Hen-Pecking

Join the locavore movement and respond to the demand for farm-fresh eggs.

Dampness soaks through my boots as I traipse through thick, wet grass on my way to the laying hens at 6 am on Saturday morning. I lift the back flap to their mobile coop, which gives me direct rear-end access to their nests. An indignant Barred Rock sounds her shock and disapproval, leaping off her perch as though I’ve caught her with her skirts hitched high in an outhouse. An annoyed black Sexlink utters a low cackling warning growl as I reach under her, pull out the warm result of her morning effort, and dodge her pecks. I am there in violation of visiting hours. Egg gathering is a legal activity any time after 3pm, permissible in exchange for a little feed to be thrown down for the girls to peck and scratch while I visit each nest. A 6 am intrusion is just plain rude.

I have no choice. Crumpled in my back pocket is a list of advance egg orders that I am trying to fill for the morning farmers market. For many years, Bob and I have carried nine to twelve dozen eggs to the market every Saturday morning from mid-May through Mid-October. We have a little space at our booth where we have always displayed the boxes. Most days they would sell out by noon; occasionally they would linger until the end of the day, and we’d pass a leftover dozen on to the guy next to us who sells maple syrup. These days, that display space remains vacant. For a period of time, egg lovers would begin hitting our stall before the market even opened, pleading with us to make the sale before we’d finished setting up for business. They would be followed by the on-time crowd, some of who would be angry that we had served the folks who didn’t obey the market’s operating hours. Once we observed customers elbowing and pushing their way to the egg display, we switched to the pre-order system.

Each week, I send an email to about three hundred subscribing customers. It is like waving a checkered flag, signaling that I am ready to accept advance orders on our products. As each reply comes in I make a list, noting the date and time of every advance order, adopting a first-come, first serve policy. All eggs remain hidden in a cooler below our sale table, and they are handed out quietly to the lucky winners.

Our market manager carefully juries and monitors all the products sold by vendors in an effort to ensure ample diversity, high quality, and minimal replication. But, eggs have always been the exception. Any farmer who wants to bring his or her eggs to the market is welcome. Market-goers love them. The reasons are obvious.

Farm fresh eggs, especially from hens allowed to forage freely, are ablaze with color. The bright yolks stand erect and well-rounded, surrounded by a strong membrane that makes them less prone to breaking in the pan. There is a high ratio of thick albumen to thin, and a clear line delineates a distinct border between the two. Plainly fried in a pat of butter, their flavor shines through. Scrambled, they seem fluffier and less watery than their sepulchral factory-born cousins. Quiches feel silkier on the tongue, homemade mayonnaise takes on a deep golden hue, cakes taste richer, and custards have more body.

Fresh eggs last longer in the refrigerator, too. Unlike the factories, we farmers resist washing them, opting instead only to flake off the most offending clues of the sphere’s true origin. Reduced washing helps to preserve the protective cuticle that slows water loss, lengthens the storage life, and reduces the risk of bacterial contamination.

I would like to believe that the increasing demand for our eggs is a result of our superior farming practices. This is probably not the case. In efforts to appease our eggless market customers, we often encourage them to visit other vendors who carry eggs. One by one, the customers usually return to our stall, informing us that no one else has them. I pay a visit to Richard, an organic vegetable producer who, in the past, sold organic free-range eggs from his booth. I ask him if he carries them anymore. He laughs gently, and then questions me directly. “How can you stay in business with the price of feed being what it is?” We couldn’t afford the grain to feed those hens. So, we stopped selling eggs.

The simple answer is that our eggs don’t keep us in business. Assuming no eggs are broken in the gathering process (a comical presumption, considering the involvement that our two year-old likes to have with the chickens), our flock of thirty-six hens gives us a net return of about $900 each year. But, keeping the girls on the farm is relatively easy. We enjoy them. We like fresh eggs ourselves and fresh eggs are a great incentive to encourage regular visits from our customers.

But, yet another question comes at us from some irate customers (Truthfully, most of them are wonderful-but it is the irascible few who so delight my pen.): “Why don’t you just put on more chickens?” There is clearly demand for the product. To these people, my family seems utterly deprived of business acumen.

