April 3 ~

Hope I am not too late....but if you still have an abundance of eggs you may have overbought for Passover or Easter...or your chickens are picking up their production....her are a few tips.

We made LOTS of egg salad to get through Passover and we like to dye eggs (and egg hunts). I have not been able to have chickens for several years, so I panic and buy too many eggs so I don't run out. Eating too many eggs is never a problem around here--we like 'em any way you can fix them. But, what about all those shells?

They can come in handy in several ways. Never really  great compost additions as they take too long to decompose unless you spend too much time crushing them finely ( I have better things to do!), still, they can be a huge help to the garden. You can wash them, let them air dry and then put them in a bag, crunch them up quickly and save them for scattering around seedling or slug infested plants.  As those critters crawl up to your plants for a midnight meal, the egg shells cut them up ( I also use wood ash the same way--it makes them shrivel up).  You can also add clean shell to your compost tea, adding nutrients ot the soil. Also, well washed and crushed shells can be fed back to your hens as long as none of them ever developed egg eating habits.

My favorite way of using up shells, though, is to put the washed shells into vinegar, let it steep several days and then begin using your vinegar as a bone building tonic. Either take a Tbsp. per day or use the vinegar as the base for your salad dressings. Calcium supplements  never tasted so good!