Typically summer is when I make potato salad since salads and summer kinda go hand in hand. But, this recipe is scrumptious any time of year. It’s especially handy after Easter when I’m trying to make use of the dozens of eggs we dyed.

Since we always have plenty of fresh eggs, this recipe calls for a few more than an ordinary potato salad. It reminds of a potato salad and egg salad mash up.

INGREDIENTS

• 20 red potatoes
• 1 cup dill pickles, diced
• 7 hard boiled eggs, or steam ’em like I do
• 2 tablespoons yellow or white onion, diced
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise, store bought or homemade
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• 3 tablespoons pickle juice
• 2 teaspoons parsley, minced
• sea salt or kosher salt
• pepper
• paprika

THE POTATOES

Scrub potatoes.

Peel them, if you feel like it. Some days I give them a rough peel, some times I don’t peel them at all.

Slice potatoes in half.

Boil until fork tender. For me, that’s usually right around 22 minutes.

Drain.

Smash the potatoes – ideally with a potato masher. Mine, however, has ran away never to return apparently, so I use a fork. You are not making mashed potatoes, so a rough smashing will do.

If you opted not to peel your potatoes, you might want to pick out some of the larger skin pieces. That’s what I do.

ADDING THE OTHER STUFF

While the potatoes are boiling, I prepare the other ingredients.

I mince parsley, preferably the fresh stuff from our garden.

I dice the onion and pickles. I prefer little pieces, so I dice them fairly fine.

I use an egg slicer to chop the eggs.

When the smashed potatoes are cooled slightly, I stir in the mayo, mustard, pickle juice, salt, pepper and paprika.

Next I fold in the eggs, pickles and onion.

The final step is mixing in the parsley.

This recipe makes about 7.5 cups of smashed potato salad.

ENJOY!

Find a fork and dig in. It’s delicious!

Save

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White leghorns are another of my favorite birds to have on our farm. They are a basic, no nonsense bird. They rarely cause any trouble. They eat. They lay eggs.

They are on the flighty side, so aren’t the best choice for a pet chicken. But, as part of our barnyard flock they are perfect.

Our birds are not American Poultry Association show quality birds. They are, however, fabulous backyard birds for egg laying & meat purposes.

Chicks

White leghorns are the super cute, pale yellow, fluffy chicks that you can’t resist at the feed store.

Coloring

Comb, face, & wattles: bright red
Eyes: reddish bay
Ear lobes: white
Beak: yellow
Shanks & toes: yellow

Hens

These two are enjoying a refreshing summer drink from our pond.

White leghorns are good foragers.

Of course, they also like kitchen scraps.

Roosters

We have pretty good luck with well behaved roosters on our farm. This guy, however, is on my shit list. He has attacked me.

Outside of his bad attitude, I think he’s quite a handsome fella.

Eggs

The #1 reason to have White Leghorns in your flock is their large, white egg. They are great egg layers, producing 4 or 5 eggs each week. They are such great layers that they are the breed commercial egg producers use for a typical carton of eggs sold to grocery stores.

White Leghorn Bonus

On a personal note – an added bonus the white leghorn has going for it is that it originated from Tuscany, Italy. Swoon! I love to travel. I have made it to Italy once… but not to the Tuscany area. It is a part of the world that is on my must-see bucket list. Maybe I need to go there to do chicken research…

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Candling chicken eggs is an exciting part of the incubating process. I don’t always candle them, but I usually do.

Candling the egg gives you a glimpse at what’s happening inside.

When I use an incubator to hatch eggs, I typically candle them a couple times within the 21 developing days. I don’t bother candling them until at least day 4 because I can’t see anything before then. And, I don’t candle after day 18 because the eggs are in lock down.

Most often if a broody hen is sitting on eggs I don’t candle them. I leave the broody to tend her eggs. The exception is if I think her eggs aren’t good. Before taking them away I will candle them.

MY CANDLING METHOD

My incubators came with candling tools, so I use those. But, I’ve also had success with a flashlight. I go in a dark room, hold the candling tool to the egg, and inspect the egg.

DAYS 1-7

The first couple days there is little to see when candling. Usually on days 3 or 4 is when the veins just become visible. By day 6 those veins should really be easy to see.

DAYS 8-14

The embryo starts to grow & fill its shell, but still has room to wiggle around. Often you can see the shadow of the embryo moving inside the shell. It’s absolutely great to see.

