A few months ago I bought three new chickens because my old girls were no longer laying. I was convinced it wasn’t just a winter slump, because they really were getting on in years (for chooks), and they’d stopped laying long before winter.

But I think they’re trying to one-up the new chickens, because now that all three new ones are laying daily, the two remaining old ones have started laying again.

So now I’m getting five eggs a day–way more than we’re used to eating.

And that’s just fine by me. It’s a sparse time of year in the garden, so a few extra eggs are welcome in our diet. And if we can’t eat them all, eggs make great gifts. One of the things that makes rural life seem like such a luxury is seasonal abundance. There may be little left in the veggie garden beyond a few old beetroots, but we can still spread around our rich harvest of eggs.