Let the eggs roll!

If I had posted last Friday evening, this picture above is what you would have seen. Finally some ripened tomatoes, enough to make sauce. More white scallop squash, my new favorite. Raspberries from the sticks we planted. And our first egg.

I’ve been told the photo makes it look pink, but this is a white egg from one of our lovely Ancona hens. They had been sporting bright combs and wattles for weeks. They cackled for no reason.

And then, suddenly, when I went out to check on the chickens last Friday evening, I found it. An egg.

I called Mike. So excited we had gotten an egg, nothing could have made me happier. Except, well, the fact that an hour or so later I found another egg. Not only did I get my first egg, but I got my second.

I had always thought that first one hen would lay an egg. I would go a day or two without eggs, then would get another. A week or a few days out, another hen might start. Within a month I might have a handful of chickens laying. Our ladies are on a more aggressive schedule.

Seven eggs. I think only six were laid today and I must have missed the seventh this morning when checking on the chickens. That, or I have an ambitious hen laying two eggs in a day. Either way, they’ve started, and they’re laying pretty regularly too. What started with one chicken laying has turned into all three Ancona hens and all three Delaware hens laying. The lovely green egg is the first from our Olive Egger.

And today I got the biggest vegetable harvest in a single day yet.

It’s not the bumper crop I was hoping for, and I’m not overrun with tomatoes like everyone told me I would be. “You’re crazy!” they said. “I can’t believe you’re planting that many tomatoes,” they said. In reality, the picture above is misleading. I had to toss out one tomato that had been bitten open, and two peppers were split open by bugs. And most of my lovely tomatoes? They look like this, but often worse.

But, you know what? It’s my first year for so many things. I’m growing and putting up my own food and I have no regrets because, for once, I’m actually excited about eating squash. I’m sad my zucchini plants have dried up. And this heirloom thing? I never used to like tomatoes. Sure, I finally learned to like marinara (smothered in cheese) and I could eat a tomato on my pizza. If I was with strangers, I’d try not to take them off my sandwiches.

But now? Now, when I eat a burger or a sandwich with a tomato on it (bought at a store or restaurant), I don’t think, “Gross,” because it’s a tomato. I think, “Gross” because the flavor is sub-par.

And that, my friends, is one major success.