With many squeals of glee and screams of delight (and the kids were excited, too), we discovered that the chickens (now officially hens according to Julia) have begun laying eggs!!! 

We were not anticipating this for another 2 weeks or more.  We didn't even have a place built for them to lay in, yet...that was this weekend's project...but...the girls just couldn't wait...

We heard a bunch of loud squawking Saturday morning during breakfast so we wondered if a chicken might be caught in some thorns.  The kids and daddy went to investigate and came back awhile later LOADED with eggs...tiny eggs, big eggs and everything in between...27 eggs in all.  About half were in a thorny area between some trees and the other half were in an old rabbit hutch that the former owners had upstairs in the back barn...

TWENTY-SEVEN EGGS...and we didn't even know they were laying them!  We quickly googled to find out how to test if these eggs were rotten as we had no idea how old they were...every single one passed the test (rotten eggs float, older eggs stand on their skinny end at the bottom of the water and fresh eggs lay at the bottom.)  So, since we'd already eaten breakfast...dinner was quickly decided on...fresh farm eggs, pancakes and bacon.

I should have taken a picture...I have never seen eggs a more deep golden yellow color when we scrambled and cooked them!  Amazing! 

Incidentally, daddy and a friend built the chickens nests to lay in yesterday and one of the chickens has already caught on and laid our biggest one yet! 

Our next project...a milking cow!!!  This is too much fun!