Today was our first day to distribute egg shares. We’ve been getting eggs from the hens for only about a month now, so we’re still figuring out how best to handle everything. Please let us know how we’re doing and how we might improve.
You’ll notice that the eggs range in sizes. The smallest of them are “pullet” or “starter” eggs, the small eggs which the hens lay as they first begin laying. Most of the hens seem to have begun to lay normal-ish sized eggs by now, with a few jumbos thrown in there. We’ve been surprised at how many double-yolkers we’ve been getting when we make french toast in the morning. Anyway, we don’t grade the eggs for size when we pack them in cartons.
In case you’re interested, our procedure is that we collect eggs every day. After collection (where we’re getting between 20 and 24 eggs a day), we take the eggs to our walk in cooler and sort the clean and more-or-less clean eggs into cartons and set aside (for breakfast or dinner) any which we notice as cracked. The eggs which are dirty enough to need some cleaning are kept separate until we’re ready to wash them. Washing usually entails a warm, damp cloth and some mild elbow grease, but the dirtiest ones will get a brief soaking in warm water to loosen up whatever’s stuck on. After that, these cleaned eggs are then put into cartons. Until we take them to market or to the share sites, all of the eggs are kept in our walk in cooler.
When kept refrigerated, eggs should easily keep 4-5 weeks or longer. Eggs that we sell have often been “out of the chicken” for less than week (in fact, some of the eggs in today’s share were laid yesterday) and never more than a week and a half.
We hope you enjoy the fresh eggs!