You just can't beat farm-fresh eggs for breakfast

 

These farm-fresh eggs, unwashed for longer preservation,
obviously, came from multiple hens.

When you live in town,  as we do, it's good to know someone  in the country who keeps chickens and sells their eggs.

Fortunately, I do.

A young woman I work with, Amy, has a husband and two children and she keeps them busy with a flock of hens, no roosters. Every week or so, she brings me a couple dozen eggs with shells that are brown, blue, or some hue I can't quite figure out.

What's important, though is the color of the yolks. These eggs have deep, rich yellowish orange or orangish yellow yolks, so you know they have to be good.

I like to cook breakfasts on the weekends for my wife and our three babies (two standard poodles and a little terrier mix feller from the animal shelter), so we eat them fried or scrambled or as French toast. Sometimes I make pancakes and put an egg or two in the mix. No one ever turns a nose up at weekend breakfasts around here.

Sometimes, when I'm in the mood, I make fried egg sandwiches for supper. If they could talk, the babies would say, "Mighty fine, mighty fine."

Amy said she told her mother-in-law that I fed bites of egg to the three fur-babies, and her reaction was an aghast, "Farm-fresh eggs for dogs! What a waste!" When Amy told me that story, I said, "Dogs? What dogs?" She laughed and said that's what she told her mother-in-law.

Farm-fresh eggs are great for boiling, too--and to use in recipes.

So, if you live in town, find someone with a flock of birds.

If you feel the urge to criticize your kids, just shut up

Our niece posted a video of her son's first piano recital, and it reminded me of another boy's piano-playing experience.
This other boy was a little older than our great-nephew. He might have been in junior high school, I think. He had started taking piano lessons the summer between second and third grades, but when the family moved, they didn't have room for the piano for a couple of years or so. I think he started taking lessons again in sixth grade. Heck, he may have been a freshman in high school by the time this incident occurred.
It was in the evening, and he was practicing. He was working on a new piece of music in his lesson book, and it was a little difficult. He was not a natural musician; he had to work hard to make any advances in technique. He played the same half dozen or so measures and then hit a clinker. The same clinker, time after time. There was something about the finger movement required that he didn't get. Perhaps his short stubby fingers didn't reach. Whatever it was, it was going to take some practice to get over that hurdle, to memorize the movement needed at that point in the musical phrase to get to the right note.
But heck, that's what practicing is, isn't it? Making mistakes, learning from them and learning to avoid them in the future.
But after he'd made that same mistake several times, his dad said, irritably, "You must really like that wrong note. You keep hitting it every time."
The young man, already frustrated at himself for failing to catch on to the technique quickly, said, "Oh, shut up."
And the dad walloped him up the side of the head a couple of times.
The boy got up and quit practicing that night. He didn't much care about practicing any more after that.
Eventually, his music teacher told him that he might as well quit wasting his parents' money.
So he quit piano lessons.
He would sit down and play every now and again after that, tunes that he could already play. If he tried a new, harder tune on his own, he only did it when his dad wasn't around, and if he didn't get through it quickly, he moved on to something else.
So, if you have a child who is learning a new skill and is working hard at it, don't knock him if he makes some mistakes. If you are the type of parent who needs to criticize your child, then knock him for not practicing, not making mistakes, not learning something new. Don't knock him for making mistakes because he is trying and failing. Let him keep trying until he gets it.
I think in these instances, it is better to encourage or just shut up.
I am going to give that advice to my niece, now that I have seen her little boy at the piano keyboard. He is young, eager, interested in music and has some talent. He can learn to be an excellent pianist if he gets some encouragement to keep pushing, practice, make mistakes, learn from them.
Perhaps most of us can learn to do lots of stuff if there isn't someone around to discourage us.
Thank God, our niece is an encourager, so I believe the sky is the limit for her piano-playing son.

