Two Months In Review

While this will probably not be the most exciting post I feel a strange obligation to update about why I haven't been updating.  I always do this.  With other blogs and even with my journals I have this guilt about not explaining myself when I haven't written for a while.  Silly?  Yes.  But then I guess it help me (if no one else) understand what has been happening during my away time.

One of the best things that happened was that our youngest, Gabriel, had his first birthday!  Yay!  It was rather bittersweet for me as he is our last.  I can hardly believe how much my baby has grown, and that he's been with us now for a whole year.  Unfortunately the day of his birthday was also the start of a sick spell that has lasted a month and a half.

It started with our oldest, Aurora, coming down with the flu.  Poor thing had been exposed to half the public school who had the flu a few nights before at her dance picture night.  It's picture night, so of course people aren't going to stay home.  I so greatly wish we had (it was so cold that night that the car ended up freezing in the parking lot and I had to have my father in law come pick us up because Forest was stuck home with the teething baby).  So anyways, Aurora got the flu, and two days later Forest got it, then two days later Gabe (who was also teething) got it.  Somehow Michael got away with just a fever for a day and never had for a week like the others, and I never got it.  But as a trade off, for pushing myself so hard, I got shingles.  Fortunately for me by the time I was so sick, the others were doing better and could take care of me.  But then two weeks later my blisters had healed and the rest of the family broke out in chicken pox.  Now I have to say, this sucked a lot and I was worried and felt so bad for them all, BUT at the same time I was thrilled.  We couldn't have had better timing to have the chicken pox and now it's done!  Happy days!  I never want to go through that again if we can help it.  We had also (a few days before) just finished our electrical inspection on the house.  That has been a project we have been working on for the last 7 years!  A Huge deal for us and it's so good to know we don't have to think about that anymore.

During the last month and a half we have also celebrated our anniversary, remembered my father on the day he passed, celebrated my mother in laws birthday, had some insane weather to deal with, not to mention cabin fever.  It has been pure insanity and I'm hoping we're done with it.  There are more things planned, and we'll probably get sick again since dance class isn't anywhere near over but at the moment, we're not doing to badly.  Everyone is starting to feel better and instead of thinking only about surviving in the moment we're starting to think about the future again and how nice it will be to have warm weather and be able to spend more time outdoors.

Green Yolked Eggs

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!

I do not like
green eggs
and ham!

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.

~ Dr. Suess

The beginning of February found us out of nesting materials for the chickens.  We recently had gone through a bunch of old paperwork and it was just sitting in boxes in the shop waiting to be recycled or used for the fire.  But we came up with the brilliant idea to utilize the paper and fill the nesting boxes at the same time.  Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.  We started shredding paper and filling the boxes.  I was thrilled we had come up with something so useful to do with both the paper and the nesting box material.  And with my father in laws different businesses he goes through a lot of paper, so we would be set for a long time.

I was in this blissfully happy world until about two weeks after we'd started with the office papers.  One morning Forest was starting breakfast and was shocked to find a green yolked egg.  It was fresh and smelled fine, but was green.  We thought it was weird but maybe it was just one bird having problems.  So he got another mug and cracked another egg.  This time, the yolk was nearly black.  He tried half a dozen eggs, from different birds and they all were strangely tinted.  Green, gray and black yolked eggs sat sprawled out on the kitchen counter and I'll be totally honest, I had completely lost my appetite.  Out of curiosity I poked one of the yolks with a fork, just to see if the whole thing was discolored, and was rather surprised when I discovered it was still that nice yellow color on the inside.

It was depressing to see that our beautiful eggs had been contaminated and as nothing else had changed with them it had to be the ink on the paper effecting them.  I posted on the backyardchickens forum since I couldn't seem to find any information about tinted yolks.  While grateful for the support of others it seemed that most people never had problems with paper in the nesting box.  So I was feeling a bit bummed.

We stopped eating the eggs because we knew they had been tinted with ink that was not food grade pigments.  We filled the nesting boxes with straw and then just waited.  I knew it would take a few weeks to work it out of their systems.  Two weeks after the problem started it was finally over.  The egg yolks had become yellow again and we were eating the eggs.  I am convinced it was the paper and ink (not a change in the grainery's mix) that changed the color.  Our chickens are bored during the long winter and to be honest are to crowded this year.  It doesn't surprise me that they would start eating the paper when first introduced out of curiosity.

I am so grateful to have our eggs back to normal and have beautiful golden colored yolks again.  What a weird, but educational, experience.