Three Many Acres Eggs & Produce
Welcome to our egg & produce page! You'll find out more about how we work with our poultry here, as well as whether or not we have eggs or produce available. If you'd like to be notified first when eggs are available, contact us to ask to be added to our waiting list.
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Chicken Eggs
$3 per dozen
Our chickens are pastured and their yards are moved weekly or more often. They get to follow our other critters, scratching the ground to eat bugs, seeds, and plant matter to their hearts' content. This allows the chickens to express their "chicken-ness". If you're wondering why that's relevant, it's because happy, healthy animals allowed to be themselves make nutritious, delicious food. Yum! We supplement with New Country Organics layer feed to ensure are ladies aren't lacking anything they need nutrtionally.
Seasonality
Another egg micro-fact
Did you know eggs are seasonal? Many people don't! It takes lots of energy and nutrients to make eggs. Hens lay in the spring, summer, and early fall and then they take a well-deserved break to molt (lose and regrow all their feathers) and rest their tired bodies. New feathers require a LOT of calcium, so this nutrient, in particular, is utilized for feathers instead of eggs. Check our blog regularly—we feel a post for this coming on!
Duck Eggs
$3 per half-dozen
Our ducks are sometimes pastured and their yards are moved weekly or more often; the rest of the time they are free to roam over about 3 acres. They visit our riparian areas and help us create new swales and small ponds throughout our property. Quacking happily, they eat ample bugs, slugs, seeds, and plant matter allowing them to exhibit their innate "duck-ness". If you're wondering why that's relevant, it's because happy, healthy animals allowed to express themselves make nutritious, delicious food. Yum! We supplement with New Country Organics layer feed to ensure are ladies aren't lacking anything they need nutrtionally.
Shiitake
$10/ pound
Ever tasted Shiitake mushrooms? They are delectable and meaty. Heavier and more flavorful than a portobello mushroom, they make excellent cream of mushroom soup or are delicious added to stir fry or sauteed with onions and butter and put on top of anything! Our logs were harvested in our forest and lovingly inoculated with spawn in 2018. We sometimes have fresh mushrooms available, and usually have dried available. If you'd like to be on a list to hear about our fresh offerings, contact us and let us know!
What the Duck?!
Duck egg micro-fact
Duck eggs are up to 60% larger than a chicken egg; they have more fat, protein, and cholesterol; and they are superior for baking!
Still interested in how duck and chicken eggs differ? Check out our blog post: “Break-ing News…Duck Eggs are Fabulous!”
Fresh Produce
Seasonal and $ Varies
It's our goal to produce at least 60% of our own food; and that percentage will increase as time passes. When we do have an excess of something though (or if we don't have time to preserve the abundance), it will be available for you! Homegrown, beyond organic, pesticide-free, nutritious veggies grown with love. Ask to join our notification list if you want to know what's available and when!
WHY CHICKENS AND DUCKS?
Feathered friends, and hard workers
I mean, come on! Chickens and ducks belong on a farm! That reason aside, in permaculture, we are always looking for solutions to problems that are good for the earth, have layers of benefits, and (ideally) lessen our work load quite a bit. The "problem"? Bugs, manure, and a heap of compost.
The "solution"? Chickens and ducks! They are excellent workers on the farm, each having a unique niche to fill.
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Chickens are scratching birds, so they are great at spreading things. They also eat bugs, grass, plant waste, our organic scraps from our compost waste, seeds, and an occasional mouse if one happens to find it's way into their yard. (Ew, did we really just say that?!) Yep! Chickens are omnivores, like us, so they need meat and plant based foods to thrive. They work hard for us: we rotate their chicken yard about our property in the spring, summer and fall. In the winter, we keep them close to the house to let them prepare our garden for spring. Seriously, they are happy, expressing their natural chicken-ness, and we don't have to lift a shovel to get the garden ready to grow. (Sounds like we'll need a blog post to be more specific about this...) The best part is they save us labor AND give us food! They turn all that into eggs and meat! They, truly, are amazing feathered friends.
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We added Indian Runner ducks to the mix because they are great at de-slugging the garden. They get to spend mornings de-slugging, and then they either get the run of the property or are guided to their own yard for more concentrated efforts (described below). If they spend too much time in the garden, they WILL eat all the good stuff. Ducks eat a variety of things, also being omnivores, however they don't scratch which is GREAT when the garden is growing and we don't want root systems disturbed. Ducks have those broad, webbed, swimming feet that they just plop around on while quacking all day. And they do quack all day; and, surprisingly, most the night too.
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The ducks also help us gley in new ponds and water features. "Gleying in" means the water stays in our ponds and water features without being soaked into the ground. The recipe for this beautiful, simple success? A few ducks, their house, and their fence to keep them in the space we need to catch water. Then we let them poop and pack it in with their feet. Add a little water (usually the rain does this for us), and the ducks get to play and quack and "muck" (eat with their signature filtering mechanism, I'm pretty sure we are the only ones who use the term "mucking" to refer to this). All this creates an anaerobic environment in the bottom of the water feature which seals the bottom so the water doesn't soak into the ground. Cool huh? And... wait for it... we get beautiful duck eggs in exchange for providing these lovely critters with love and work they enjoy doing.
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Rotating the chicken and duck pastures allow us to intensively stimulate the land where we need/want to, keep their manure spread evenly over the property (chicken manure is "hot" because it's so high in nitrogen--when it piles up in one spot it is toxic to the surrounding environment), prevent parasite problems, and keep our fowl friends excited about the job they're helping us do...for them, the grass really is greener (and more full of bugs) on the other side of the fence. And they'll get to go there really soon!
