Electric fencing has been around a long time, and has been used with chickens since at least 1960. The methods used then still work today.

The earliest mention I've seen of electric fencing with chickens was in a 1960 issue of "Egg Producer" magazine. The electric fence consisted of a single strand of wire 4-5" off the ground. That's it! This single low wire was enough to hold in the hens and discourage predators. Sometimes they added a second wire at 8-10" off the ground, but it was mostly just for show.

I've tried it, and it works! And I got independent verification by stumbling across a site that talked about keeping raccoons out of your sweet corn. Same deal.

I once watched a coyote chase a hen that was outside the fence, but come to an abrupt halt when the hen raced past the two wires. The coyote stopped so fast I almost expected to hear tire squeal! Clearly the fence intimidated it to the point where even the prospect of a certain meal didn't tempt it.

I cover this more fully in a follow-up post about electric fencing.

I also have an Electric Fencing FAQ with more details.

I'm going to spill the big secret to producing better-tasting eggs: it's the grass, man!

No, not that kind of grass! Ordinary grass, clover and other pasture plants, I mean.

Happy outdoor chickens that are allowed to run around on a grassy area will eat a lot of grass and other succulent plants. These plants don't have many calories, but they're loaded with vitamins, minerals, and flavor.

The eggs of such hens are bigger, have darker yolks, are more nutritious, and taste better. They taste like "real farm eggs," which is not something you can say of the eggs in the store. The chickens are eating their veggies, and it makes all the difference.

This doesn't seem like a difficult concept, but farmers, consumers, and even certifying agencies get it wrong every day. They think that "free range" is all about "outdoor access," and that a barren yard is in the same league as a grassy field. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Right on cue, we've run short of eggs to sell. This is harvest season, so the farmers' markets are jammed with customers. That's part of it. And we're in the long, slow decline in egg output that starts at the end of May and continues through December. This happens every year.

Next year, we'll try starting an unusually large number of pullet chicks in January and February, to fill the production gaps with young hens who are just starting to lay. Maybe we can delay the day of reckoning until October that way, after the harvest-season crowds start to slacken and the problem starts to solve itself.

That's the problem with doing the "real outdoor hens" gig -- it's harder to fool Mother Nature. Eggs are more seasonal than with confined hens.

So if you're one of our egg customers, show up at the farmers' market early to avoid disappointment!

How did I cure my insomnia? No, it wasn't by reading my own writing!

I used to have insomnia. I used to have trouble going to sleep and staying asleep. It turned out to be a pretty easy problem to solve, though it took a while to fade away.

The first thing was to resolve to never worry in bed. A big problem with my insomnia was that I would worry, which is a silly waste of time in the middle of the night, because you're too tired to think straight, so you never solve any problems or gain any insights. So promising not to worry in bed is a good start. Some people actually write a list of problems down before going to bed, so they know they won't forget any issues overnight.

The next thing I did was to stop drinking caffeine in the evening. That helped a lot. (I make an exception if I'm driving at night and feel tired.)

Probably the most helpful thing I did was buy a copy of Deep Sleep Every Night by Glenn Harrold, a CD that uses self-hypnosis to zonk you out. Works like a charm! Harrold uses New Agey music and an echo effect on his voice, which makes the recording seem almost like a parody, but it really, really works. The CD has two tracks, but I'm always sound asleep well before the first one ends.

After I got tired of this, I switched to playing audiobooks all night. This works best if it's something I've heard before, so it's not too fascinating. But after a couple of years of this, I found that it was no longer necessary. I fall asleep right away, and stay asleep until morning. I'm cured!

I like using the shotgun approach on problems, trying everything I can think of, maybe all at the same time.

Packaging costs more than you might think. We're paying about $0.30 per egg carton these days, and we buy 'em 1,000 at a time!

The economy has not been kind to our egg-carton supply. Pactiv closed the Northern California plant that made our egg cartons, so our egg cartons are coming up from Mexico, adding a lot of shipping/energy cost into the mix.

Fortunately for us, we live in God's Country, Western Oregon, where lots of people are eager recyclers and the state regulations aren't all written by compulsive hand-washers. Not yet, anyway. It's perfectly legal to use clean, used egg cartons in Oregon, so we do. And not just ours -- anybody's. We'll stick our labels on top of whatever was there before, and that makes 'em ours.

So we're in a pretty good position where cartons are concerned. Our customers bring us huge stacks of cartons and give them to us free, gratis, and for nothing, glad to see they aren't wasted. We use 'em until they get dirty or start falling apart.