DAYS 15-21

Days 15 – 18 the chick is filling most of the egg. When candling, nearly the entire egg is black except where the air cell is.
Do not candle the eggs past Day 18, as they need to be in lock down and not disturbed.

EGGS THAT AREN’T DEVELOPING CORRECTLY

Sometimes the eggs don’t develop into a hatched chick.

Left: This egg is clear – meaning it never started developing. It’s possible that it was never fertilized. If I think an egg is clear, I leave it in the incubator and check it again a couple days later. If it’s still clear, I take it out.

Right: This egg has a blood ring. For some reason, the embryo started developing, then quit. This one gets taken out of the incubator.

Some hatches I candle more than is recommended. Some hatches I candle 2 or 3 times & some hatches don’t get candled at all.

It is recommended to candle only 2 or 3 times within the 21 day period. That really is all that is necessary to check the development of the eggs. But, some hatches I’m more antsy and curious about what’s going on. So, I candle more often. Hands-on experience is how I learn best. Candling more versus candling less, hasn’t changed my hatch rate. Although, I could see how messing with the eggs more than necessary could be a bad idea. So, please use your best judgement when deciding how often to candle your eggs.

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• Red Tail Hawk & Northern Flicker

• The tilapia are doing well

• One of the Olive Eggers hatched over the summer layed her first egg right where I could see it easily – on the milk station. This photo, however, is not quite true to color. The egg is a fabulous olive color – darker than what the photo shows.

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• Georgia
• Betsy
• Farmer John is working on a hay shed. The building also holds the milking stand.
• Pink dawn viburnum blooming
• I finally bottled the calendula salve I made from our calendula flowers.
• I also bottled our homemade mint extract.
• There are crazy mushrooms growing in the yard.
• The Delaware chicks from this spring are starting to lay.
• The youngest chicks on the farm, a Cream Legbar and Olive Egger

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• Still love okra flowers!
• Okra, cherry tomatoes & Mexican sour gherkins are growing in the aquaponics system.
• The water in one of our ponds completely evaporated. So, I took advantage of it and troweled out much of the duck sludge. This was literally a crappy job. But, I’m so glad I did it.
• Basil growing next to an herb barrel.
• The ladies are continuing to lay well, so I’ve been making lots of hard boiled eggs.
• Awhile back I ordered hatching eggs. Things didn’t go as I had planned and only one black copper marans hatched. Not that it’s a few weeks old, I noticed it has a few white feathers. Ugh! This was a damned expensive chicken for it not even to be breeding stock.
• Zucchini has been blanched and frozen.
• The tomatoes have been transformed into sauce. One batch has Italian flavor. The other has Mexican.

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• Still picking typical green zucchini and less typical golden zucchini. They’re lookin’ pretty good.
• Pepper in the taco garden.
• Herb Barrel going strong.
• Using up the many eggs we are getting: Breakfast Burrito’s, Egg Muffins, Egg Wraps
• Wee little black copper marans
• Gettin’ the stink eye
• Apples on our tree! Still so excited to see this!

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• We have reached the time when the squash goes wild. Squash, squash, and more squash. I blanched some and am freezing it for fall or winter. The chickens have also had their fair share of the larger ones.

• The plums are ripening. And, they are yummy!

• The herb barrels are full and beautiful. This is my first time growing parsley. It’s growing very well. Almost too well. I need to research recipes that include parsley.

• Back in March, we lost all but one of our ducks. She was then fenced in with the chickens. She was not impressed with this. Eventually, she ended up getting out and I didn’t have the heart to put her back. Lately, she’s been sitting on eggs. They aren’t fertile, but I hadn’t gotten around to taking them away. And sitting on eggs is what kept her safe from the predator(s) last time. Unfortunately, she is now missing and her eggs are gone…

• Our laying ladies are granting us with a lovely array of colorful eggs. My favorite right now is the dark brown Welsummer egg.

• Because we’re going through a lot of eggs these days, I crushed a bunch of the shells. Some I’m saving for a craft and others I sprinkled around our tomato plants.

• The olive eggers that hatched a couple weeks ago are growing quickly. I’m sure they aren’t, but they seem to be growing more quickly than our other hatches.

• It’s hatch day! About the same time the others were hatching another batch were set in an incubator. Those ones are starting to hatch. So far, we have 2.

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This week it’s all about eggs.

We have eggs coming out our ears. The ladies are laying great. This is a fabulous problem to be having. We are also hatching eggs.

