Oh Happy Day!

It's not cold enough (it's January in Michigan and we've had exactly one day below freezing this month). 

It's not snowy enough (it's January in Michigan, and we've had a whole less-than-one-inch of snow this month, and that little bit only lasted one day).

It's cloudy (which means not very cheerful or inspiring outside,) but still, it's a happy day today.

Why?  Because when I went out at 12:30 p.m. to do a bit of maintenance in the chicken coop, I found this:

Yes, it's an egg.  In the chicken coop, where you'd expect an egg to be.  So why am I so geeked?

Because it's the First Egg of the Year!! 

My "girls" ("ladies", "chick-a birdies") don't have heat lamps or lights in their coop, so they stop laying in the fall when the days get too short and the weather cold. That is the natural order of chicken-ness, to conserve their energy into surviving the cold dark months when in nature food is scarcer and caloric needs are greater. They don't start laying again until we get far enough past the winter solstice that the days get long and bright enough to stimulate them back into production. 

Two weeks ago, I ran out of my last 'real' egg--as opposed to 'store eggs' (what we call those insipid pale-yolked things from the grocery store).  All my local friends with chickens had also reached the point where their flocks were no longer producing enough eggs to sell (I had been buying from them since around Thanksgiving time).  So I've been choking down store eggs (which, after a while, upset my stomach; the reason I began my home flock in the first place) since shortly before Christmas.  This morning I couldn't even finish my omelet (made with store eggs) before I got that unwelcome queasy feeling that let me know I've been eating store eggs too long.  This caused some mental consternation because DH loves his eggs for breakfast, and I like having breakfast with him before he heads off to work.  If I could no longer have an egg breakfast, that was going to put a monkey wrench in our morning bonding breakfasts.

And that is why I am in such a state of ecstasy over an egg on the floor of my hen house.

To find a freshly laid egg in my own coop today is something akin to winning the lottery.  It's a Godsend, a gift from above--my hens are gearing up for another season of egg laying!  I shall have decent eggs again!  Breakfast with DH is saved! Hallelujah!