Egg Man

I ran to the fridge and pulled out an egg...

Chickens are kind of dumb. They wander around all over and make noises and messes and run if you try to get near them. Or maybe they are lucky that’s all they have to do! That and lay eggs. If there was ever a perfect food I suppose it could be the egg. It’s portable. It doesn’t need refrigeration (although now they say store-bought need to be refrigerated because they have been washed) and it can be prepared in a multitude of ways. It is also a great source of protein!

My husband likes chickens. So for the time being I am wealthy…in eggs! He has several different breeds of hens (they all look like chickens to me!) and they lay different colored eggs. We have brown, light brown, dark brown, green, light green, olive, speckled and, oh yeah, white. It’s like an Easter egg hunt with no dye!

Colored Eggs!

When the Littles visited a couple of weeks ago they loved gathering the eggs. They brought them in and I scrambled them. I fried them. I even boiled them a dozen and a half which they ate them in no time flat! If they remember anything from their time here, they'll remember that “Mamye can boil eggs really good”!

Fresh eggs...scrambled!

We have so many eggs that I’ve started selling them. I had no idea how to price them so I said $5.00 a dozen or $4.00 if you bring a carton. We had to order cartons to start with so there would be enough. Now people bring me cartons all the time!

One day there were so many eggs I had a ‘special’. They were on sale, that day only, for $3.50, carton or not. You wouldn’t think a mere fifty cents would make a difference to people. But it did.

When people buy eggs, I open the carton to show them the eggs and to make sure nothing is broken. One day someone came and when I opened the carton one of the eggs had a little silver spot on the end. I picked at the spot, wondering what it was. I lifted the egg and looked closely. It said 1.69 on the bottom. It wasn’t real! It was a glass egg!

Don't eat it! It's not real!!

Ceramic eggs are placed in the egg boxes to encourage the hens to lay. They are also there so the hens will lay where they are supposed to and not out in the yard or under a bush. I’ve found eggs in some strange places! Anyway, when the eggs were gathered one of the ceramic eggs was accidentally picked up too! I told my husband and he said the funny thing is there was another ceramic egg, in addition to the one I found, that was missing. That meant two were accidentally put in the cartons.

I sent out an email to all the people I had sold to letting them know to watch for a fake egg. My husband did the same. To this day nobody has admitted to finding that lost ceramic egg!

You know, I'm the Egg Man 

I’ve been working on a baby blanket for a friend whose baby was born a while back. I was finished except for the border and binding off. There was a little time during spring break so I decided to get it done and take it to her. I knitted six rows to make the border and proceeded to bind off the edge. I worked the ends in and it was good to go. That is until I decided to take a picture.

Right side/wrong side. See it?

That's a lot of mistake!!

When I spread it out I discovered that somehow I had switched so that the front was now the back and vice versa. It wasn’t a little bit. It was about a foot worth. Would the ordinary person have noticed? It’s doubtful. But I did so I had to have a do-over. I 'unworked' the ends (and that’s hard when they are hidden well). I pulled out about 15 inches total. I got it all back on the needles and am finally going forward again. I just hate it when I do that!

It comes from a chicken not a bunny dummy. 
Yeah, I'm the Egg Man...

There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens

There ain't nobody here at all.
So calm yourself and stop that fuss
There ain't nobody here but us...

Chickens are funny creatures. Alan opens the door to their coop every morning. By the time I leave for work they are standing on the side and in the middle of the road. I slow down and they look at the car and peck the road. I honk and some of them run alongside the car or right in front of it and stop and peck the road and grass some more. I honk again and inch forward. Somehow I get past all of them without anyone getting run over. They peck the road. They weren’t worried in the least!

So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, I don’t know about everywhere but around here it’s the chicken. We didn’t have fresh eggs before they got here. When they came they were cute little chicks. It was a mixed batch so we didn’t know if we were getting hens or roosters or what. We got mostly hens but there are three roosters. I really like the fresh eggs. We have all colors of eggs; light tan, brown, white and green.

The roosters act like typical males, strutting around thinking they are really something. All three roosters wanted to be in charge. They fought for dominance. One gets to be the boss rooster and bully the others. After all the posturing took place it seemed like the flock divided into three groups, one for each rooster. I think of them as chicken harems. The head rooster is called a Production Red. He’s kind of pretty, for a chicken anyway.

Chickens were domesticated about 8000 years ago and there are over 150 kinds of domestic chickens. In fact there are more chickens in the world then any domesticated bird. Different breeds have different characteristics. These run from how they look to the color of eggs they lay. They have funny names, too, like Transylvanian Naked Neck or Waki Waki Hawa. In the bunch of chickens that we got there are Buff Orpingtons, Columbian Wyandotts, Production Reds, Golden Laced Wyandottes, Black Australorps, and Light Brahmas. There was a Speckled Sussex as well, but it died. According to Alan we still need more chickens that include Welsumers, Barnevelders, and Cochins. The Cochins are the chickens who have the big balls of feathers on their feet that look like shoes. To me they all just look like chickens!

It is thought that the nearest relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex is a chicken. This was decided from research on collagen that was extracted from the thigh bone of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex. There were similarities between the dinosaur collagen sample and the bone collagen of chickens. This gave support for the hypothesis that birds as we know them today are descended from dinosaurs. I didn't know collagen would last 68 million years. Before that, there was still the thought that there was a relation between the two. The dino-bird connection was based on physical similarities in the creature’s body and bone structure.

You can knit or crochet a chicken. My friend from LSSK made a great purse. She experimented and came up with the pattern herself. There are other chicken patterns as well, like chicken potholders, magnets and stuffed animals. If you can’t have the real thing you could make a fitting substitute!

Chicken Clutch from Gari. http://www.etsy.com/shop/garilynn

Close up of chicken's head on Gari's purse. http://www.etsy.com/shop/garilynn

Chicken potholder Gari made. http://www.etsy.com/shop/garilynn

So, were there really Dinochick-Rexes or Chickosauruses running around millions of years ago? I don’t know. What I'd really like to know is did dinosaurs taste like chicken?

 

Knitayear goes on. August 26 is day 148. I helped a school district and actually was included. They asked my opinion and asked for suggestions. I felt like they really wanted to know what I thought. I chose a purple mohair. The purple is a royal color and the mohair binds it all together and makes it strong. Day 149 is August 27. It was a busy day but I got a lot accomplished. I was very industrious and chose a yellow variegated soy yarn. I did a slip stitch pattern that makes this section look industrious too! Day 150 is a lazy day. I chose a light green from sock yarn for this day. Day 151 is an ambitious day. I have plans and actually get some things that I planned done! I chose a very thick turquoise yarn, for my big plans! Day 152 was not a good day. I was invisible. I suppose I let it happen. Anyway, I picked a beige homespun, kind of nondescript, like I felt all day today. August 31 was a lot better day. Got a haircut and got to go to the wine dinner. I also helped some people who appreciated it at work. I felt a lot more useful than yesterday! I chose a rainbow Noro, and used an orange/green section. I liked how the colors twisted together. They twisted to make a new color. I need to remember that experiences twist together and make new ones. And tomorrow will be a better day. I don’t suppose there are any orange and green chickens. Unless it’s Easter!

 

Tomorrow is a busy day.
We got things to do, we got eggs to lay.
We got ground to dig and worms to scratch,
It takes a lot of sittin', gettin' chicks to hatch.
Oh, there ain't nobody here but us chickens.
There ain't nobody here at all…