The Olive Egg, Niwot, CO (2025)

03/06/2023

Locals - anyone looking for near laying pullets?

01/26/2023

I’ve been getting lots of messages from folks wondering if I’ll be shipping hatching eggs this spring, and I’m actually going to take a shipping break this year. I do hope to have my breeding programs up and running again by next spring, but only time will tell. I can’t rush the rebuild after the bear massacre, and I’ve been reallllly enjoying focusing on producing food for my community… I may never go back to shipping eggs, if I’m being honest. I’ve expressed this before, but shipped hatching eggs so often end in disappointment after rough handling in the mail, and I’d much rather see those eggs get eaten or hatched myself than end up wasting resources to ship them only for them to end up in the garbage (or compost at best). Shifting my focus to serving my local community has been such a natural transition, one that feels more aligned with who I am and what I want to be doing with my life. Don’t get me wrong, I love sharing my genetics with friends across the country and it’s been an honor to add to your flocks, and I’m so grateful to each and every one of you who’s supported me thus far. But I’m only one person and I have to chose where to delegate my time wisely. Feeding people is my thing. I feed people and it feeds my spirit; seems like a pretty good trade-off.
Having said all that, I *will* be offering chicks locally this spring though! If you’re local and have already reached out, rest assured you’re on my list. If you’re local and haven’t reached out, please do and we can work something out! I’m so grateful for all the well wishes and kindness during this time of transition and growth for The Olive Egg. I love this chicken community immensely. 🥰

📸:

01/23/2023

Just wanted to pop in and say hi to all the new followers of our page! Sorry for the long period of inactivity. At some point my Instagram switched to sharing posts on my personal page instead of here, and I didn’t notice since I’m not on Facebook much. I’ll be sharing some of those posts here today to catch you all up!

Thanks for your continued support as we navigate lots of change and growth!💚

Photo by

06/17/2022

I just restocked hatching eggs on the site for the final time before the summer heat really sets in. So if you’ve been contemplating grabbing eggs, now is the time to do so! Any eggs ordered now will be shipped in the next month, most likely by the first week of July. Head on over to TheOliveEgg.com to order.

*Remember, shipped hatching eggs are a gamble. I do my best to send fertilized eggs, package them as securely as humanly possible, and check weather before sending, but sometimes that isn’t enough to compensate for usps’s rough handling.*

06/12/2022

Cute little F1 Olive Egger pullet from an early spring hatch.💙

06/08/2022

Can anyone guess what I cooked with these greens (fenugreek, mustard, & spinach)?🥬

06/06/2022

I love her muffs & beard so much.🥹😍💙

06/06/2022

A sweet, fluffy Howie face.💕This goofball is 2 years old! I spent some time holding him & petting his beard today, while telling him how pretty he is (even with his sun bleached feathers). He always clucks proudly when I talk to him. He’s one of the roosters that works their way into your heart with their big personality & gentle nature. Good roosters are unforgettable. I hope to hatch out a nice blue son of his this year, so I currently have him over a black hen and am collecting her eggs for myself.💙

06/04/2022

Eeek, my peas are flowering, which means soon we will be devouring delicious fresh peas!! I planted 100ft of peas around the perimeter of our main garden bed, as well as another 20ft or so in a raised bed. They are one of my favorite things to grow for a number of reasons; I love that they fix nitrogen thanks to rhizobia, a bacteria, that forms a symbiotic relationship with the nodules on the pea’s roots (this is true of all legumes). The rhizobia utilize carbohydrates from the plant and in return, chemically convert atmospheric nitrogen gas found in the soil to nitrogen the peas can use. Not only does this benefit the peas, it also benefits the following crop. As the nodules decompose, they add even more usable nitrogen to the soil. Rhizobia is naturally found in the soil, but often not in the quantity needed to properly fix nitrogen. Inoculating your pea, bean, and legume seeds with purchased rhizobia is the best way to ensure your plants and soil will get maximum benefits!
Aside from being ridiculously delicious, another thing I love about peas is how well they freeze. Frozen peas are a staple I like to have year round, and thanks to their upward, vining growth, it’s possible to grow a lot of peas in a small space! I’m growing 4 varieties this year: Super Sugar Snap, Little Marvel, Lillian Caseload, & Kelvedon Wonder. Peas are, for the most part, self-pollinating, which means I’ll be able to save seeds despite growing numerous varieties. What’s your favorite pea variety? Are your peas flowering yet? (Zone 5b here). Let’s talk peas!

