Meet Judy: The chicken who likes to ride in the Land Cruiser and also lays her egg in the car every day! A brave new chicken-dog breed!
Photography by Juliana and Matteo
Photography by Juliana and Matteo
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Green! Chickens with access to grass engage in natural foraging behaviour and lay eggs which are with:
⅓ less cholesterol; ¼ less saturated fat; 2 or 3 times more vitamin A; 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids (healthier ratio); 3 times more vitamin E, and 7 times more beta carotene than eggs produced by chickens in confinement with no access to grass. It is a joy to observe Hilltops' free ranging chickens and their healthy habits of spending time in sun, synthesizing vitamin D in their skin and eating a healthy balanced diet.  Greeks and Romans used the power of the Sun to light torches for religious ceremonies as far back as 3rd century B.C.
July 2019, Hilltops Free Range egg farm is now harnessing the power of the Sun for pumping water and ensuring our chickens always have a fresh supply. Hilltops Free Range egg farm is embarking on a Sustainable Green Energy program, using solar and hydro to power the farm. Sustainable farming includes Sun, Land, Animals and People.  The result of a hard day's work, both for chickens and people: super fresh, nutritious and healthy premium food, coming straight from our farm to your kitchen.
It takes about 24-26 hours of labor inside the chicken just to form the shell and the white of the egg. The chicken is born with the beginning of all the yolks for the eggs she will lay in her life already inside her. It takes about 4-5 hours of human labor to collect the eggs when chickens are in true pasture-raised, free range farms like Hilltops Free Range. It then takes about 2-3 more hours to process, grade and pack the eggs. The amazing product of Land, Animals and People working together.  "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” -- T.S. Eliot
Found this chicken wandering far away from her flock, and she had come back to the same area of the paddock where many moons ago we started the Hilltops free range egg production with the first flock of beautiful brown chickens. Behind her, one could see the three trees which feature in the photo which still stays on the front of our egg label. Poetry coming to live at Hilltops Free Range egg farm: "We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time." -- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"  Ethical farming and shorter daylight hours: our chickens enjoying the natural rays of sunlight; out and about on the last forage for the day.
We have a made a conscious choice NOT to trick our chickens with artificial light. Chickens need 14-16 hours of light for intense egg production, and so the short daylight hours in winter affect them. Electric lights are used on some farms to trick the birds that July is October. For Hilltops Free Range chickens, winter is a time for rest, not reproduction. How can one appreciate Spring, if one never lived through Winter?  The cycle of life in one photo: trees grow, build their crowns and then fall down. Worms and insects make nests inside the stump. Chickens come to play around, forage and eat a few bugs. We cut firewood to keep warm. The chickens (seen in the background) spread fertilizer so the new tree seeds will grow fast and strong.
This is just one small paddock on Hilltops Free Range farm, where animals, Land and humans work together side by side.  Today was a world record breaking day: the biggest egg in the world tipped the scales at 128g!
With love from the Happy chickens at Hilltops Free Range  Dinner is ready!
Late, working dinners on the farm. Bon appetite!  Ice cream for breakfast anyone?
Chickens are enjoying the small forbidden pleasures of life: eating ice cream (frozen grass) for breakfast and jumping in mud puddles wearing one's best clothes (feathers).  When he ignores all the young chicks around, and only has eyes for you;
When he looks deep into your soul with his beautiful brown eyes, then you know... Only dog love is forever! :)  "In a dell of dew, scattering unbeholden among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view..."
Discovering eggs in Hilltops farm in winter feels like Percy B. Shelley poetry coming to live. -- from "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley  The King and all the Ladies of the Royal Court enjoyed the last bits of sunshine of this lovely day.
Trying to explain the way we do egg farming with happy chickens around: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!
More noise and feathers than at the Met Gala :) An amazing Art creation by Kerry is to be unveiled at the Southside Farmers market this weekend: the Hilltops Free Range egg farm story told in three enormous quilts!
Storytelling and the Art of quilting have been connected for many generations, and this is one amazingly crafty and ingenious creation by Kerry. It tells the story of the farm, starting from wool, in the best wool-growing region of Australia. Then adding free range eggs production, building our own caravans and infrastructure, moving the chickens every few days so as to fertilize the land and give back more than is taken away. Training beautiful Maremma dogs to guard the chickens and look after the flock discipline. Rotating cattle, sheep and chickens in sustainable, rotational, biodynamic farming, finally producing beautiful, award-winning eggs. The story comes to live with the wonderful characters Kerry created, and one can stand for hours and discover the patterns, stamps, embroideries, feathers, and all the techniques that went into making the Hilltops Free Range egg Farm Quilts. Come and be amazed.  The face I make when I shirk from work and come to the house for hugs (you can see the caravans of the flock I am supposed to be protecting in the background). -- Oddball the Maremma dog.
..and this is (supposedly) our most mature, oldest dog of all the Maremmas on the farm.   Meet the Hilltops Egg Family: father, mother, sister and baby boy egg!
The different shapes and sizes of eggs we get in one day, combined with the measurement creativity. Photography by Maria  Hilltops Free Range eggs are ONLY produced on our farm in the beautiful region of Boorowa, NSW. We deliver straight from our farm with our own truck. You can see the paddocks where our chickens roam freely in the photos on our packaging and on the side of our truck. The photography is all on our own property.
Hilltops pastured eggs are single-origin only, grown on our farm. We do not repackage nor resell eggs. All eggs are stamped with our unique code NSW1130. The transport truck is dedicated only to transporting our own eggs, in our own packaging. The single-origin, farm-grown, own-transport delivered eggs reduce the risk of contamination and give consumers peace of mind when buying Hilltops pastured eggs.  When there is both rain and sun at the same time, oats are growing nicely; we feel blessed for working with the Land and producing quality, nutritional, healthy food to feed the world.
 Can we feed 10 billion people by 2050 without destroying the environment?
This month's Eat-Lancet Commission report recommends a 'planetary healthy diet'. Eggs, the report says, "are a widely available source of high-quality protein and other essential nutrients needed to support rapid growth...Despite past concern about possible increases in risk of heart disease because of their high content of cholesterol, in large prospective studies high consumption of eggs, up to one a day, has not been associated with increased risk of heart disease, except in people with diabetes." And on further benefits of eating eggs for young kids: "replacing calories from a staple starchy food with an egg can substantially improve the nutritional quality of a child’s diet and reduce stunting." #foodforthought #welovescience #eggs #sustainablefarming #sustainability The report is available from https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/  Can you smell the rain in the air? That rain smell has a name: #Petrichor!
It was created by two Australian scientists, Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas from #CSIRO in 1964. And at Hilltops Egg Farm, in March 2019, there is no lovelier smell than petrichor - we love the rain! If you are curios how they came up with 'petrichor': it comes from the Greek words 'petra', meaning stone and 'ichor', meaning the blood of gods in ancient myth.#newwords #welovescience  Farm Autumn in the southern hemisphere: a yellow mulberry leaf, fire-red grapes' leaves, multi-color cherry leaves, and the amount of giant eggs we collected today!
The grass and the chickens love the rain and warmth of Autumn.  Despite the drought at the end of summer, the pastures where chickens rotate with other animals bounce back quickly, full of color, vigor and vitality of the fresh new green. This is the area of one paddock where chicken caravans were anchored just over a dozen days ago.
 Yellow flowers, yellow yolks! As Bruce Pattinson wrote in The Land Newspaper, "Very yellow yolks are from green feed" which are "very good for the birds" :) Poultry experts agree with #hilltopsfreerange #theland #pasturedeggs #grassfed  |
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February 2020
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