey.

New to our flock in 2024 are the guineas. These silly birds go all over the pasture, flock yard and paddocks gobbling up as many bugs as they can. They like to antaganize the Preanese by settling on the fence rail and “yell” down at them. I think they are asking them to move so they can explore for more bugs. It doesn’t work. Athena and Mariam chase them away from their herd.