This isn't legal everywhere. I swear that, in some states, the food-safety rules were written by Howard Hughes. I can find no mention of used-egg-carton-borne illness having ever happened anywhere, even once, but that doesn't prevent some states from banning it. Oddly, some of the midwestern states seem to be particularly anti-farmer. That's just plain weird.

Anyway, if you go the used-carton route for your own flock, here are a few tips for you:

• If you sell any eggs in grocery stores, use new cartons for these. The same people who will happily accept a used carton when you're selling face-to-face won't touch anything that's the least bit shopworn in a retail store. Strange but true.
• Always put a rubber band around the egg carton, especially if it's used. Used cartons are floppier than new ones and may not stay closed on the trip home. For marginal cartons, use two rubber bands.
• When cartons get too dirty or wrecked, into the wood stove with them! Fires are a lot easier to start if you use heavy stuff like cardboard or egg cartons in addition to paper and kindling. Get one last use out of them this way. (Two, if you have a good use for the ashes, which we do.)
• Egg cartons are all the same except for Jumbos, which are bigger. So you can mix or match all your cartons except the Jumbos.

Just in case anyone wondered why I live in the country, take a look at my morning walk.

My neighbor's horses are always worth a look.

Our back pasture has some pullets on it at the moment, in one of our portable chicken coops.

The neighbors have a flock of sheep in their back pasture.

Our broilers are houses in hoophouses made by bending lightweight cattle panels into a semicircle and putting a tarp on top. The grass is getting pretty brown, but they still forage for what green stuff there is.

Karen at the gate that marks the boundary of Starker Forest property. Starker has a "good neighbor" policy that must be experienced to be believed!

Inside the forest. Most of my morning walk is like this.

I walk until I reach this giant alder tree. It's important to say, "Good morning, tree" before turning around.

On the way home, the view is much the same, except for some good vistas of the farm, like this one:

I do this walk every day. It's almost a vacation in itself!

Hens with the free run of a grass pasture not only lay more nutritious eggs, better-tasting eggs, they lay bigger eggs.

In spite of decades of selective breeding to ensure that most eggs fall into the Large size range, my hens insist on laying mostly Extra Large eggs. This is something of a nuisance, since customers prefer Large, but them's the breaks.

The cause is presumably better nutrition. Like us, chickens should eat fresh greens in addition to processed stuff. Given half a chance, they do, and it improves the flavor, nutritional content, and size of the eggs.

Few people seem to know this, which is why people insist on building mud-yard free-range operations that have zero potential for producing a product that's superior to what's in the supermarket. The secret ingredient is not outdoor access, but grass.

It's harvest season on the farmers' markets are packed. Hooray! Hey, where did all the eggs go?

Last week, for the first time this year, I ran out of eggs before the farmer's market closed.

One of the sad things about being in the free-range egg business is that the seasonal peak in egg production (April and May) is horrendously mismatched with the seasonal peak in farmer's market customers (August and September).

This is a hard problem without a very good solution. (Telling people that they should buy a whole fryer instead of eggs, because a chicken is nothing but an experienced egg, doesn't work!) It's made even more difficult because demand slackens after September, and it's hard to engineer a two-month egg peak in the wrong season.

So it works out the same as always: get to the market early for the best selection. You snooze, you lose. That's true of everything, not just my eggs.

You, too, can have mouth-watering pastured pork if you get your order in by August 14.

Our six little piggies have become six big piggies and they're going to make the big transition from "pigs" to "pork" next week. I don't know if you've ever had pastured pork or not. It's wonderful -- our favorite meat. Lean bacon, mouth-watering pork chops ... I'm not kidding, it's impossible to overstate the quality of range-reared pork.

Our pigs are fed high-grade feed as well as pasture, featuring a daily feeding of cracked or otherwise unsaleable free-range eggs. They are happy outdoor pigs -- a little too happy, since they keep escaping and making cheerful ambles around the neighborhood. They're at the right weight now and have been in sparkling good health since day one.

Our pigs are slaughtered on the pasture by the area's best butcher, "The Farmer's Helper" of Harrisburg, Oregon. They never know what hits them: one moment they're here, the next, they're gone. On-field butchering means that they aren't distressed by a truck ride before slaughter.

We sell pork by the half-pig, cut and cured to your specifications by The Farmer's Helper. If you aren't certain about that step, don't worry -- they'll walk you through it.

But you have to place your order with us by August 14.

For more information, contact Karen at karen@plamondon.com or call her at 541-740-0612.