Custardy Oven Pancake With Berries

Once upon a time we had only 4 chickens. One was our rooster, Elvis, and the other three were our laying hens, Sassy, Wynonna, and Freja. Freja, (the special green egg laying chicken - purchased especially for this quality) doesn't lay, so really, only two of our 4 chickens actually produce eggs. During the summer and fall, this was fine and we had all of the eggs we needed. Then winter came and, well, lets just say we were lucky to get 2 eggs a week! As Scrapple recounted last week, this egg shortage is no longer an issue and now, instead of rationing our eggs, we find ourselves with the fortunate challenge of trying to find various ways to use all 5 dozen a week up! 

Occasionally, that scene from Napoleon Dynamite comes to mind... You know, the one where the farmer has "lunch" set out for the handful of kids who worked the chickens that day? Egg salad sandwiches, hardboiled eggs, and raw egg sludge by the ladleful. Mmmm.

Nono - no worries of that around here! We've found some tasty ways to use them up, one of my favorites is this custardy oven pancake.

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Buying Raw Milk in Tennessee

Since we milk seasonally (March/April through December/January), there are 2-3 months where we don't have any of our own milk. No milk for coffee, no milk for cheese, none for our cereal, etc. Of course, all of the milk we drink is raw, unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk, and we'd like to continue drinking raw milk even when our goats are not lactating.

Raw milk mozzarella "bocconcini" made with milk from Brian's Jersey cows

So we buy milk from a local farmer that produces raw cow's milk from Jersey cows. His name is Brian Harville and you can find his contact info through the Tennesseean's For Raw Milk website by contacting Shawn Dady. I believe he delivers to Murfreesboro, Nashville and many surrounding suburbs. Brian was recently featured in The Tennessean in an article titled "Health Claims of Raw Milk Debated. Farmer Sees Increased Demand, Despite a Lack of Government Oversight".

Brian rotationally grazes his 20+ herd of Jersey cows on a farm about 10 minutes away from us. I go once per week and pick-up two gallons of milk for us to drink and a few gallons of milk for Sweetbreads to make cheese with (which we split with Brian and his family).

Sounds all well and good, right? Milk straight from the cows, from a farmer we know, just down the road. Well, in many states it would be totally illegal for us to pay for his milk. Fortunately, it's perfectly legal in Tennessee.

You see, raw milk isn't the milk you get in stores.

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The Chickens & The Egg Mobile


Everyone wants to come say hi

A few weeks ago I posted about the end of the guinea mobile and how we were in the process of transitioning to an official egg mobile with laying chickens and all. A lot of people don't realize that there are specific chickens for laying eggs and specific ones for growing meat. When I say 'laying chickens' I'm talking about the egg layers. In our case, the breeds we have are Wyandottes, Rhode Island Reds, one Black Giant and one Leghorn/RIR cross. A neighbor of ours was looking to reduce his layer flock, so we adopted 11 of his egg laying chickens and 3 of his roosters.

We ate two roosters and kept Axel, who you can see below. He was by far the largest of the roosters, but also the friendliest and so far he's done a great job keeping the hens safe. Whenever I drive by the goat's paddock I see all the hens run under the coop and Axel standing guard in front of them. All the hens follow him around, it's pretty fun to watch. They also have Izzy (one of our Livestock Guardian Dogs), who you can see in the photos, with them at all times. She barks at low-flying birds and wards off other predators. She's great with poultry, unlike our puppies who are still prone to chasing.


Axel, the egg mobile's head honcho

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