Good Day JWR,
My prayers continue daily for you, and for your son’s hearts healing at the loss of Memsahib. May you find some fraction of reciprocal solace and warmth from the Thanksgiving Blessings from God for the many hundreds of thousands of lives that you have enriched with your blog and books. Thanksgivings to you JWR for what you have done and do so very well, by providing this valuable multi-national information highway of connectedness on survival and preparedness!
Here is my organizational tip of the week I would like to share. We have free range poultry and very rogue ducks and geese. The chickens and guineas are pretty reliable about returning to the coop for their egg “layoff”. However, our many hen ducks just roam and lay where ever they get the urge to do so. Most of their eggs are used for baking and if I don’t check the property for newly made nests with eggs every day or so, I end up with occasional bad, rotten eggs in my mixing bowl, because I have lost track of the age of the eggs. This is a smell you are likely not wanting inside your kitchen! Phewy! Always break eggs, one at a time, in a separate bowl before adding them to your other ingredients.
To help me organize and pull these piles of eggs for sorting in this order for my use: for eating,(the freshest), for incubating under a surrogate brooder, (the next in oldest date and these get marked with the date with a wax china marker pencil before getting placed under the surrogate), and then those which are past hatching (after 35 days) and end up in the compost pile. What I use now as nest place markers, is a saved and placed used and cleaned styrofoam plate or used aluminum pie pan (these are long term reusable) which have been marked and dated with a fine tip marker onto a piece of masking tape on the outer rim of the plate where it can be seen easily once filled with eggs, the actual date that I set it on the ground and place it under the surrounded pile of leaves and plucked out down and pin feathers. Then when I am scratching my head, two or three weeks later, wondering when this pile was layed, I have a reference to refer to and do not have to toss all the eggs in the composter. Those eggs that are freshest, by the way, are usually on the top and to the back, and are still warm to the touch hours after being laid.
Those eggs that a broody hen has pushed or rolled away from the nest, you can go ahead and remove and place in the compost pile. She knows that the egg is not viable for hatching.
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Also, another tip for barnyard time savings: Keep your old egg cartons out by the hen house. Instead of transferring the eggs twice, from the nest to the basket and then to a bowl or carton, just pull the fresh eggs and place them straight into a carton, mark the date on a piece of masking tape on the end of the carton for easy viewing. Eggs that I donate to charity, or sell to neighbors and friends, I ask them to please return my cartons cleaned for reuse and recycling again. May all Have a Blessed Thanksgiving Day! – KAF