Perfectly Peeled Hard-Boiled Farm Fresh Eggs

You probably think that making a hard-boiled egg is the easiest thing in the world, but when you're dealing with very fresh eggs, think again. The only drawback to using eggs that are literally right out of the hen, is that if you hard-boil them, they can be very difficult to peel. The whites stick to the shell as you peel them so they end up looking a bit unappetizing with chunks missing all over it.

An unsuccessful peel

We have found a way to cook very fresh eggs that resolves this problem. It also cooks the eggs perfectly so our yolks don't have that green line around it. Here on Glen Hill Farm we STEAM our eggs! And here's how we do it...

STEP 1: We have a pot that has its own steamer insert. Put about 3 inches of plain water into the pot. (Or whatever amount of water will fit so that it does NOT touch the steamer insert.) Bring the water up to a boil.

Bring a few inches of water to a boil

STEP 2: Put your steamer insert on top of the boiling water. You do not want the water to touch the insert. If it does, you have too much water in your pot. If you don't have a steamer insert, I've heard that you can use a metal colander instead. You just need to be able to put the lid of the pot on, so you may need to use a larger pot to accommodate your colander.

This is our steamer insert

STEP 3: Carefully put your eggs into the steamer insert in one layer. I was able to fit twelve in mine.

STEP 4: Cover the eggs with the pot's lid and let them steam for 12 minutes for hard-boiled eggs.

(I like my yolks a tad undercooked so, I cook mine for 10 minutes.)

STEP 5: While the eggs are being steamed, you need to get a large bowl full of ice water ready.

STEP 6: After 12 minutes take your eggs off of the stovetop and put them into the bowl of ice water to immediately stop the cooking. My steamer insert could fit right into my ice water bowl, so I just inserted the whole thing at once. If your steamer is too big, you could carefully transfer the eggs separately into the bowl. You can leave them in the ice water for about 10 minutes, or until they are totally cold.

Gently swish the steamer and water around a bit to help the ice water
cool the eggs down as quickly as possible

Step 7: Once the eggs are completely cool and dried, you can peel them. I recommend cracking them on the top and the bottom first. There are air bubbles there that make it easy to crack and remove the shell. As you work down the sides of the egg, be sure to grab the thin membrane attached to the shell as you go. This will help the shell come off smoothly. 

Crack the top and bottom first

a perfectly peeled hard-boiled egg

I was never a huge fan of hard-boiled eggs when I got my eggs at the supermarket. 

But now even I love farm fresh hard-boiled eggs! 

Add a little salt and it's such an easy, protein-packed snack

We store ours in a tupperware container in the fridge for up to a week. Although, we tend to finish them long before then.

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It's looking like Spring may have been canceled here in Massachusetts this year. 

We are still mostly covered in snow. However, in the few places that the snow has melted we have been rewarded with.... MUD! Yay! Mud AND snow! Woohoo!  

Thank you to Jonathan who works so hard to keep the yard's flooding under control

Ah, so "pretty"! Mud and dirty snow.

Um, Jess, you look a little guilty.
What did you get into that gave you that dirt beard?

Never mind, I don't think I want to know, actually.

Very sad to find a dead blue bird in the chicken run.
It was so pretty.

Reese climbed up the roosting ladder to say hello

Very strange looking egg collected the other day!
Minerva Louise is our best egg layer. She gives us a white egg every single day without fail.
But sometimes, I think she would be better off slowing down her production.
Quality over quantity, please! :)
(Truthfully, I kind of like the weird ones, it keeps things interesting!)

Training Chickens 2 :)

Session 2 of training Minerva Louise

Oops, we did it again. Ryan and I had another training session with our Minerva Louise. Again, it was an hour filled with giggles and laughter and lots of success! After we were done, we came inside to make lunch and Ryan said, "That was so much fun. She is so smart. I wanna raise my kids on a farm and teach them how to train chickens."

Come on.

