So here’s the grand egg test of whether you can taste the difference in store bought eggs versus home grown free range eggs.

So can you tell the difference? You betcha! The two eggs on the left were the home-grown variety and the one egg on the right was the store-bought variety. The yolk has a notably more flavorful taste that’s hard to miss. They were also a slightly brighter color. These two home grown eggs probably would have been even brighter yellow in the yolk if the chickens had gotten more free ranged. But since we were in the middle of home improvement projects galore, the dogs got to take over the chicken pen, and the hens stayed cooped up more.

There is an egg in the coop! Okay, let me rephrase that. There are TWO eggs in the coop! When I checked on the chickens today I found two surprises. I knew that they were getting close to laying. Yesterday I didn’t check in on them and then today I found two on the floor in opposites corners. Now I am going to have to try to convince them to lay in their nesting boxes.

So how much did we spend raising our chicks to laying hens? I’m not going to count the cost of building the coop because there are much cheaper ways to make them than what we did. Here is a list of our expenses.

$35 in chicks (12 chicks with one death)
$90 in chicken feed (275 lbs)
$28 in bedding materials
$20 in scratch grain (which is optional)

That makes a total cost of $173 spent in 149 days (or basically 5 months). You could shave some money off if you could find cheaper bedding, didn’t buy scratch grain, and let them free range more so the expense of feed would be lower. Then again I’m not counting the cost of operating the heat lamps. With what we spent, it works out to about $16 per chicken before the eggs start rolling in. That makes our two little eggs worth $86.50 each.

I grew two varieties of popcorn this year. One variety was Early Pink and the other variety was Strawberry. I pulled a head off of each type to see how they were coming along. When the end of the warm spell ends this week I plan on harvesting all the popcorn. This is a new thing for me to grow so I hope it pops. Maybe I will become a master popcorn grower instead of a troubled sweet corn grower.

The Strawberry variety is absolutely beautiful. The ears only grow to about 2” to 3” and the corn stalks grow about 4′ tall. Just looking at it makes me want to hang it on a wall. Except I don’t have any walls to hang it on and somehow I think it would get lost in the studs.

The Early Pink variety was planted right next to my sweet corn. So you can see some of the sweet corn yellow kernels in the corn. Next year I will be better about spacing my corn varieties. But I won’t worry about it too much as they just won’t pop when I get around to making popcorn this winter. Early Pink ears get around 5” to 6” long and the stalk grows about 5′ tall. You can see the size, color, and kernel difference in this picture.

I have tried growing corn for the last four years. Somehow it never works out for me. This is the first year I have tried growing it in Oregon. The previous years tried were in Arizona. I may have possibly got it right the last year I lived in Arizona, but will never know for sure as we moved before the corn was ready.

This year in Oregon I tried two types of corn. Popcorn and sweet corn. The sweet corn was supposed to be an early heirloom variety. What went wrong I’m not sure. Other than it was me trying to grow it. The ear was suppose to be 5 to 7 inches long. But when it was that size it wasn’t ripe as the kernels were white and not yellow. So I wait and wait and finally I harvest because the stalks are starting to die.

I am excited because I *think* this may be the year I finally get it right. As I am shucking the corn I first notice that I have some colors in a few of the corn kernels. So a phone call to my mom reveals that there was some cross pollination with the popcorn variety that was grown right next to them. Usually there is a space buffer which I didn’t do. You could feel the difference in the colored kernel and yellow kernel. The colored kernel was harder.

A couple of the ears had a lovely addition of a corn earworm. I just cut the bad part off.

After shucking all the ears I still had to get rid of quite a few that just hadn’t developed. They were still pale. Oh well, so next step of cooking a few ears. My mouth was watering just waiting for them to finish. On went the butter, salt, and pepper. First bite was going to be grand… Yeah, it wasn’t grand. The corn was not sweet, it was mushy, and just didn’t have a nice taste. Lee and I both didn’t finish our two ears.

I need to blanch all the ears of corn that are left. I figure I can use them in soups or something. Next year I can try again. One day I will get it right. With better soil fertility and a new corn seed maybe I will finally master growing corn.

I am experimenting for the first time on saving bean seeds. I let the bean pods dry out on the plant. When the bean pods felt really hard I picked them off. Here is a picture of the dried Bingo bean pods. It’s really exciting splitting them open and seeing the dried beans in them.

It really makes sense to save your bean seed for next years planting since most legume species rarely cross. I am going to try and save seed from some plants that my mom gave me to try out.

Dragon’s Tongue beans. Aren’t they beautiful?

Jacob’s Cattle Gasless beans. For some reason these beans really produced a lot of seed.

Bingo beans. I just shelled these ones today. I will let them set out for a few days to finish drying all the way.

Lima beans. I barely got any pods that set on this year. That was most likely due to the hot weather. I probably won’t save any seed from them as there isn’t enough and I don’t really like lima beans.

To make sure that I don’t have a problem with bean weevils, I will put the seed into the freezer for a few days. I figure if it all works well I will be money ahead not having to purchase my bean seed next year. If it doesn’t, then no big deal as I was buying my bean seed every year anyways. Might as well try it.

I find this picture humorous for some reason. I’m not sure why. Today I primed 8 sheets of plywood that will be used for the eves in the new roof. We are priming them because we are not sure when we will get around to painting the house. Tomorrow I have 8 more to do.

Lee and I have been working on processing the wood scrap coming out of our house project. Most of the wood we are just cutting down to size so it will fit into our wood stove. It should burn very good as it has had over 70 years to dry. Lee cuts the wood to size in the cart so it will just fall into place.

Then once the cart is full I bring it back to the barn stall and stack, and stack, and stack. We still have so much more to do before being done. I plan on being warm this winter.

My sunflowers had finished flowering a while ago. After each sunflower leaves had turned yellow and dead I cut the head off it. So far I have four heads cut and drying. I didn’t want to leave them out in the garden as I was afraid the birds and squirrels would harvest the seeds before I could get to them. Funny thing is, no animal has tried harvesting them yet. This is the first time I have ever got a sunflower head full of seeds. I am feeling very shocked.

Home improvements continue. I am sleeping at my sisters while this goes on. Lee is sleeping on the couch so he can keep an eye on the dogs and the house.

The dump bin is just going to get fuller. Right now it mainly has old insulation in it. We plan on upgrading that along with insulating the entire house. Only the 1980s remodeled part had any insulation installed. The rest was uninsulated tongue and groove or plywood walls.

Wood scrap that will be re-used in the house or cut to size and used as fire starter.

Lee and I had been planing on having a winter vegetable garden this year. Unfortunately we got so busy prepping for the house improvements along with other day to day stuff that the time just slid by. I will try to get my garlic in though. Just nothing else. Next year we hope to be better and more on top of things. Or at least have the energy to tackle it.