"Any eggs?" asked one of my regular customers, hope on her face. "No, sorry," was my reply. Every time. She gave up asking after a few weeks. It was frustrating. The chickens had never done this before. One or the other would continue to lay throughout the winter months. But now, with a larger proportion of pure breeds who stopped laying when broody, moulting or when the days had little sunlight, and, in turn (I'm sure) influenced the hybrids, we were lucky to get one a week.
Then, finally, a few weeks ago, we had our first dark brown egg. It was one of the new chickens. Then there was another. Then a white one, a blue/green one. More brown. All of a sudden we had a dozen.
Have you read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith?
I don't recall reading it as a child, so read it for the first time a few years ago.
"Goodness, Topaz is putting the eggs on to boil! No one told me the hens had yielded to prayer. Oh, excellent hens!
And this is the line I thought of when the eggs finally appeared.