I know how ridiculous it is that we are training our chickens. I'm the first to admit how silly it is. But when your kid says something like that. Well, clearly, we're making memories here. Ridiculous, crazy, absurd memories. :)

And wait 'til you see what Minerva Louise can do! It is actually somewhat impressive considering she's a chicken! Click the link to find out: Training Chickens 2

Farmer Ryan, animal trainer extraordinaire

Cooper's paw prints
Jessie's tail's shadow

Update: Good news! The electric dog fence company came out Monday and fixed our electric fence. Yay! The dogs can run "free" in our yard again. AND they also changed the wiring to make our manure area part of the 'forbidden' area. Woohoo! Thank you to DogWatch Hidden Fence Systems. I was impressed that you could do the repairs even with all this snow.

TGISunday

Thank God It's Sunday.

This was not my favorite weekend.

Friday was Friday the thirteenth, so I should have known that things may not go smoothly.

--FRIDAY--
First up, Cooper figured out that his electric fence was broken and decided to go visit his girlfriends, Bella and Kadey, next door. Special thanks to my neighbor, Rich, who was smart and kind enough to grab a leash and treats to help me catch Cooper.

Look out Rich, now that my ginormous following knows about you,
you may be getting fan mail, paparazzi, cover of 'People'. I apologize in advance! :)

The biggest bummer about this was that even though I had treats, when Cooper saw me, he ran away. :( I know it was because he knew that I was mad that he left the yard, and that he didn't want to leave his friends, but ouch. Guess Cooper didn't get the memo that he is a stray that was "rescued", not "captured." Sigh.

So that was early Friday morning. That afternoon, we let him out again with us because we assumed that he'd stay with us if we were outside with him. Nope, he jumped the fence. Turns out that not only is our electric fence broken, but our actual wire fence has also been destroyed in many places by the snow, too. And then that same evening (yes, this is embarrassing) he got loose again. What's that saying? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Now I will add "Fool me three times....I'm an idiot?" Cooper is now only allowed out on a leash line. He hates it. I hate it. But it's called consequences, buddy. If you didn't leave the yard (you have 3.5 acres to safely run, you know!) you wouldn't have to be leashed. I'm totally bummed. And the electric fence people still haven't returned my call. Hopefully Monday.

On an up note, my Jessie girl stayed in the yard through all three runs. Thank God. She doesn't have a perfect record either, but this weekend she came through for me when I needed her to.

So now, once this snow melts, we have to get the electric dog fence fixed AND we have to fix all the places where our wire fencing has been destroyed. Sadly, all that fencing is covered in vines which are more than likely poison ivy, so I'm probably going to have to hire someone else to do it.

--SATURDAY--
Saturday brought with it rain. Which is good because it is helping to melt away the snow. What is not good is that our yard is starting to flood. Big time flood, like right up against our house and down into our utility room. So far, we're keeping ahead of it with sump pumps, and we have a call into Roto Rooter because the drain that was put in to help with this seems to be clogged. Good times.

Flooding up to the house.
I think I'd like to skip the muddy months of Spring
and skip right to June.