06/02/2022

Ferdinand 🖤

05/23/2022

Ameraucana chicks are quite possibly the cutest thing ever imo.💙

05/22/2022

Part 5
Aside from gardening as much as possible, and planting new fruit trees, I’m devoting quite a bit of my time to the rabbits. These little creatures have completely captured my heart, and so have the benefits of keeping them. Rabbits are an awesome addition to any homestead. Their manure can be added straight to the garden without prior composting (😱🤩). It’s a game changer; tiny little nuggets of slow release nutrients for your plants. They contain roughly 2% Nitrogen, 1% phosphorus and 1% potassium plus minerals, micronutrients, and trace elements (calcium, magnesium, boron, zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt and sulfur). Not only are they extremely beneficial to the garden, rabbits can provide sustenance in the form of meat. Oh, and did I mention they eat waaaaay less grain than chickens? In fact, they can thrive without any grains in their diet. In a survival situation, I could feed rabbits indefinitely…I can’t say the same about my chickens. That unnerves me. If I was unable to purchase grains, I would be left scrambling to figure out what to feed my flock of 75+. One of our local feed stores closed their doors last week, which left me feeling vulnerable. I already have to try multiple places to find the feed I need sometimes. This spring I’m growing alfalfa, oats, buckwheat, field peas, and black oil sunflower seeds. Probably enough to feed a flock of 10 or so at most. To an extent, chickens are little dinosaurs that could live off bugs, greens and scraps for quite some time, but it wouldn’t be optimal. They’d have to forage, & our land couldn’t sustain the size of my current flock without the addition of grain to their diet. Who else thinks about this? What would you feed your flock if you couldn’t find layer pellets or chick starter to purchase?
These questions always lead me back to the need for balance, and respecting the land you’re stewarding. Observe, reflect, adjust, repeat.

05/21/2022

Part 4
I will still continue to share some hatching eggs, but it’ll be on my time. I’ll probably just share the pure breeds from now on, since that’s what most people are interested in, and my crosses will go to eating eggs. Availability will change regularly based on what I’m hatching for myself. That’ll allow me to keep a close eye on fertility on the eggs I’m shipping, while also allowing me the freedom to not care about the other pens. I’ll only offer eggs that I have on hand ready to go & have time to ship within 24 hours. Essentially, I’m going back to the way I did things two years ago, in regards to my offerings. It required me growing beyond my means to realize what’s sustainable. I’m not the only one who learns by going too far and then adjusting, right?!
One of the projects I want to start devoting time to is this field. When I first laid eyes on this open space, I immediately saw so many possibilities. I’ve been staring at it every day for the last 3 years and think it would be such a perfect spot for a little orchard. It’s already home to our 2 largest apple trees and will soon be joined by a variety of stone fruit trees. Down the road, I envision it becoming a you-pick orchard.
Continued in the next post.

05/21/2022

Part 3
With eating eggs, you obviously make less $ per dozen, but when you take into account the time it takes to pack one shipped dozen and take it to the post office, I could have washed and packed 10 (or more) eating egg dozens and walked them down to the farm stand.
I honestly should have started selling eating eggs a long time ago, because at least a 1/3 of the eggs laid here aren’t up to standard to ship out as hatching eggs anyways (dirty, misshapen, small) and end up getting eaten. We’ve expanded to the point that we are producing more eating eggs than we and our friends can eat. Another factor that I’ve struggled with: hatching eggs are an extremely time sensitive product. They must be shipped off within 48 hours of being laid, to ensure eggs with the smallest possible air cells and highest chance of hatching are being sent. This fact has me juggling so many things at once, constantly trying to get eggs out the door. If I kept up with shipping hatching eggs at this pace, I’d have no time or energy to explore other ways we can expand our farmstead.
I have lofty goals to grow & raise at least 50% of our food this year, and even more in the years that follow. I hope to eventually grow enough to share with my community as well. To be able to do all the things I envision, I must streamline aspects of the farm that are taking too much bandwidth. Washing and packaging eating eggs flawlessly fits within my day, without disrupting the natural rhythm, whereas coordinating all the details of shipping hatching eggs eats up way too much time and mental energy.
Continued in the next post.

