These Odd Times

This is my zen activity each day. I contemplate sixty eggs, one at a time. I look at the size, shape, color, gloss, texture, irregularities, and unique qualities of each one. When I assemble each dozen, I sort all the eggs by color and gloss, then take my time arranging them. I love balancing the colors in each carton. I usually put on chill music and hit my pipe. It’s a slow process. Egg Tai Chi. Today it’s raining which makes it even better. It’s my zen garden mandalas, my daily joy, my responsibility that gets me up every day. I’ve been selling out of my eggs over a year now and this morning I had an amazing revelation. All over Nelson County, people are eating my girls’ eggs every day. I feel this so deeply during this CoVid-19 shutdown. I actually am contributing something. Ha! This pandemic will be the best thing ever for the Eat Local Movement.

And maybe a few of those people are taking a single moment to pause and think “That is such a beautiful egg.” and then smash it. I actually do bring a tiny bit of delight and real value to my neighbors lives. I’ve never allowed myself to think about that before. I wanted to share the amazing beauty I find in these eggs and I succeeded. I realized, what I wanted to accomplish, I did! A good revelation indeed.

Love and Gratitude to every one of my neighbors over the last five years who have celebrated these eggs with me.

paul @ Art is an Egg

Mother's Day 2016

When my mother was a young woman,
She decided to paint the heads
Of thousands of flathead pins.
A few hundred of this color,
A few thousand of that.

Then she would push thousands of these pins
Into blocks of styrofoam
To make beautiful paintings.
She did two of these,
One of the crucifixion,
The second of Jesus and Peter on the sea.

These hung in my home all of my childhood,
Until time eventually reduced the styrofoam
To dust.

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In my mom's last few years
She painted rocks,
A step up from styrofoam.
I've kept one that she painted
Recalling one of her lost pin paintings.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.
You are loved and missed.

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250 fresh eggs - the colors they were laid.

Birth of an Obsession

In August 2013, I came across this picture on BackyardChickens.com.

It was a chicken egg that came from cross breeding a chicken that laid blue eggs with a chicken that laid dark brown eggs. Blue and brown made olive green. Who knew?

I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. The next day I went online and ordered a new flock of birds that would arrive April of 2014. Half of them “Easter Eggers”, chickens which lay blue green eggs, and the rest Cuckoo Marans, a very dark brown egg laying breed. I wanted to breed some of these “Olive Eggers” myself. I’d had a flock of 20-40 chickens for most of the past 14 years and this seemed like a fun science project!

As I waited for Spring to come and the arrival of new chicks, I continued to read more about other varieties from all over the world that lay colored eggs. I learned about some of the genetics involved, and found colors I never knew existed. I found galleries online of colored chicken eggs and became enamored with the beauty of some of the arrangements.

My 40 chicks arrived in April, but by May I already had bigger plans to develop, not just green eggs, but to explore as many different colors of natural chicken eggs I could discover or breed.

I purchased more chicks of several new breeds and began building a small farm with a maximum capacity of about 200 chickens over the summer of 2014. I designed the entire facility but had the help of many friends, neighbors, and family building the 12′ X 36′ coop, a 4000 square foot pen open to acres of pasture, and four breeding pens.

At present I have about 180 hens and nine roosters, and about 50 young ones I hatched this past January. I currently have 13 breeds of birds.

I want to keep this small and of the highest Quality.
I think people are gonna like this.
I hope so.

paul Hudspeth

What Chickens Really Want

When we buy our eggs
We want to know
Cage-Free, Free Range, Pastured?

We want to see a flock of hens
In a sea of grass.
We all know,
Chickens want grass.

But they want more. 
Chickens also want a stable home,
The same place to sleep in every night
And lay eggs in every day.

Protection from cold winds, rain and snow.
Allowed to wander for acres,
Chickens will always come home at night.
They are the original creatures of habit. 

Chickens also want shaded places,
Under a porch, and out of the sun.
Overhead protection when the rooster says GO!
The earliest chickens lived in dark jungles.

Chickens want to get down in the dirt,
Every day. 
They wallow in established dust pits for hours,
On their backs,
Feet in the air. 
Animals that exude Joy
As loudly as a happy puppy.

Chickens want the opposite sex.
A few roosters in the flock
To provide natural tranquility and protection.
The hens relax and forage, 
Someone has their back.

Chickens want to be social beings.
They negotiate for position in the flock,
They move up and down in rank.
And up and down the roosts.
They have their favorites to sleep with.

There is more to a life of a happy chicken
Than just grass.
 

yell

I see predators at my place often,
Coyotes, foxes, hawks.
I’ll stand outside and watch them a while,
But when I’m done,
I yell;
And for whatever reason,
They startle and run.

Sitting quietly with my girls today,
Watching a creature so defenseless
Against claw, tooth, and talon;
I realized it has evolved an incredible,
Ear splitting
Defense.

Little Blue - aka "Pipes"
Blue Laced Red Wyandotte