--SUNDAY--
And the final (hopefully) heart attack of the weekend happened at 2:00 in the morning last night (Sunday morning technically.) I was sound asleep, when I was awoken by an exploding noise (I think?) and a bright orange/blue explosion light that literally lit up the sky. Think a giant lightning storm, but the colors were orange and blue. And then nothing? And then it happened again about three more times. For those of you who know me, you might know that when it comes to "fight or flight" situations my instinct in the past has been to fight.... Figure out the problem, and fix it, NOW! (I can admit that although my instinct literally makes me run to the problem, in hind sight, I realize that this is not always the smartest choice. Sadly, in the moment, I'm not actually making decisions, I'm just doing. I'll save those stories for another day.) But last night freaked me out like nothing else. I jumped out of bed, ready to run to the problem and fix it... Was there a fire? In the house? In the barn? No. The colors were so other-worldly that I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. Was I still dreaming? And then it happened again, and I swear that for a second I thought that we were under nuclear attack, like the scenes from that movie we were all terrified of in the eighties "The Day After"? How was I going to fix that?!?! At this point I am yelling "What is happening!?" Thankfully, Jonathan realized the cause of all this.... a pole mounted transformer on our street was exploding/on fire. Oh thank God. This I could handle. I called 911 and they said they were already aware of it. Phew. Of course, our power was out, which sets off a bunch of beeping alarms in our house and barn which are attached to those sump pumps I mentioned before, which is fine. Annoying noises I can deal with over a nuclear attack. LOL. Now I just had to comfort my poor Jessie dog who was so scared she was shaking. Surprisingly, Cooper seemed fine. As some point, Jessie and I were able to calm ourselves down and fall back to sleep, knowing that the fire department and Eversource were on the job. To my amazement, when we woke up this morning, our electricity was back on! I couldn't believe it and I was so impressed! Yay!

I don't say this too often, but I'm happy to say good bye to the weekend! Bring on Monday!

Thank you to my brother-in-law, David, who bought my chickens a treat ball!
Lucky girls!

I filled it with a few of their favorite snacks
(cucumbers, strawberries & lettuce)
 and hung it in their coop. Fun!

Training Chickens

(Wait, what? Training Chickens? Uh oh, I think Maureen has actually lost her mind now.)

Okay, okay, while I'm not going to deny that I may have crossed the border into the cray-cray, all I can say is....It was Ryan's fault!!!!

Yes, I'm totally blaming my 11 year old son.

We saw a video that mypetchicken.com posted on their Facebook page that showed some animal scientists who were clicker-training chickens, similar to how you can train dogs. (Bob Bailey and Sophia Yin were two of these people.) Well, after seeing that, Ryan was sold. He was TOTALLY going to do this with our chickens. He was so excited to get started. And when your kids get *really excited* about something that doesn't involve screens or candy and it isn't dangerous, destructive, or totally annoying, how can you say no? Right? Right?

So, I didn't say no. Instead I pulled together the tools that he was going to need. He needed a training clicker and a cup full of chicken treats. He also needed a small red circle, a small blue square and a small green triangle. That's it! Simple! When he came home from school the next day everything was ready for him and he was totally psyched. We set up our "lab" in a horse stall and my little scientist was ready to prove to the world that his chickens were so smart!

Weeeelllll, what we actually learned was that our chickens were really cute, very sweet, and maybe not the brightest bulbs in the barn.

Except for one!

Just when we thought it was a hopeless situation, one of our hens proved us wrong! After so many failed attempts with most of our hens, we were so excited when this one hen really seemed to get it.
And when I say we had success with one hen, I am probably exaggerating. By success I mean that one hen seemed to understand that we were trying to teach her something. (As opposed to the confused, blank stares from the other hens! LOL) But did she truly learn the trick? I actually think she did, but only time and more training will tell for sure.

Any guesses on which hen it was?

We had so many laughs this weekend. Laughing at the chickens, and laughing at ourselves. And now that Ryan has had a taste of success, I'm sure he'll be trying to teach our hens, er, maybe just the ONE hen, more tricks. So stay tuned, there could be a "Training Chickens 2"! That is, if the guys with the straightjackets don't take me and Ryan away to the funny farm too soon!

(See what I did, there? Funny farm?) :)

Click on the link to watch our Chicken Training 1 video. Enjoy!: Chicken Training 1 Video


Update: Thanks for all the well wishes regarding my poison ivy situation! I really appreciate it and I'm now embarrassed about my whining. Happy to report that I'm off the prednisone, and the poison ivy seems to be on its way out. Both dogs have been groomed and I am continuously washing my hands with Tecnu soap and dishwashing liquid (both help wash the poison ivy oil away.) Thanks again for all the kind thoughts and prayers!

