Coming of age

I got home from work today and Kelley told me that she and Moira spent a good bit of time with the hens today. She also said that they collected 9 eggs from them today. That's the most yet. We originally purchased 4 hens back in February. We lost one of them to a fox, we think. When we bought our second bunch of chicks, we purchased 3 Golden Comets, 2 Rhode Island Reds, and 2 Auracanas. Evidently the Golden Comets came of age a little early, so we've been getting 4 to 6 eggs a day since about late July. A jump to 9 eggs means that almost everyone is beginning to lay now...all except our Auracanas. That means 7 birds are laying 9 eggs a day. From what I understand, sunlight stimulates the birds to lay eggs...so increased sun during the summer can have a hen laying more than one egg every 24 hours. The Auracanas lay green eggs, and we haven't seen one of those yet. :)

So as Moira and Kelley were putting up the birds for the afternoon, one of the hens got spooked by something and fluttered up right to where Kelley and Moira had placed the egg basket. It got all the other hens in a tizzie and, as a result, the egg basket was rolling around the hen yard with the eggs getting trampled by birds and knocking into each other. Out of the 9 eggs, 6 were cracked!

I guess it's a testament to the higher quality of organic, free-range eggs, but even the ones that cracked did break the membrane on the inside of the egg, so none were really spoiled. Of course we wouldn't sell a cracked egg regardless, but it sure did help us decide what was for dinner tonight! :)

About Us

These days we have become so detached from our food. Most people have no idea of the process of food production and the way that animals and plants are manipulated to gain a higher profit and reduce upfront costs. In fact, Americans are one of the only nations where the average family pays less than 16% of their take-home income on their food. The eggs you have purchased are one small step in the opposite direction that our food industry is trying to take us. So keep buying local!

Our laying hens are not kept in small individual cages or fed medicated food. We supplement their processed diet with insects when the birds free range as well as provide them with organic table scraps. The reason the eggs are different sizes and colors are because of the variety of breeds in our flock. We currently have 10 laying hens. Our breeds are: Barred Rock (large double-yolked egg), Buff Orpington (medium brown egg), Golden Comet (medium dark brown egg), Rhode Island Red (large brown egg), and Auracanas (medium green egg). We hope you enjoy not only the taste of these eggs but also the peace-of-mind in knowing that the eggs were produced by super-happy birds in a spacious free-range environment and hand-picked by our daughter, Moira.