Garden roundup for January

In January, our chickens gave us 60 eggs.  Well, they laid 67 eggs, but seven were damaged in some way so they didn’t make it to the house.

The only other gardening news I have for this month, is I found three onions that had sprouted.  So I put some potting soil in a pot and planted them.  This is something I’ve done a few times in the past, but I haven’t had too much luck with.  Last year, I was able to transplant a potted onion into the garden, but that was when the onion held on until late-March, or April before it started to grow.  I found another onion growing back in November, or December, which I planted, but I think it’s mostly dead now.  We’ll have to see if any of these make it to warm weather to be planted out.

Garden Roundup for 2023

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now, so I’m just forcing myself to finally finish this, so it’s probably a bit rough.

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I only started keeping track of how many eggs we got each day at the end of May.  But between then and December 31, our seven chickens gave us – assuming I didn’t miss some – a total of 598 eggs.  Which is almost 49 dozen.  We used some of them, but we also gave some out to family and neighbors.  I even sold a few dozen to co-workers. 

Besides keeping track for the whole year, I should also keep track of how much feed we buy for them.  Then I can figure out how a dozen of our eggs costs versus store bought ones.

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For the last several years, my mom has kept track of how much we freeze or can on a legal pad.  She’ll have green beans, and every quart we can she’ll add a tally mark.  She tries to keep up to date, but I think she misses some things, or double counts others.  And even though I help her most of the time, some things on her list I don’t remember canning.  So in 2024 I’ll try to do my own list.  But reading her list as best I can, this is what we froze in 2023: 25 bags of blueberries (1 bag makes 1 pie), 15 bags of sliced apples (1 bag makes 1 pie), 7 bags of grated zucchini (1 bag makes a couple loaves of zucchini bread), 2 bags of rhubarb (I think 1 bag makes 1 pie), 10 bags of parsnips (1 bag is probably worth 2 meals), 2 bags of broccoli, 4 bags of green peppers, and 9 bags of peas, although some of the peas were later canned with some other stuff.  And I think all the green peppers we used for spaghetti and pizza sauce we from 2022.

This is what we canned in 2023: 9 pints blueberry jelly, 5 pints grape jelly, 3 pints mixed berry jelly, 3 quarts and 8 pints of applesauce, 1 pint of pears, 6 pints of green beans, 2 pints of mixed vegetables, 1 quart and 15 pints of sweet corn, 9 pints of tomatoes, 15 quarts and 1 pint of spaghetti sauce, 1 pint and 9 half-pints of pizza sauce (1 half-pint is enough for one pizza), 18 quarts of grape juice, 5 pints of beets, and 19 quarts of potatoes. 

We also bought some items to can, such as 6 quarts of pears, 5 pints of peach jam, and 7 pints of strawberry jam.  We also froze two containers of sliced strawberries.

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2023 was a busy year, but we’ll have to see what we do in 2024.

First egg of the year!

 

Unfortunately, the second egg broke so this one was covered in yolk.  There’s one hen that gets picked on, and I don’t know if the other hens aren’t letting her eat the oyster shells or what, but it seems like every other day or so there will be a broken egg in a nest.  I don’t think any are eating the eggs, so I think it’s all just the shells being thin.

When I got this one, there was another hen on another nest, and when I went out later there were two unharmed eggs there.  So, “four” eggs from seven aging hens in the middle of winter, isn’t too bad.