•  For the first time ever, I ordered hatching eggs. I’ve been wanting to add to our Marans flock, but haven’t found what I was looking for locally. Also, I would like to try raising Cream Legbars and haven’t found what I wanted locally. So, I opted to order from out of state. At this point, I am unsure if I think this was a good plan. I was definitely excited to try it as this opens more options for future breeds. I was impressed at how well the eggs were packaged and that none were broken. Once I got the eggs home, I let them sit for about 7 hours before placing them in the incubator. Possibly I should have let them rest for 24 hours?

• About 36 hours into incubation, I tried to pick up an egg to give it a little turn. It was stuck like glue to the turner. The egg broke. Two more eggs did the same thing. And by stuck, I mean stuck, stuck. We had to use a scraper to get it off the turner. My guess is it was the egg leaking, then hardening. Weird. I have never had that happen before. I’ve also never had eggs shipped across the US before. At this point, I need to do more research to find out if this is a common problem with shipped eggs, or if there was something weird with this batch. Also, the egg yolk and white parts seemed a different consistency, more liquidy, than regular eggs. Coincidence? I’m not sure.

• We quickly took the eggs out and cleaned the incubator. Then, put the turner and good eggs back in.

• The next day I checked on the eggs again looking for any that might be stuck. One Marans egg was stuck just a tiny bit. When I picked up the egg a tiny piece of shell stayed in the turner. Ugh! The membrane was still intact. So, I put tape over the missing shell piece and am hoping for the best.

• Thankfully, no more have stuck since then.

• Almost a week into incubation, the majority seem to be developing. Awesome!

• However, last night I noticed a slight odor when I opened the incubator. Dang! Farm Girl and I used our detective sniffing skills to find the culprit. We found it, took it out and smashed it to see why it was stinky. Nothin’. It wasn’t developing, but it also wasn’t rotten colored. It was more liquidy, though, than I feel it should have been.

• I am conflicted on what to feel about this. It is definitely frustrating since these eggs were quite expensive. However, it is still amazing to me that I can hatch any eggs that came all the way from Ohio. The way things are going, I will be thrilled with a 50% hatch rate.

• The barn swallow babies I’ve been admiring have learned how to fly, so I’m sure they’ll be on their way soon.

• I found another nest. This time belonging to a white-crowned sparrow. So far, there are just two eggs.

• The ladies are cranking out eggs like crazy. We’re getting nearly 2 dozen every day.

• We can’t eat all the eggs we are getting, so I have been putting extras in baggies and freezing for future use.

• We have two incubators. A couple weeks ago, I set eggs in one of them for the first time this year. Right now they are busy hatching!

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Things are in full swing around here. It’s a busy time of year trying to keep up. But, the reward makes it all worth it.

• Years ago, Farm Kid2 requested a flower garden all his own. I ended up putting together one near the chicken coops for him. Rookie mistake. Often our chickens free range and they love that plot of dirt, making it difficult for anything to grow. This year, though, only a couple roosters are free ranging, and we’ve had much better luck with the wildflower seeds we planted in the spring.

• Farm Kid2 collected sage seeds from last years plant that has already bloomed.

• The last couple years a barn swallow couple has built a nest and hatch babies above our porch. This year’s babies are here.

• The middle photo is of the bounty I collected one day. Tomatoes and Mexican sour gherkins from the greenhouse. Raspberries, kale, & squash from the main garden. Flat leaf parsley from the herb pots. Eggs from the hens. And, lavender from a flower bed.

• Stinking Chamomile, or Anthemis cotula, and mint growing in front of the chicken run.

• I put eggs in the incubator for the first time this year. The rooster responsible for fertilizing the eggs is an olive egger. My goal was to produce more olive eggers. But, I ended up adding a few other eggs in as well.

• Snakes are now on my naughty list. I’m not a fan of snakes. But, I can appreciate them and I am thankful they prey on mice. I dislike mice even more than snakes. However, I was unaware that they also prey on goldfish. Ugh! A few months ago, we lost all but one of out ducks. I tried to find a bright side – which was I can have goldfish in our ponds once again. I happily bought more goldfish thinking they wouldn’t quickly turn into duck food. There are a lot of snakes out and about these days. I ignore them. They ignore me. But, one day a particular snake seemed a bit aggressive. It never came after me, his behavior was just different than the other snakes. I didn’t realize at the time that he was fishing and I was disrupting his hunt… until I did realize it because he caught a fish right in front of me. Then hauled it off in to the bushes to devour it. Stinker! Go eat a mouse!

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