Welcome to Happy Eggs - raising pastured eggs and growing chemical-free garden goodies in Oklahoma City. Pastured means that the chickens are not hennmates - they run around outside eating grass and bugs. Our production methods are clean, humane and encourage the self-actualization of every hen. We welcome our friends to come to the farm and meet the hens who lay their eggs!

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Recently the Daily Oklahoman profiled happy eggs - take a look. They also had a bit about my take on Tomatoes.

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Food is available - check the farm food tab to the right!!!

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Changes, changes, changes!!! Spring is in its fullest flower and just beginning to fray at its majestic edges as the earliest blooms give way to rich green foliage. Thanks to my neighbor Ron, my laying flock doubled from 14 to 26 hens. The first wave of garden is in the ground and the second is gettin' ready in the seedling station while I build the new CSA plots. The new laying flock is growing well and should be ready in July. My conviction that chem-free is the way to go has been reconfirmed. Ah for the love of the garden!

So I showed up at the farm the other morning and there were four new hens in the pen. Then on Saturday our mutual neighbor, Kelvin, arrived with eight more. There was the usual pecking-order confrontations but everybody seemed happy....but crowded! The make-shift shelter I built the old girls when the chicks took over the luv-sled wasn't enough. I expanded it into the Poultry Pagoda you see in pic two. One side for laying one side for eating just enough cover for everybody's owl protection. It's like living in a trailer while you build the dream-house!

To the right is a mid-afternoon glimpse into the interior of the Luv-sled and growing little chickens. They are very happy to be out of the horse-tank I use as a brooder! In the center of the picture is one of our Roosters to be, Ara, (I will get a better pic in the next update) who spent his first two weeks of life being handled daily by 25 kindergartners in my son's school and got his his picture in the Oklahoman at the tender age of three weeks! Eating and pooing, pooing and eating! Did you know chickens don't pee?

The first round of tomatoes is outside and growing. The second round waits patiently on the workshop bench for me to set up their rows. Notice the cow panel trellis system I learned from John Blevins. Last year I went experimental and got away from this tried and true system and had a trellising disaster. I am trying a new oxhart canning variety this year along with the celebrity hybrids. I will have tomatoes for sale soon (I hope.)

I grow my greens and veggies with compost, water and sunlight. I use blood meal, coffee grounds and green sand to fertilize. I use Neem, BT and my fingers for pest control. I am still debating whether to use Pygannic on a very limited basis this year for squash bugs. What you get from me is exactly what I feed to my own kids!

The terror of the first two busily mating potato beetles was revealed to me by a recent farm visitor. I went into a tizzy and started combing the rows for more bugs and their evil spawn. Much to my pleasant surprise the only thing I found were abundant ladybugs merrily munching beetle eggs and aphids. Woo-hoo!!! My live and let live philosophy is paying dividends! Good Mother Nature will balance things out if we just watch what she does and try to mimic it.

Sometimes I write down the things I think about while I'm working in the garden. Thought I'd share.

The Fast Food Moment
Ghawar is Dead
Limits to Lakoff
Fiftyfive
The Speculation Explanation
American Freedom: The Drive to Drive