Last year I cleared two dollars over the cost of feed from each of my layers, from the sale of eggs alone.
The pleasure and freedom of country life are worth much. A garden with high quality vegetables, fruit of all kinds and varieties, fresh eggs and poultry, goes a long way in making the cost of living less. (We save cracked, small, or misshapen eggs for our own use.) With a saddle horse and a tennis court, life in the country is far from dull.
Ava Hooker
PRESERVING EGGS FOR WINTER USE
When eggs are cheap and plenty is the time when it will pay to preserve some for winter use. Remember, though, that no amount of preserving, or cold storing will make a fresh egg out of an old egg. As infertile eggs keep better than fertile ones, it is well to separate the laying hens from the roosters when the hatching season is over.
Cold storage is undoubtedly the best method for keeping eggs in wholesale quantities, but for home consumption there is nothing more satisfactory than a preservative called water glass which is sodium silicate and can be bought in crystal or liquid form at drug stores. Prof. J. E. Rice of Cornell University says that "the liquid form is very much to be preferred owing to the fact that it is very difficult to dissolve the crystal. One part of water glass to nine parts of water makes a liquid having a consistency not quite heavy enough to cause the eggs to come to the surface, but still sufficiently strong to furnish the coating which prevents the air from entering the shells."
Stone jars are recommended as inexpensive and not likely to leak. Eggs taken out after nearly a year in the water glass and washed look like fresh eggs. As to taste, a very fastidious person might find the flavour not quite right when served as boiled eggs. In all other ways they are entirely satisfactory.
With water glass, eggs can be preserved for less than two cents a dozen. In communities where the price of eggs varies from a cent apiece to four cents apiece it would be very profitable to preserve all the surplus.
RAISING GUINEA FOWL
What would you expect if you ordered "American pheasant" from a bill of fare in a London restaurant? No matter what you expected, when the bird came onto the table it would be guinea hen! This is a dish you probably never ate at home unless you live in the South, "where they know what's good," or make a practice of dining at fashionable hotels where they serve fancy game and poultry.