Egg cartons delivered

 A local friend delivered 1200 egg cartons yesterday after picking them up in Dandenong, They should last us a while before we need to restock. The days have gone when we trucked  cartons on pallets and kept a year’s supply in the shed.  Now, age and health issues have slowed us down so we have cut flock numbers and it’s not economic to buy large quantities. We still print our labels on the farm.

New egg carton supplier

We have found a new supplier of egg cartons, relatively close to the farm. Anne picked up 1500 plain cartons in Dandenong on her way to visit friends in the City. Our previous supplier had closed down in Clayton, so we thought we may have to truck cartons from Preston, Footscray or Laverton. Although cartons are a modest cost compared with all the others such as feed and compliance costs imposed by red tape, it is significant to be able to collect our cartons as we need them.

Unloading pallets of cartons just part of the chores

We had a delivery this week of two pallets of egg cartons and five pallets of carboard outer boxes (which each hold 15 dozen eggs. I unloaded them with the forks attached to my front end loader and put them in the shed out of the rain.
But that's just the start. They needed to go upstairs to the storage area. So 56 boxes of egg cartons (28 per pallet) have been lugged up the stairs and so far one pallet of outer boxes (400 of them) have now made it up there.
I don't know why people need to pay to go the gym for exercise - they can come here and I won't charge them a thing!
Hopefully some other egg farmers will buy a pallet or two of the outer boxes before I have to carry them up into storage.
There's nothing worse than running out of cartons and discovering there's a three week delay in getting new ones so we always buy reasonable quantities of cartons and boxes to ensure that we have plenty on hand when needed.

A fun tractor day

Don't know about you, but somedays things just don't go right.
I was collecting eggs from one of our flocks today when the dogs alerted me that a truck was driving down our road. (There's nowhere but here for it to go unless the driver's lost. And the dogs don't care anyway, they'll just bark at any intruder).
I realised that it was probably two pallets of egg cartons which I had ordered on Friday. So I took the trays of eggs up to the shed, locked up a couple of the marauders (ah Maremmas) and wandered off to get my Chinese tractor with it's Chinese front end loader with forks attached. Everything was going swimmingly.
And then the unloading began!
The first pallet came off the truck with a bit of juggling. Then of course I had to try to put it on the ground. Well, suffice to say the joystick mechanism isn't the most sensitive thing in the world and the pallet of cartons suddenly decided to tip forward and distribute themselves over the ground.
Oh well! One pallet down, one to go.
Should be easy - more room on the back of the truck.... Complacency is a wonderful thing....
The tractor was in low ratio, the forks were lined up with the pallet, it lifted off the tray of the truck - bloody brilliant and then ... crunch ... the loader arm touched the side of the truck (only a touch I swear).
The hydraulic hose coupling snapped and warm hydraulic fluid sprayed over the truck, the truck driver, the cartons, the tractor and me. Oh joy!!!!!
At least it wasn't raining and I was able to get the cartons into the shed by hand. I must be stupid because I thought that machines were supposed to make our lives easier.