This weekend the weather was great here in Colorado, so Britton and I decided to take a bike ride from our house down the Poudre River Trail for a while. At one point we stopped as there were lots of cows crossing the river. They are so cute. If cows were smaller, we would so get one! 🙂
Moo-ve over the river
We have two chickens who are called Americanas, AKA Ameraucanas, Auracanas or just Easter Eggers. One of them is Greenfoot and the other is Littlefoot. When we got Greenfoot we were excited to see green or blue eggs, but she only laid brown speckled eggs. So this last year when we got the new chicks we got another Americana, Littlefoot and were hopeful that her eggs would be a different color.
Littlefoot the green egg layer
So…one day we went out and found a very obviously green egg! They are so cool. Now you know that the Dr. Seuss story wasn’t completely made up! We CAN have green eggs and ham!
The egg shell color is determined by the breed of chicken. A brown egg or green egg is no more (or less) healthy than a white egg. What makes an egg healthier is what the chickens eat. Because white eggs are from the industry standard Leghorn (like Omeleto) they are often considered less healthy than brown eggs that are from heritage breeds – like our barred rock. But really, it’s about their diet. On the outside the shells may have a different color, but inside the color only changes if they have a more varied diet such as being on pasture eating bugs, green grasses and the occasional mouse. If you want to see the inside difference between a conventional store-bought egg and our backyard hens’ eggs, you can see it here.
Otherwise, here’s the outside cool variety of colored shells.
Variety Pack: carton of eggs including the green eggs and speckled eggs
Now that two of our pullets are laying eggs, they’ve decided they don’t like laying eggs -or sleeping- in the the chicken coop. They will roost on the chain link fence right above the coop, but they won’t go in unless we actually physically put them in at night. As for the laying, I was getting a little worried when I didn’t see any eggs at all even from the older hens for two days in a row.
Chickens in the yard
I checked the place where they had liked to lay before under the unruly rose bush by the house, but no, there wasn’t anything there. I thought I had looked everywhere until I glanced into the mint bush and just happened to spy their clutch in there. It was so well camouflaged that I asked Britton if he could come out and try to find it. I don’t think he ever would have if I hadn’t shown him where it was. Right under our noses and super hard to spot! If you have chickens who are about laying age, make sure to check your yard for any hiding areas. Now I know where the Easter Egg Hunt tradition came about…this wasn’t just a game for kids back when most people had their own chickens 🙂
Hidden Eggs in the brush
My friend Kelly and I were talking one day about a bike ride dinner that Britton and I had done a few years ago with our friends Melissa and Alan. It was a progressive dinner where at each stop there was a different course of the meal, then you would bike to the next one. She loved the idea and said we should do our own which I completely agreed! So we set about putting it together.
With a progressive dinner you can have between 3-7 stops. For the most basic three stops there would be Appetizers, Main Course, and Dessert. We had four stops so we also had a salad course. To add more stops, you could do Drinks, Appetizers, Salad, Soup, Main Entree, Dessert, Coffee/Chocolate/Cheese. Each stop is meant to be a “tapas” size stop except the main course which should be fairly filling.
Frozen chocolate banana appetizer
Our house was the first stop at 4pm where we served appetizers and drinks. We had frozen half bananas with hazelnut chocolate and slivered almonds, deviled eggs from our chickens and some chips and nuts. We also served kombucha tea from Celestial Seasonings because we thought our guests would get a kick out of it as we did. Everyone arrived and enjoyed this snack and then we saddled up on our bikes. I think there 11 or 12 of us who ranged in age from 12-50 years old!
Leaving to our next stop
Then we rode about 3 miles to our friends Matt and Jamie’s house where they served the salad course which was a nice pasta salad with veggies from their garden and a homemade tuna salad. They just got a couple chickens in their huge backyard so it was fun to check out their set up as well.
Next was probably both the most fun and also the hardest leg of the bike trip to Kelly’s house about 5.5 miles away. There was a lot of up and down hills and one very fast downhill part. At Kelly’s we had the main course of homemade pulled pork sandwiches and drinks and played with her adorable new puppy.
The whole group with all our bikes
Finally we rode to Gina’s house (about 4 miles) for a dessert of fruit and brownie kabobs which were excellent! Afterward, Matt and Jamie rode (treacherously uphill) back to our house under the full moon where we hung out and listened to music and sat outside for a while. It was a great day and a nice way to take all of our minds off of the usual. We all agreed that we should do this more often. It was sort of like having four parties in one with a quarter of the work of one large house party. Plus we had people ride along just for the fun of it without having to be a stop. It was great night plus awesome exercise. I am definitely feeling it in my quads!
