We get our share of double yolker (and even two triple) eggs but this morning’s haul is worthy of sharing.

Giant egg, double the weight of a standard large egg

As the picture shows, at 119g it’s twice the weight of a regular large egg (that needs to be between 56 and 63 grams). This blows away our previous record big egg that was at 93g (if I remember correctly). Here’s how it looks compared to the other eggs from this morning, all well into the large size range.

The giant egg compared to 3 large eggs

When I moved the chicken pen to fresh pasture on the grass this morning there was our first egg lying there!

The first egg from our Pastured Chickens

Time to get the nesting boxes built. With almost two dozen hens we’re hoping to get at least a dozen a day when things are at full production. Lots of yummy breakfasts ahead

I figured I’d add a few farm related projects to the site here. This is one that I kinda backed into over the past few weeks. I picked up a badly beaten back blade for scrap this summer. It sat waiting for me to get to until a few weeks ago when I decided to pull it out and see if I could get it going quickly to help clean the driveway. The quick answer is it’ll take a bit of work. I’ve been taking it apart and now feel that it’s well worth saving.

I’ve been discussing this project with my friends at the Machine Builders Network.

I didn’t take a picture of it before I started. Here’s the state it’s in now:

The blade for the 3pt hitch back blade

This is the main frame. You can see where the end that has the latch that holds the blade at a certain angle had broken several times and been repaired, with varying degrees of finesse and success. I’m going to have to cut the whole crack out so I can bend things back into the proper position.

Rear Blade Frame

The threads at the end of the blade pivot had been all messed up. They had ground groves to hold a cable clamp in place to keep the blade on using a plumbing flange as a washer. Originally there must have been some sort of special “washer” and then a heavy nut with a split pin to keep it in place. The thread is 1″ fine thread. I managed to clean up the threads with a borrowed thread repair file.

Blade Pivot and Latch

Here’s a close up of the bodged up “fix”. A nut will now thread on. I think I’ll weld a plate on to a nut so I can use the “good” part of the threads down near the bottom.

Pivot Mangled Threads

Rear Blade Top Link

This makes 6 calves in a row that I haven’t been around to see born. Sometime mid day (I suspect) Marigold had her third calf.

Marigold and her 2010 new born Calf

Here’s a close up of the little heifer calf.

Marigold's 2010 Heifer Calf

Shortly after I took these pictures I helped the calf up and she had a good suck. I think all is well, I’m not completely sure that Marigold’s milk is full coming in, but likely that’s just me being a worried “uncle” (or some such).

The only cow left to calf now is Charlotte, but she won’t be due for several months yet I expect. This given her calf last year wasn’t born until Labour Day (fittingly perhaps). I’m now 1 and 1 on the sexes this year.

I thought I’d share a view of our new high tech lawn mowers. This model has some highly desirable features:

• Autonomous & self propelled
• Run on renewable, green energy
• Low emissions
• Thorough
• Self renewable
• Fertilizes while it mows

My favourite moma cow Squiggy came through again with her fourth calf today. He seems to be a healthy bull calf who was born without any assistance (from me anyway).

First Calf for 2010

After running out of patience for nature I eventually helped him stand up and before long he was enjoying his first meal.

Squiggy's 2010 Calf having his first meal

This first drink is so important because the colostrum has all the antibodies that get the immune system of the calf off and running. Once I’ve seen this happen I’m a lot more confident that everything will work out for the best.

It’s been an early spring here this year, and I think overall a fairly mild winter. We looked across a week ago and saw spashes of colour from last years vegetable garden. We were happy to discover that most of the pansies we planted last year made it through the winter and were flowering already. We also have more pansies growing in other places that have self seeded themselves from last year.

We grew the pansies to use as garnish on our plates at the Yellow Canoe Cafe. I picked the second batch this morning and here they are ready for use today:

Spring Pansies ready for Garnish at the Yellow Canoe Cafe

One thing I like about heating with wood at the farm is that I can fill the “oil” tank in half and hour out the back. My goal is to only burn dead wood. With this warm spell we haven’t had the wood stove going for a few days, but tonight that has to change. I went out this morning and brought back this load of dead elm (darn that Dutch Elm disease) and ash (ditto, Emerald Ash Borer I guess).

This morning's load of firewood. Dead Elm, Ash & Poplar

My friend Fred Dawson came over yesterday and we cut a bunch more dead elm trees for firewood. This is most of it.

Dead Elm Firewood

Susan is very happy now that we have a wood store again … she likes to be warm!

Why we do this

One of the real joys of living on the farm is being self sufficient for our winter heating. I’m way behind in being ready for winter, but today in less than an hour I filled the Treker twice with wood from dead trees around the old orchard.

Second quick load of firewood

This will keep us warm and toasty until the weekend. With the dry(er) forecast for the next few days I’ll let things dry out a bit more before I cut more. This is some of the wood I pulled out of the swamp late last winter, all dead ash trees flooded out by beavers in the 70’s.

Dead ash trees skidded out over the ice from the beaver swamp