We have gotten a handful of Italian prunes off our tree, but because of the windstorm during blossom time there just wasn’t that much to be had. Our neighbor, on the other hand, had her trees protected from the storm by the bulk of our garage. She’s had her fill and told us to go and take the rest, so today we went over and picked them. We ended up with 3 gallons or so of good ones, and a gallon of drops that were beyond salvaging, as well as some mushy ones still on the tree to give to the chickens. Guess who loves us now? The little raptors swarmed us.
We will probably eat quite a few of the prunes out of hand, but the rest will be preserved by freezing. I simply wash them, cut them in half, remove the pit and lay them out on a cookie sheet. Then I put them in the freezer for a couple of hours and once they are solid, I divide them up into quart size baggies. Nita from http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/ told me about this method when I asked her last year and it worked really well.
I like to eat them frozen like little Popsicles or they go good in a smoothie. I had planned to try drying them this year or making fruit leather, but there just weren’t enough to make it worthwhile. I don’t like them canned, so freezing seemed like the best choice.
I am trying to get up the energy to go and can another batch of green beans. I am very tired today though. The power kept going on and off last night, so it would turn my C-PAP machine on and off which is very disruptive and interferes with my breathing. Every time it happened I’d come fully awake. By the time it stopped I had a really hard time getting back to sleep. But I still want to get it done today, despite that. The longer I wait, the less fresh the beans will be.
One of the chickens laid a shell-less egg today. If you’ve never had that happen before, the egg comes out with just the thick membrane around it. It’s soft to the touch, yet firm, kind of like holding finger Jell-o. I think we may need to get more oyster shell. I think it was Patricia who laid it. She’s the oldest hen and her eggs have been a little weird lately. Queen was laying weird eggs before she died, but they didn’t even have the membrane. I am hoping that Patricia is okay and won’t go the same way as Queen did. She seems much perkier than Queen did, though.
I’m not sure if you can really tell that it is shell-less in the photo, but it sort of shows how the light moves through the egg. These sorts of eggs go to the neighbor and she feeds them to her dogs or cat. They always love the little treat. Fortunately these don’t show up too often, though.
When Did This Become a Farm? 
I’ve never seen an egg like that before. Enjoy the plumbs!
Yes – old hen – lack of calcium. Oddly enough hens do have a finite number of eggs in them. 😊
Not necessarily old hen or lack of calcium. I had a younger hen lay about three of these last fall, and after a little worry and research, I discovered that when hens begin to go into their fall molt, it interferes with their egg-laying mechanism. Sometimes the part that puts the shell on ‘turns off’ a little early, and they lay a few shell-less eggs before they stop laying entirely for the winter! My hen started laying normal eggs again the following Spring. If your hen is molting – or starts to molt soon, I wouldn’t worry about it.
5 of them are molting right now. There are so many feathers flying around it looks like a massacre hit them. One of those is the oldest hen, but 4 are the youngest.
Weird. When my chickens laid shell less eggs they broke and made a mess. That one is very cool!
It’s the hormones and the changing of the season… Today one of my hens layed an egg TWICE the size of any I have gotten before now!
Very good point about the fall molt – I never think about that as our layers are on timed lights – so they lay all winter – actually all year round. The odd egg I get with no shell generally comes from one of our ‘senior’ hens. I just bump up the oyster shell.