Egg overload

Now that the chickens are no longer trapped in their coop by deep snow, they’re happy as clams exploring the barn and scratching in the compost pile. Suddenly we’re finding eggs. Lots and lots of eggs.

Yesterday in the chicken coop, I happened to glance at this old battered fire screen we keep tucked inside, in case we ever need to block the door without actually closing the door.

I don’t know what inspired me to pull the screen away from the wall, but this is what I saw tucked behind:

Suddenly it seemed we had eggs everywhere.

(One of these is a fake wooden egg to encourage the ladies to lay in this spot.)

Lately I’ve been getting about a dozen eggs a day, but suddenly I had an additional three dozen. This was in addition to the five dozen I already had in the fridge.

There was dirt and grunge on many of them…

…so I plopped the dirtiest in water to both wash and test them. (A bad egg floats; an old egg stands upright; a fresh eggs stays at the bottom of the water.)

All but four eggs passed the test.

I laid the rest out to dry; some on the dish drainer, the rest on a towel.

Fortunately we have neighbors who take eggs with great enthusiasm, and before the day was out I had distributed seven of the nine dozen eggs.

Grunt. It must be spring.