Good Morning, Glen Hill Farm. 6:30 a.m.
Couldn't believe the amazing sunrise today!

Medicated

Why does it make me so happy when all seven hens lay in one day?

Thank you, ladies!

It's March 2015, the middle of the snowiest winter in history and I am battling (wait for it).... poison ivy. Yes, somehow, in this snowy wasteland I was lucky enough to come into contact with poison ivy on my right hand. I think I first noticed it appear in December, and even after using my prescription topical ointments, it's just wouldn't go away. Instead, it would seem to subside and then flare up, becoming increasingly more intense. Three months later, I had to go see my doctor to beg for some help and I left with a prescription for Prednisone. I have a bad history of waiting months and months before I go to the doctor. I always hope that I can fix it on my own, and then by the time I admit that I need a doctor's help, I literally feel desperate for anything they can offer me.

This is my first time on Prednisone. While it is definitely helping to cure the poison ivy rash, it isn't working as fast as I would have liked. In fact, I take my last dose tomorrow, but my rash is not totally gone. We're 97% there, but not 100%. I'm scared that the rash is going to flare back up when I stop taking the medicine. On the other hand, I can't wait to finish it! Whew! That prednisone is powerful stuff! I feel like I've had 50 cups of coffee, all the time. (Not a good thing for me.) It definitely gets me jittery, I kind of want to jump out of my skin. Actually, now that I type this, I'm realizing that it's not all that different from the crazy panic feeling that the poison ivy rash gives me. Ironic. But at least it doesn't have the terrible itch. That's the thing about poison ivy, it's kind of like childbirth where when you aren't actually going through it, you remember in a general sense how bad it was, but you forget JUST HOW AWFUL it is until you are in the thick of it again. When it wakes you up in the middle of the night with an itch so bad that you can't stop scratching even though you're now bleeding. Ugh. Anyway, please say a prayer for me that this latest bout will heal by tomorrow. Thanks.

And as soon as all this snow melts, I need to call in a professional to help me fight this invisible monster in my yard. I know that I'm not touching the poison ivy myself, so it must be my animals who are rubbing up against it (even the leafless vines have the oil on them during the winter), and then I'm petting them. I know I need professional help (on many levels) because I'm at the point where I'm ready to kill every living plant from this land just to be free of it. Or move. We just might have to move. My doctor suggested wearing gloves. Um, okay, like literally all the time? Not sure that's practical. :)

In my desperate research (google), I learned that there is a company who is trying to create a vaccine for urushiol (the poison ivy oil that causes the reaction.) Sadly, it is still in the process of running clinical trials at this time. I need this vaccine. I need it a year ago.

Sorry for all the whining.

My poor puppy, Jess, is on medicine, too. She tested positive for a tick-related illness (not Lyme Disease, but something similar.) So she's on a 30 day antibiotic prescription. I can tell that she feels kind of blah on her meds. Her appetite is way down (and she never had a big appetite to begin with.) It's so awkward because I'm constantly trying to get her to eat a bit more, and she's not interested. Meanwhile Cooper (my foodie) can't understand why Jessie's being offered all this extra food and he's not. He doesn't understand that Jessie's being offered the same bowl of food that she never finished at breakfast. So out of guilt, I end up giving Cooper just a few bites more, and now he's getting chubby.

Looking forward to everyone being off-meds and healthy, and spring!

Mornings are hard for me, too, Jess.

Um, Coop, not sure that's how that dog bed is supposed to work?

A Double Occupancy.
Buttercup was in this nesting box first.
Reese thought there was plenty of room for her, too.
Yes, they both laid eggs in there.

Winter landscape

Love the vines and the winter berries,
but ready to kill everything just in case it's poison ivy. :(

Untouched snow is so pretty

Shoveled out our gate. Now that was a workout.
Still kinda-farmer-strong.

Strawberries for the girls.

The dogs now roam ON TOP of the snow.