05/21/2022

Part 2
To an extent, our hatching egg offerings will be changing. Shipping eggs comes along with a set of challenges that are inevitable. You’re shipping super fragile little orbs encasing a blastoderm, just waiting to get disrupted on a cellular level, through an unforgiving mail system that jostles them around for days on end, while sometimes exposing them to extreme temperatures. And no matter how many times you mention shipped eggs are a gamble, there will always be disappointed people when eggs don’t hatch; no one enjoys losing. As a breeder pouring blood, sweat and tears into your breeding program, it can end up feeling like you just can’t win. You can diligently conduct fertility checks, do test hatches, invest in the best feed and supplements, do all preventative pest and illness treatments necessary while keeping up with required testing for exporting eggs, and still, some folks (almost half, it seems this year) will get unlucky and have bad hatches. Eggs will get internally scrambled if the box gets punted like a football or dropped off a 10’ conveyer belt, and generally don’t develop after such treatment, despite being fertilized. No amount of good packaging can prevent such a thing. I try to be as up front about that as humanly possible, but I’m also the type of person that wants everyone to be happy with their experience, so I generally send more eggs for the cost of shipping when people have a bad hatch. I have quickly discovered that is not a viable long term business practice. With profit margins already shrinking due to rising grain prices, it’s just not practical to send free replacements anymore. And that leaves me feeling powerless to fix situations where customers end up unhappy. I don’t want to run a business where inevitably half of my customers have a bad experience, but that would be the reality if I want to break even and be able to feed my flock over the winter. It’s quite a dilemma, and it doesn’t sound fulfilling to run my business that way, which has lead me to think outside of the constraints of shipped hatching eggs.
Continued in the next post.

05/21/2022

Who’s ready for another long-winded, multi-part farm update?

Part 1
I’ve been trying to think more big picture lately, and explore ways to expand The Olive Egg from more-or-less a hobby farm, to an actual viable farmstead. I’ve had to reflect on where my energy is going, as well as my limitations and strengths as a person. And then there’s the question of how I want to be spending my time, and what drives me to keep going. What brought me to the world of poultry was a deep pull to reconnect with our food source. I feel an inexplicable reverence for these birds when I think about the nourishment they provide me and my loved ones through their eggs and meat. I’m coming to realize that feeding people is what I find most fulfilling and plan to start offering eating eggs for sale locally in the next week. Boulder/Longmont folks, feel free to reach out if you’re interested. More details to follow, but I look forward to sharing our delicious eggs with our community via a small farm stand at the end of our driveway.
Continued in the next post.

05/16/2022

Baby blue.💙

05/15/2022

So much goes on here besides chicken related matters, but I tend to only post about the birds. Since there seems to be no rhyme or reason to engagement & the algorithm anyways, I think it’s time to change that! The chickens are the heart of our little operation, but lately plants have been bringing me great joy and capturing quite a bit of my attention. Watching our little plot of land wake up after winter is always so exciting and I’ve been taking the time this season to really delve into getting to know all the plant species that exist here. We have 53 trees on our 1.25 acres, not to mention hundreds of shrubs and other plants.
And then there’s the garden…I’m beyond excited to garden this spring. I’ve been amending our largest garden plot (625 sq ft) for 3 years now, lovingly growing cover crops every spring and fall, adding compost seasonally, and refraining from growing anything that will take from the soil, until now. This will be my first season using that space to grow food. Half of the space has already been planted with a variety of greens and root vegetables, the entire perimeter has been planted with peas that will vine up the fence, and the remaining half will be for beans. Focusing on beans and peas this season seemed like a perfect balance of give & take, since they are nitrogen fixers that will continue to improve the soil quality. We planted a couple containers with these gorgeous Hidatsa Shield beans (native to North Dakota, grown by the Hidatsa tribe), but otherwise I’m holding off on getting beans in the ground for another week. We have some nights in the 40°s coming up, and I’m determined to resist the urge to plant too early this year. Does anyone else have to sit on their hands in an attempt to not plant before the last frost date?😅

The Olive Egg

03/06/2023

01/26/2023

01/23/2023

06/17/2022

06/12/2022

06/08/2022

06/06/2022

06/06/2022

06/04/2022

06/02/2022

05/23/2022

05/22/2022

05/21/2022

05/21/2022

05/21/2022

05/21/2022

05/16/2022

05/15/2022

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Videos

Shortcuts

Share