When I am making my egg delivery rounds, I often run into people who have never seen an egg that was laid and collected that very morning. They also have never seen a green, blue, pink, or peach colored egg. "What kind of bird laid THAT?!" is a question I hear almost every single week. "A chicken" I say laughingly. We then discuss taste, cooking, and nutrition. A green egg is only better than a white egg if the chicken has been allowed to roam the wild looking for bugs, worms, tender grass, and berries. Otherwise, the shell color is just for funsies.
The last question I get is "Do you have to wash and refridgerate them?" Well, no. And yes. For my own family, I do not wash or refridgerate. Actually, if your home is cool inside the eggs can stay on the counter for up to SIX MONTHS! Your mileage may vary, as they say.
For my customers, however, we sanitize the eggs in a commercial sanitizer that is Vitamin C based, along with a gentle bubble from a battery-operated bait bubbler. It's something they can look up on the internet and feel safe knowing their eggs have been cleaned and cooled. Washed eggs MUST be cooled, as we have now washed off the protective bloom, or coating, that the hen put on them when she laid them.
Also, we NEVER pack fresh eggs into used cartons. There's too much chance for cross-contamination from people who crack their eggs, then, place the shells back in the carton. We only use new paper cartons as well, since styrofoam is a nasty product in my opinion.
So if you can, buy farm-fresh eggs and help support a local farm. The taste, look, and results of using fresh, pastured eggs will add so much to your meals!
Very well written and informative. My wife and I just got chickens last summer and have been eating the eggs like crazy. We have 9 hens and average about 7 eggs per day. We like to eat what we can and give some of them away to our church family to be a blessing as well! Upvoted and reblogged!! We love living on the farm compared to city life....we would not go back to that ever! To nice and peaceful out in the country and stress levels go way down!
Thank you! We love our farm life too, wouldnt trade it for anything (hard work and all). Nice to meet ya!
Also, followed yall too! I cant wait to see what youve got on Tornados. I actively followed the chasers until Reed took the site down. Well, it probably wasnt just him but i sure miss it. We dont have wifi at the farm so i cant really watch anyway now.
Forgot to mention in the blog, we've been raising and using our own eggs for almost 20 years now. Raised 5 kids on them and would never go back.
We had chickens for years too.
While I didn't try it when we had them, I've been experimenting with drying raw eggs in my dehydrator.
Our Aldi has had locally produced eggs for anywhere from $0.34-$0.46 a dozen and it's difficult not to do something with them.
That's really cheap protein.
Wow, that is cheap. I would visit that chicken farm if its close by. You need to see why they are so cheap. Hopefully they are just doing the spring clean out. Thats when they send the older chickens to be slaughtered and the newer hens are brought in.
I'm sure the eggs are coming from more than one farm. There are a lot of poultry operations in our area. Both Chickens and Turkeys.
Well I'm happy to "meet" you and look forward to sharing more! Its a great place to learn from each other.
Same here, post upvoted and resteemed.
Hallelujah, common sense about eggs!!!!!!
I believe I read an article on mercola_dot_com (I have no affiliation with them but I respect their work) about the US being one of the few countries on the planet where eggs are refrigerated.
Any thought on raw milk?
I wish I had more! We're looking into getting a dairy cow, although I really see no reason a grass-fed beef cow can't be milked for 1 gallon a day. I love making yogurt and cheese, so hopefully I'll be making a blog on that in the future! Thank you for reading!
I think from an economic viewpoint, goats are a great milk animal.
Some people don't like the taste of goat milk but I'm not sure what factors go into taste. i.e. Goat or Cow, raw milk or pasteurized, organic, grain fed or grass...
We had a goat share for years and both of our kids drank the raw milk and not only didn't they ever get sick, they don't have a single allergy and suffer colds & flu a lot less than their schoolmates.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence though. ;-)
But it became a "luxury" item and I was the only one who still drank it.
Goats milk is so good for those who cant have cows milk and makes luxurious soap...love it!
Great post! We have our own chickens and are raising goats hoping to milk next year. We currently buy raw milk from Amish and LOVE it. I may do a post about that some day.
Resteemed, upvoted and followed!
Looking forward to it!