We resist putting on more chickens because we do not have a strong winter market. We like it that way. Rather than hustling our products all winter long, we prefer to rest during the snowy months. We stop attending a weekly market and just sell once per month off the farm. Our meats store in the freezer during these slow times, but the fresh eggs present a problem, growing in number each day. Thus, thirty-six hens is just the right flock size. It limits our egg surplus, enabling us to satisfy our winter visitors needs without forcing us to dine on a steady diet of omelets.

So then, of course, the obvious answer to the egg-shortage at our farmers’ market is one we’ve heard time and time again: We need more farmers. More grass-fed farmers could supply more eggs, and every committed locavore could return home from the market with a fresh dozen, and would never have to endure a factory-produced egg again. While I believe that we always need more farmers, in this case, I do not think this is the whole answer to the egg problem.

We need more people keeping hens.

Chickens are one of those fascinating animals that fit beautifully into humans living systems. When the first chickens walked the earth, they did not promptly require that a carefully blended ration be dumped before them from a feedbag. As omnivores, they ate what we ate – meats, vegetables, fruits and grains, plus any insects that might be pestering us.

Unlike us, chickens are not fussy about their food. Their diet needn’t be impeccably fresh, nor voluminous. Chickens are not in competition with humans. They are a way for us to recycle nutrients, creating food from food. A good laying hen is happily nourished by our household food waste, which she then converts to an egg for us to eat. She might like a small handful of grain each day, but the amount is minimal. Her feces can nourish our gardens, which grow more food, which nourish our family and her, and she in turn creates more food. At the end of her life (yes, that is part of the bargain), she is both soup and compost, which will help to generate yet more nourishment. She is a miraculous example of the true abundance we have available to us on this planet.

But, if we insist through zoning ordinances or misguided fears of disease and dirt, that individual families should not keep chickens, that gathering eggs each day is the exclusive work of the farmer or the egg factory, then the human-hen harmonious relationship ceases to exist. Thousands of chickens isolated from natures bounty in the factory farm setting require tons and tons of feed, which are typically produced with the intensive use of fossil fuels, pesticides, fertilizers and ecologically rapacious cultivating practices.

We grass-fed based farmers can do a lot better, putting the birds into rotation with our cattle and sheep so that they can pick through the feces dropped on the fields, eating the eggs of any problematic parasites, converting even the most unwanted critters into wholesome food. But if their numbers are too great, farmers cannot support the flocks with household food waste and grazing, and the chickens will require substantial feed beyond a light afternoon supplement.

The most sustainable form of egg production is for more families to keep hens, in addition to the small grass-fed farmers. Certainly not everyone can do this, but many more can, and many more should. If the number of neighborhood flocks increased, so too would our food security and our ecological sustainability. The volume of methane-producing food waste being shipped off to landfills would greatly reduce. Our carbon emissions would subsequently decline. The deeply pleasurable relationship with charming hens would lower our blood pressure, and when the girls are allowed to forage in backyards, their eggs would be a source of Omega-3 fatty acids, lowering our cholesterol. They’d eat the bugs, give us compost, and nourish our souls.

And yet, the idea of keeping some family hens seems preposterous to many Americans. We forget that this was a common practice among our ancestors in both rural and urban areas. Today, the presence of a few hens in our lives may be viewed as a direct infringement on our personal freedom. We believe that the commitment to a handful of kindly birds will prevent us from zipping off for a weekend getaway, from leaving for a vacation. In our fears of making a commitment, we are over-looking perhaps the greatest gift that a backyard flock may offer: stronger, deeper relationships. When our neighbors learn we have fresh eggs, they too will benefit from our stewardship. Some might even be willing to have a fully cooperative venture. A shared dozen each week goes a long way toward building friendships and goodwill within our community. The care of hens is very easy, and asking neighbors to feed and water them while we are away in exchange for eggs strengthens our commitments to each other, to a more peaceful and sustainable life, and toward the enjoyment of truly wonderful food.

Shannon Hayes is the host of grassfedcooking.com and the author of Radical Homemakers” (April 2010), “The Farmer and the Grill”, and “The Grass-fed Gourmet.” Hayes farms with her family on Sap Bush Hollow, raising grassfed meat, pastured poultry and eggs in Upstate New York. This excerpt is taken from her forthcoming book, “Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lovers” Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. Adapted and reprinted by permission.