Well, we don’t think you can ever have too many eggs – but sometimes we can have too many orders for eggs! Right now, Tom the Baker is ramping up for the holidays. He’s wanting to start back up with 10 dozen each week. 10 dozen! We were able to fulfill that order today, but we had to wait until Sunday evening in order to get that many. We didn’t sell any to anyone else all last week so that we could get to 10 dozen by today… and we just barely made it! After we took the 10% out, we had exactly 10 dozen. When I dropped them by this morning, I said, “Just let me know what you need later this week…” and he said, “10 dozen.” All I could say was that we’d do our best. We have orders in from regular private clients as well. We don’t want to forsake everyone to make sure Tom gets 10. Especially those that purchase from us because they have allergies or are dealing with cancer – so they’re trying to eat more cleanly. What’s a body to do? We’re coming up on that time when they are really going to slow down for the winter. We’ll just do the best we can! 

In other news this weekend…. I totally forgot to take photos. I had been trying, this last week, to get up to the Cross and take photos looking down on the property, because we’re trying to do that each year and mark the changes – plus I wanted to show the progress of the orchard, but whenever I tried to go, it would be raining, or worse, lightning would be striking all around us. I’m very leery of that! Then, I just forgot. I’m taking my camera with me for a while and I’ll see if I can’t figure it out at some point this week. Sue sent me a few photos though… if you hover over or click on the photo you can see the captions – at least that’s how it works on my laptop.

Cocoon?

fuzzy pillers

good morning glory

Saturday we made up for not working in the orchard the day before. We planted two trees and then we finished filling in the trenches previously dug for the drip line. Now everything is covered over and Sue will be able to mow quite nicely. Today we were able to get in one more tree, so that gives us a total of 6 chestnuts in and 6 more chestnuts to plant, plus two pomegranates, and one fruiting mulberry! It is starting to look really neat up there. Here is the one photo I did take today… Sue dumping a load of chipped mulch over the cardboard surrounding our tree planting today.  As you can see – even though we are still getting the occasional rain – we are nearing the end of the monsoons and the grass is beginning to dry up. It’s now that time of year when we watch out for lightening strikes all the more; since the moisture is going away, our fire danger starts to increase. California peeps: can you relate?

We had one chick casualty today. A little one that arrived Thursday didn’t make it through the weekend. We’re not sure if it was injured in transport, was trampled and injured, or ended up just sick. We noticed that it wasn’t thriving as well as the others yesterday morning, and seemed to have hurt it’s little leg. So we isolated it, kept it warm under the heat lamps, and made sure it had food and water. Even though it was eating and drinking, it just didn’t make it through the night. Always sad, but also a part of the whole process. You just never know.

What does the rest of the week hold now? Hmm. I can share some goals. Thursday morning we’re going to attempt to plant three more trees. Friday we hope to move the RCW into its new spot, very close to the cross fence between the house and the back acreage. Saturday we plan to go ahead and process the RR#2’s – they are just getting huge! Sunday is a rest day.  Not sure yet what I’ll write about on Wednesday – never a dull moment around here though, so you’ll just have to check in with us and see. If we reach our goals or not, you’ll be able to read on Friday and Monday next. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: We continue to warm up. Our high today was 94°. Currently, at 7:38 p.m., it is 78° with 34% humidity. We had some clouds form in the afternoon, but nothing much else happened. Not even much wind. Looks like more of the same for tomorrow, with an overnight low of 63°. Sunrise this morning was at 6:01 and sunset this evening was at 6:30.

Egg Report: Saturday – zero goose, zero duck, 23 chicken. Sunday – zero goose, zero duck, 26 chicken. Monday – zero goose, zero duck, 24 chicken.

Cool Thing: Cobbler anyone? We did make cobbler out of the apples that we picked on Friday. Ended up adding two extra apples from the fridge because they were really needing to go, and we put in some blueberries that were in the freezer because it was time for them as well. Came out quite yummy. It’s the first time I made a cobbler in our cast iron pan; I’d do that again.