Supposedly as winter settles in, we should be getting less and less eggs, especially from a very young laying flock. When I wrote this initially we were getting between 5 and 7 eggs a day – now we're getting up to 12. These are still smallish, like little pullet eggs, but they are delicious. A few are starting to get bigger. So what have we been doing them?

In fact some people reckoned the chooks may only start laying in the spring – especially our Wyandottes. But the Scot Greys are steadily laying more and more. And it seems the not-so-little-anymore Buff Sussex pullets as well as the smaller White Sussex pullets have also started laying, unless some of the Greys slip into their coop – which is not impossible with our very-free-for-all-ranging setup at the moment.

There are the obvious things which we obviously do with the eggs – like scrambled eggs and pancakes over the weekend, which go down very well with organic maple syrup, or a combination of cinnamon and organic maple sugar, or with some of our home-made plum jam. We get our maple products from our good friends and my  sometimes surfing buddy Scott who runs Woodsmoke Gourmet.

But Patricia’s latest creation was a great double-header. From the yolks she made proper old-time custard. Yummy proper yellow custard. It tastes just like my mother’s home-made custard used to taste – so I guess she must have used good quality eggs too?

From the egg whites she baked meringues, which were also made with maple sugar.

A deadly combination – the one’s better than the other!

Just this morning I read an article on How to get your hens to lay fresh eggs year round on the Murano Chicken Farm blog. Apparently if the hens come into lay in Autumn, they may just lay through the winter. So maybe us getting hold of our eggs (the ones we used for hatching our flock) only in the summer had been an advantage unknown to us at the time. Now if the two Wyandotte hens will start laying in Spring, we may be very well covered. Here’s hoping.

Anyway, a great tick in the box is that we have stopped buying eggs. In fact, we’ve even started giving away some of the pullet eggs. One small step for mankind.