Enter the egg zone

I’ve got 65 chook eggs, 20 duck eggs, and 17 tiny Japanese bantam eggs in the house at the moment.

Some are in cartons, lots aren’t.

This is what you get when you have too many chooks.

And I know we’re in a perfect situation to have eggs and bacon. But even if we followed the Heart Foundation’s recommendation of six eggs per person a week, that still only gets rid of a dozen.

And we’re getting more than a dozen a day.

I shouldn’t complain, eggs were like gold during the war years. And I do genuinely feel guilty if I crack one.

I flog them off to the neighbours and work colleagues, but there are always some in the back of the fridge, on the freezer, and in the egg basket.

I’m constantly trying to make cunning plans to cut back the numbers:

If I make 12 batches of gingerbread men that’ll use 12 yolks. Then I could make three fruity pumpkin cakes with the remaining whites.

I know I can make custard with six yolks, and then turn the whites into a meringue. But I really don’t think we need two desserts on the go.

A quiche will use up two, and that’s two whole eggs, without the separation fuss.

If only the chooks understood the stress I’m under. I’m sure they’d cross their legs and hold on for a day.

I do think the bantam eggs are rather sweet, at only about three centimetres long. Do you think there could be a niche market for mini eggs? Baby carrots and beets are trendy.

The duck eggs are beautiful too, either an almost see-through white, or bluey green. And the yolks are cadmium yellow.

And the chook eggs come in all shades from deep brown to white. And they vary in size and shape depending on the age and breed of the chook. The young pullets are producing rounded brown eggs.

The pleasure of collecting eggs never fades.

One of us will always ask, ‘how many eggs did we get today?’.

We always leave the eggs if we know we've got young visitors coming.

And I love seeing Guy at the chook house holding up the bottom of his jumper, placing one egg at a time into his nest.