Scrambled Eggs

Oh my gosh.....this makes me want to drop everything and become a full time egg farmer!!!

Egg Score Card

Check out this awesome site with an "egg score card" to help you identify some important details about the organic eggs you are purchasing. Whether from a regular grocery store or a health food market, see where your eggs score on the "Egg Score Card"!  Some of these "Egg Star Ratings" will surprise you!

http://www.cornucopia.org/organic-egg-scorecard/

"Inedible Egg" - SlowFoodUSA.org/egg

Wow! Sure is a good feeling to know the source of our eggs!!

First Farmer's Market

Farmer's Market was so much fun today! We were set up by 7:30am and sold out of eggs by 10:45am. We got off to a slow start so I was a little nervous for the kids. I sat them down and explained it was possible we wouldn't sell many eggs this first time, especially considering the competition at $1.50/dz!! But a child's optimism is so refreshing as it didn't even occur to the children we wouldn't sell them ALL. While I was reverting into "sales mode", worrying about the table presentation, reviewing "features and benefits" and what they should say in the "first 30 seconds".....the kids just happily played, greeted the customers and visited other producers to get honey and banana bread samples! I had to chuckle at myself as I settled into the realization that Farmer's Market is not a trade show and the eggs are not medical equipment! They practically sell themselves! LOL

Happy Chickens

Even with all this heat, the chickens seem to be doing really well and production is ramping up daily. We are so grateful to have the shade and bugs that Grandma's fruit trees provide! Now if we can just figure out what to do with the extra roosters! Out of the four, three have to go but we are having trouble getting our courage up to "process" them.  Maybe YOU would like a pet rooster? Did you know there doesn't have to be a rooster in the flock for chickens to lay eggs?

Keeping the water jugs clean is quite a chore in this heat.

The fallen fruit attracts many yummy bugs!

They're running toward the camera because they think we have food!

Time to lay an egg!

Keeping the feed up off the ground is better for the grass. 6 of our 9 breeds are shown here.

Good Life Naturals, Inc.-It's Official!

Good Life Naturals, Inc. is officially open for business! Below is the sign that you will see at the farm, at farmer's market and on our cartons! Gracie helped me carefully design the label to tell as much of our story as possible right on the sign. Yes! We have green/blue and brown eggs! Yes! The chickens are foraging on green grass! No! we don't use antibiotics or hormones! And yes! The hens are fed organic chicken feed! The labels are hot off the printer so the kids and I are on the way to the farm to label the cartons. Production continues to ramp up so maybe we'll see YOU at farmer's market this Saturday. Call us if you want a weekly standing order!

The First Two Eggs!

Gracie was thrilled to find our first two eggs inside the mobile chicken coop today! After 5 long months of caring for the chickens and waiting for the coop to be built we will now begin to finally enjoy the fruits of our labor! They are tiny pullet eggs right now (about half the size of a normal egg) but within just a few weeks we'll have full size eggs to eat and sell!

This egg scale belonged to our kids' Great-grandmother, Frieda Beckmann. The tiny egg is not even registering yet. (shown with the bottle of beer for comparison)

Luke and "Butler"

Luke is shown here with one of our roosters, "Butler". Amazingly, he can still catch him and Butler shows no aggression. In fact, after putting him down, Butler continues to follow Luke around.

Chickens In The Yard!

The girls are rangin' all over the place!

Chicken Update!

So whatever happened with those chickens you ask??  Yes, with the birth of Nyla the chickens took a bit of a back seat, so here we are now with the flock at almost 16 weeks old!  We ended up brooding them in our basement until they were about 8 weeks and then moved the entire operation to the garage (got too stinky for the basement!) Scott and the kids built  a pen with high, cardboard walls to contain them until their new home was ready.  The "egg mobile", built by our friend Stefan Penas, was delivered to us in early May and we moved the chickens out to the farm on May 13. The egg mobile has been moving around the farm every 5-7 days since then and the chickens are thrilled to be foraging on pastures with real, live bugs! We should have eggs by the end of July so stayed tuned for news on that!  Let's get caught up with some photos.....

Gracie with the chickens in our garage!

The coop arrives at our house.

Gracie is checking out the inside. There are 8 nesting boxes and 4 roosts.

Gracie is sanding the windows (they are from the old hog house at the farm)

Windows get a fresh coat of white paint.

Coop is complete and ready to move to the farm!

Chickens are loaded and ready to leave. Check out those nice windows!

Egg Mobile arrives at the farm!

Chickens aren't too sure yet.

Luke helps some find their way outside. The rest quickly follow.

Chicks-Day 11

Quick summary of our first week with the chicks:

1. We didn't read the instructions correctly on the "chick starter" and added way too much to the water! (You try reducing this fraction: 4oz/55 gallons!) Yeah....we know now, it's less than 1/2 t. per gallon!) We're not sure, but this may be why we lost 8 out of 56 chicks in the first 48 hours!

2. Had to travel to Lincoln to find chick feed without antibiotics. Can't get "organic" feed shipped in until March 11th!

3. Gracie and Gemma have done a fantastic job of keeping the area clean and providing fresh water and food every day.

4. The kids convinced me to buy 16 more chicks to replace the 8 that died. Not sure how that math works out but we now have a total of 64 chickens.

5. The kids have spent hours just sitting and watching the chicks. I sneak down there every now and then too and must admit, it is very relaxing.

6. We've had lots of visitors to see the chicks but they are growing fast so if you want to get a glimpse before they get ugly, come soon!

7. Overall things have gone very smoothly so far but the chicks will be able to fly over their 12 inch containment wall in just a fews days, so it's time to build the taller cardboard walls!

Seems like their little wings sprouted overnight!

That's "Longshot" on the right. She's one of the new girls.

She's a smaller breed of chicken but the kids fell in love with her.

Don't write her off just yet. These chicks were trying to intimidate her.....

....but Longshot stood tall and backed them up!

The Chicken Adventure Begins!

After nearly 10 years of buying eggs directly from farmers who raise all natural, free range, pastured laying hens in mobile chicken coops, we've decided to try it for ourselves! Not because we want to become farmers, but because we want to give our children an opportunity to own their own small business, learn responsiblity that comes from caring for the animals and to teach them the connection between our soil, the animals and our health. We are excited to raise these laying hens with no antibiotics and no hormones in the most natural environment we can possibly offer them. If you've never tasted an egg from this kind of chicken, get in touch with us in July! You're in for a real treat!

We will brood the chicks in our basement (then garage) until construction on our new mobile coop is complete and it becomes warm enough to move them outside. The mobile coop is being built on a flatbed trailer which we will move around Grandma and Grandpa's farm every week with a 4 wheeler. It will look something like this (ours will be a little cuter of course!):

To see all the photos from our morning click HERE!

With chicks on the way, the children were very eager to get started on the brooder pen!

Gracie, in her jammies, is speading wood chips over the plastic.

We got a call at 6:30am this morning from the post office to inform us that our 50 baby chicks had arrived by mail from the hatchery. I don't know if the children were this excited on Christmas morning! We piled into the van and headed straight over to pick them up! I warned the kids that one or two might not have survived the trip but they were all in excellent condition.

At the back door of the post office.

Our friendly US postal worker presents the chicks to the kids!

The adventure officially begins!

We can't believe there are 50 chicks in that little box!

Ready!!

Get set!

Open!! All 50 have made it safely!

Six different breeds and 3 different roosters. Should be a colorful bunch!

It's so hard not to handle them but they are very fragile this first day.

And so the chores begin!!

Kids are little late to school but chicks are happy and the principal says they had a "GREAT" excuse!