In Search of a Good Egg (as Well as a Chicken or Two)

"You're probably going to get stuff on your shoes," Elizabeth apologized.

"That's to be expected," I told her. I'd come prepared. My old clogs had seen many things just as nasty as chicken poop.

I'd come to buy my chicken and eggs for the month.

(I don't buy such things from the nearby grocery store chain. I tend to avoid such places like the plague.)

This was the first time I'd toured the farm, altho I'd been purchasing my eggs from Elizabeth and her husband Michael for some months, every time I found them selling at my local farmer's market.

I was greeted by hens everywhere when I arrived. These birds are free-rangers during the day. Bantams, Barred Rocks, Black Sex Links and I know not what other breeds were happily, vocally pecking in leaf piles, scratching in dirt, and running around loose all over the property. "They even come up on the porch," Elizabeth grinned at me. This was evidenced by little "clues" everywhere, as we walked up into the farm house. "We're planning to put up a fence to block them from access to the house."

She talked about the chickens' different personalities as she showed me the barn, the various chicken houses, and their new baby pullets. "That's Ophelia," she said as a hen garbed in elegant black feathers sped by. "She needed a regal-sounding name."  "Rambo" was the lone mascot rooster, with a gorgeous, streaming tail comprised of many colors. "He's beautiful," I murmured. Rambo had been fated for the chicken processor, but - "He's had a hard life, and we decided he needs to stay here. He only has one eye." He lives with his "harem" in his own pen and house. Elizabeth pointed out "Dovey," who seemed to be at the top of the pecking order. "We had arrangements for them to get married, but, well... it didn't exactly work. They hate each other." Apparently, Dovey will have nothing to do with Rambo. Still, they seem to be comfortably enough situated, living together.

As the sun started setting and the chickens were returning to their homes, I helped Elizabeth collect eggs. She showed me how to gently ease my hand around and under chickens that had chosen to roost in nesting boxes. "That one's not a 'biter'" she assured me, as I hesitated to reach into a box that was already occupied by a hen. I marveled that, amongst some two hundred hens they keep, she can tell one from another.

I could tell the birds are happy. All that contented clucking really is a peaceful, soothing sound to the ear. They're happy, and therefore healthy. There didn't seem to be much spatting. Only once in my hour there did I note a some-what emotional "conversation." Unlike commercial birds, locked up in a tiny, dark room with their own filth and barely enough room to walk in (not that commercial chickens can walk, they're so fattened with grain and antibiotics!), these birds get to roam around and eat bugs. They're not sickly. And they receive a lot of affection and TLC from their owners.

I already knew these eggs that I eat were good. Just one look at that beautiful, deep yellow yolk as they're cracked into a bowl is enough to convince me.

But it just makes them that much "gooder" to get to see how they were raised. Not many people have the privilege of meeting the chickens that give them their eggs, talking to the people who lovingly raise them, and getting to enjoy the same fresh air that the chickens providing one's food also enjoy.