My family raises chickens, ducks and geese, so we always have all the eggs we need plus plenty to spare, or at least it always seems like plenty, right up until you start selling them from your home, and you discover that people will not drive all the way out to the boondocks unless they can buy about sixteen dozen eggs all at once. If you come to the door asking for jumbo chicken eggs you shouldn't be surprised to find that you don't get too many, because you are probably not the first visitor of the day and if you want jumbo eggs, so does everybody else in the world. The next time you need to buy eggs, mark that date on your calendar because that day is very special. Everyone on the planet buys their eggs on the same day.
If we get a surplus of a certain type of egg, say regular chicken eggs for example, nobody will show up to buy any for weeks, until we decide to use them to bake a cake, or boil them up to serve back to the chickens, at which time every customer we have will suddenly show up on our doorstep, money in hand, and every one of them will want at least six dozen. Guaranteed. They don't want duck eggs, because once upon a time, a very long time ago, someone told them that duck eggs contain more cholesterol than chicken eggs. Chinese people are our best duck egg customers. Odd, isn't it? Chinese people eat all that "artery clogging" cholesterol yet they have a very low heart attack rate. Isn't it amazing what statistics can do? Sometimes if we get desparate, we can pass off regular eggs instead of jumbos, (at a lower price, of course )but it's usually a moot point, because the eggs in question by that time, no longer exist, having already walked off with a previous customer.
Chickens get pretty fussy about which time of the day they lay their eggs. Bother them too early and they have a cow. Bother them too late in the evening and they think you are allowing them to set and they have a cow when you take their eggs from them. We have had customers tell us to go out to the hen house and squeeze the eggs out of those chickens. Some will even stand there and wait while we go out and gather what eggs there are. Those eggs must be good if people can still stomach them after seeing what they look like fresh from the chicken.
Eggs fresh from the chicken do not look anything like store bought eggs. In fact, they do not even look edible until they are washed. Some farmers have neat and tidy hens who do not foul the nest, but our hens are not of that caliber and tend to be too lazy to leave the nest when they need to....well, you know,....foul. So the eggs come out of the nest box looking for all the world as if someone just used them for toilet paper. Guess who's job it is to gather these eggs? Yup. But I'll tell you something; those eggs are not nearly as disgusting as a chicken who has broken an egg and then laid in the goop all day long. That's a lot of fun, to reach under a hen with my bare hand and come up with nothing but sticky, slimy feathers. Give me a soiled egg any day.
Once I have the eggs I have to wash them, and the professionals will give you all sorts of rules for doing this properly. Never wash them in water that is cooler than the egg itself. The water should always be just a hair warmer than the egg. This is easy in the winter but in the summer when the sun has been baking the hen house all day long, finding water warmer than the egg can be a challenge. The experts also have differing points of view regarding whether to use soap or not. Trust me, if you saw what an egg looks like fresh from the nest, you would be glad I choose to use soap. This particular egg-washing expert has written one more rule that you should know....Never squeeze an egg too tight while washing it. Eggs don't like that.
Next, I have to count them for our records, and put them in the proper cartons. This means, the large egg cartons are for the jumbo chicken eggs, the medium sized ones are for the regular chicken eggs, and the duck eggs reside within the confines of a space more befitting their size. Namely, a size twelve shoe box. No, just kidding. We put the duck eggs in the jumbo cartons and pray the two halves of the carton will meet in the middle without creating any cracking noises. Goose eggs sit in the refrigerator until we have enough to scramble. Two should just about do it.
If it weren't for the fact that farm fresh eggs taste a thousand times better than the store bought kind, people would probably run screaming for the hills after reading my description of the egg farm process. Trust me, though, store bought eggs come from chickens too, and those chickens are just as sloppy as ours, and not fed half as well. Why eat eggs that taste like old rubber when you can have the real thing for just pennies more? Do yourself a favor and visit your nearest egg farm today, but make sure you hurry because the day you buy some is the day that everyone else in your neighborhood is buying some too. Call ahead if you can, or better yet, make reservations.
