Variety is the Spice of Life

“Variety’s the very spice of life 

That gives it all its flavour.” 

 William Cowper (1731-1800)

I like that quote from the British poet, William Cowper.  How boring it would be if everyone looked the same or thought the same, if you only had one choice of any product from which to purchase or eat, if there was only one color.  Can you imagine how boring if there was just one type of homemade pie?  The differences within all of us and all of God's creation make this world an interesting and fun place.

We purposefully introduce variety on our little farm to add some spice.  We like brown egg laying hens like the Barred Rock and the Rhode Island Red, but we also have some Aracauna hens that lay gorgeous blue and green eggs.  We recently had a hen that started laying really nice dark brown eggs.  I wish I knew which one she is. (No one's laying golden eggs, yet.)  The eggs are all different shapes and sizes and make for a nice visual when opening a dozen of our eggs.  Note the small size of the egg we picked yesterday on the far right.

They come in all colors and sizes

I guess the downside to having diversity is if you want to hatch out eggs for chicks, the chances of having a purebred Barred Rock or Rhode Island Red or Aracauna chick are lots lower than if you only had one breed out on the pasture, but that's okay with us.  For our cows, though, we do only have one breed, registered Jersey - not much variety there.  Here are the Brown egg layers settling down for the evening in a variety of breeds and alternating hens and roosters in a row. 

Barred Rocks and RIR's

And here are the Aracaunas, the blue and green egg layers, roosting in the barn:

Aracaunas

Same thing in the garden.  I like different colors and odd things to add some variety. From left to right below we have Parisienne carrots, Atomic Red Carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots, Turnips and Berlicum carrots. They provide a feast for your eyes as well as your stomach.  We like different types of beans and different lettuce types to mix in a fresh salad.

Root crop variety

Just this weekend I planted a wide variety of melons in seed starting containers. Hopefully we'll have a successful harvest this year.  We are blessed to have a wide assortment to choose from.  It takes all kinds...