Ruth Eden

"Other"... My 70 something mom is the official owner, but I will inherit with my sister when she passes.

South African here, from a very hot in summer semi desert region where temps are above 35-45 deg C most days through summer.

I have successfully lime preserved eggs in this climate, stored in a dark but I don't imagine particularly cool place, although it would certainly be a good 5-8 deg cooler than outside.

I've only ever had this happen to one 3litre jar and it was jostling that did it. I bumped the jar as I put the last egg or two in and thought at the time that I hoped I hadn't cracked any. Well that jar stank and had a handful cracked eggs near the top. We opened it a year later. The eggs that weren't cracked were most certainly still fine, in the usual lime egg state of slightly more fragile with runny-ish insides.

We use reverse osmosis water, as we get very little rainwater and rely on a rather mineral rich groundwater supply.

Hope that helps pinpoint your possible issue. Also might be a good idea to make sure your hens are getting enough calcium while they're laying up a storm so that the eggs you preserve have good strong shells.

This has been an interesting read. I often don't give enough consideration to the science behind things, so it's good to have my thoughts venture off down this road.

We have rather sandy acidic soil, definitely lacking Ca and K. River floodplain in a semi arid environment. We also have a dense stand of invasive acacia trees. Nitrogen fixers, not bad firewood, but way more than we need and would love to manage and utilise them better, and use the much better quality soil underneath them that they've helped create.

We've chopped down a lot, sell and use firewood and chip the small branches. Chips cover roads and pathways, random bare patches left over from flood damage, and also the floors of our animal night shelters, along with straw.

We have refrained from burning a lot of dry biomass from previous felling (before our time) as we have slowly been chipping it and because fires can get pretty risky in our climate/environment, and also because in my mind it's not the best way to clear land if you're trying to build soil.

But, in our situation, perhaps there is value to adding a good amount of ash to the sandy fields we use for pasture, rather than trying to chip it all, even though chips can slowly build pretty good soil, as we've seen on the forest floor under the trees themselves. I'm all for amending things faster if possible!

What would you all do in this situation? Maybe I should start a new thread?

We inherited 3 hens and a rooster from the previous property owner. All 3 hens went broody within a month or two of us taking them on and we suddenly went from 4 chickens to about 34!
We had never had chickens before so it was a great learning experience and I've never bothered with an incubator and brooder as we now have broody hens on hand  for much of the year. After the first lot hatched, there was obviously chicken math happening as even though we now had 34, we bought in a good few more just for genetic diversity and good egg laying traits. After 3 years I've now learnt how to select the eggs I actually want to hatch for good genetics and the broody hens do their job to great acclaim. Last spring I stopped counting after they hatched out 120! We do keep them in a separate enclosed run as we have semi resident hungry goshawks and the rest of flock forages far and wide.

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