It is about 10 thousand degrees outside right now.
I’m not kidding.
I’m Canadian I was not built for such extreme temperatures.
And so far on the hottest day of the year I have managed to sell 5 dozen eggs! Boo ya!
We put up signs at the end of both our driveways (yes both. We have a road running on each side of our property, and the one side is highway exposure. So boo ya again!) and are starting to see the benefits of it.
Today when I came home from work I was shocked to find the little bar fridge empty and my little money mason jar full. It made the day even better.
Did you catch that?
I said when I came home from work.
For almost a year I have been playing homesteader. Farmer. Goat slave. Whatever you want to call it. (I prefer goat slave.)
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But once a bakery babe, always a bakery babe. It’s just in my blood apparently. Honestly it’s nice to talk to real people again. It’s nice to work in an air conditioned building when it’s 10 thousand degrees outside. It’s nice to be a cake decorator again.
As for the garden, I was sure it was not going to produce anything. The terrible soil here has been a struggle for me. Plus my garden was once a gravel parking lot. Some what poetic actually. What was once a parking lot is now a garden. We should have more parking lots become gardens. Growing food makes everything better.
My tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and kale are loving the heat that we are finally having. We’ll be eating from the garden tonight! About time. And I will just ignore the fact that our 5 newly adopted hens destroyed the peas, thyme, chives, and jade beans. Even the sprinkler was not enough to scare off those gangstas.
Oh did I not tell you about our newest girls? They’re red sex link hens that we adopted. They are just over a year old and were sold to us as “spent hens”. At a year old. Seriously people! I have no idea where this idea that hens are spent after a year came from (probably factory farms. I swear they are the source of all evil). But I am here to tell you it isn’t true! As it stands 13 of my hens are over a year now and they lay everyday. When we brought home these 5 girls they had never seen grass. They had never been allowed to free range. They lived in a coop that was 4 feet by 2 feet (I kid you not!). As a result they were eating their eggs (probably why they were thought to be spent), and plucking each others feathers out. They had bald spots on their backs, and necks when they came to live with us.
They lived in quarantine for awhile and during one of those days I ended up getting 6 eggs from 5 spent hens. Someone was clearly feeling grateful. They were stunned when we first let them out to free range. And there’s been no stopping them ever since. I’ve had to collect them from down the road several times, attempt to scare them out of my garden, and try my best to get them to lay in the nesting boxes in the coop. Alas my peas are dead, the neighbours lawn has been thoroughly inspected for bugs, scratched, and pooped on (sorry!), and I collect their eggs from beside the hay bale in the garage. Happy chickens come with a price apparently.
As for getting prepared for winter I have 20 pounds of brown sugar (any Anne of Green Gables fans out there?) and a dwindling supply of frozen bananas. I better get my butt to the farmers market and get that old canner out. Winter will be here before I know it!
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