Are you interested in homesteading? I always was

Growing up on a five-acre homestead in Southwest Missouri, I was eager to get away from the place and the chores. In my junior year at the university, I ran across a publication called Ozarks Access Catalog or something similar. I discovered the "back to the land" movement, and I wanted to be a part of it.
Well, I was, but only in my imagination. After the university, I took a job as a small-town reporter/photographer/editor, and that took a lot of hours every day for seven years. Then I moved to another paper, just a little bigger but not much, and that took as many hours or more. I worked about seven days a week for that paper for 20 years. Then my wife and I started our own little publication and that took a lot of time for three years before it went broke. For the past dozen years or so, I have been working in retail full-time and journalism part-time, plus occasional blogging, so I guess I have three jobs and they take up about 13 hours a day.
As much as I'd like to have a homestead, I can't afford it and I don't have the time to work it.
Oveer the years, I had a huge collectionof Mother Earth News and similar publications. I always dreamed about having five acres  or so to have a small orchard, a big garden, ssome bees, rabbits and chickens, and room to fatten a steer every year.
Alas, none of that has come to pass and likely won't now.
But perhaps you have such a dream. If so, here's an interesting item I ran across from the University of Missouri Extension office in Springfield.

Five acres of land, a small pond and a desire for schedule flexibility does not sound like the typical path to success for cattle producers.
However, land in southwest Missouri can provide a reasonably priced home for a cow compared to other parts of the nation, which is why Missouri ranks number two in beef cows behind Texas according to Andy McCorkill, a livestock specialist with University of Missouri Extension.
Cattle are also a great option for people with small acreages and flexible schedules.
"I would encourage people in that situation to look into running some aged cows that you would buy bred, calve out and then sell as pairs. Another option is to keep them until the calves are ready to wean and sell them separately. Running young growing stock would probably be the best way to get some experience," said McCorkill.
With growing cattle, a producer is hoping to profit from efficient gains of weight. That is doable on small acreages.
"In most years, October and early November mark the softest point of the year in the calf market so it is usually a good time to buy lighter weight calves if you can keep them healthy. You would then sell them at a heavier weight in the spring," said McCorkill.
In this scenario, a person could buy back a set to summer that would be sold in July or August which would give the land some time to rest and stockpile grass until October or November when you would do it all over again.
"It would take good management of the grass for things pan out at that intensive of a level, but it is what many folks do," said McCorkill.
Water is, of course, a very important factor for cattle and for many people it can be a limiting factor. With a small pond, a watering tank is still going to be necessary.
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
According to Eldon Cole, livestock specialist with MU Extension in Lawrence County, says not expect huge profits from beef operations. A lot depends on what you include in your costs.
"Backgrounding operations rely on buying and selling skills plus market shifts for profits. A $100 per head profit is a goal of many backgrounders," said Cole.
Running beef cattle is viewed by many as a desired lifestyle and a great way to introduce children or grandchildren to cattle so they can grow up with an appreciation for agriculture. Getting them involved with 4-H may be an outgrowth of this lifestyle choice which can mean making a profit is secondary.
"The first consideration before you buy any cattle is to have something for them to eat and drink. The best cattle producers are the best forage managers. One beef cow and her calf require about three acres per year," said Cole.
If southwest Missouri has a comparative advantage over other areas of the country in producing an agriculture product it is probably beef cattle, specifically cows, and calves.
"Even though our land is not overly fertile and seems high priced, we can still provide a reasonably priced home for a cow compared to other parts of the United States. This is the reason Missouri ranks number two in beef cows behind only Texas," said Cole.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information, contact any of the MU Extension livestock specialists in southwest Missouri: Eldon Cole in Lawrence County, (417) 466-3102; Andy McCorkill in Dallas County at (417) 345-7551; Dr. Randy Wiedmeier, in Douglas County at (417) 679-3525; or Dr. Patrick Davis in Cedar County at (417) 276-3313.

 My homesteading today is limited to five 4x8 raised garden beds. I don't have livestock, but we have three poodles and a cat, plus some feral cats that wander in sometimes. I guess that will have to do.