A Solution for an Age-Old Problem

Our laying hens have been donating fresh country eggs for as many years as I can shake a stick at.  We love those fresh eggs and collect them every day.

There is only one problem with a FRESH laid eggs.  They are very hard to peel.  Oh, you can peel them, but the eggs look horrible.  Why is this?  Well, a fresh egg's proteins bond to the membrane instead of each other.  When you boil them and peel them, the white sticks to the membrane just inside the shell, resulting in an ugly, pitted egg.  This means Tricia can't make pretty boiled eggs or deviled eggs for the ladies luncheon at church!  What to do!?!?

Turns out there's a solution that my wife learned that works!  Instead of boiling the eggs, you steam them.  What you're looking at below is a pot of boiling water in which a tray with holes in it (from our canner) is placed on top.  The boiling water beneath the tray STEAMS the eggs for about 15 - 20 minutes.

After that time, the eggs are submerged in cool water to cool them down.

Tricia then peels them under a stream of cool water.

Voila!  Perfect fresh peeled eggs without a flaw!

We were glad to learn the secret to this problem.  We've created workarounds by putting the eggs for boiling aside for "aging."  Once the eggs are a few weeks old, they peel better.  But with this process, we don't have to do that anymore.  How does this new process work?  I'm not sure, but I would guess that since the outer eggshells of the eggs are porous, the steam must work it's way inside the egg and release the bond of the proteins in the white from the membrane.  Just a guess.  Whatever it is, it works!

Who Fliipped The Switch to the "ON" Position?

Fresh pastured country eggs laid by our happy hens that roam around on 3 acres are a blessing to us.  We love to eat 'em!  Each and every afternoon Benjamin goes out with his basket and gathers eggs in the hen house, the barn, the chicken tractor and numerous other hiding places like in the loft, behind the box fan, in the goat stall, in the trough in the goat barn, at the bottom of the burn pile...  Well, you get the picture.  The hens will lay eggs most anywhere.

Except, Benjamin's egg gathering was slim to none for a while.  On December 5, 2016 a hen laid ONE EGG (you read that right) and then none on the next day, or the next or the next.  Not a single egg in the month of January!  No eggs for the first two weeks of February.  Finally on February 17th he picked up one egg.  The number kept growing and growing and during the month of April, he is picking up about 5 dozen eggs a day.

When the hens weren't producing eggs, we hardly ate or cooked with eggs.  There is a HUGE difference between store-bought eggs and ours.  Now we have plenty eggs to scramble, fry, make quiche with, or cook with in any number of recipes.  We also have plenty to sell to our egg customers and plenty to give away to our family, our neighbors and our friends.  Friends don't let friends eat store-bought eggs!!

So, back to talking about finding hidden nests of eggs, we learned a test to determine the freshness of eggs.  If you take a bucket of water and drop the eggs found in a 'hidden nest,' the rotten ones will float, the old eggs will sink but stand up at the bottom of the bucket, and the fresh ones will lie flat on the bottom.  The rotten eggs get thrown back in the woods or composted in the garden.  The old or questionable eggs get fed to the dogs.  And obviously the fresh eggs get eaten by our family.

The hens are very healthy and fat right now and the yolks of their eggs are a deep yellow-orange color.  The eggs are just beautiful and tasty, too!  We don't wash them unless we absolutely need to. When the hens lay the eggs, they coat the eggs with a "bloom" that seals the eggs from bacteria and gives the eggs a longer shelf life. Once they are washed, their shelf life is shortened.  In the late fall and winter, the hens' production will taper off, but for right now, we are enjoying the eggs.

The incredible, edible egg.  I'm thankful that they are laying in abundance again.

"Country" Eggs

As the green grass suggests in the picture below, Spring has Sprung!  I look at the last sign of Spring being when the pecan trees start to put on leaves and all of our pecan trees have bright green leaves popping out on the previously barren limbs. It's here - and it's about time.  I'm sure those in the north would agree and are anxiously awaiting Spring to come to them.

In addition to getting the garden in, Springtime signals the on-set of a huge increase in egg production from our flock of laying hens.  We have probably 65 layers, 7 roosters, and then 23 pullets that have not laid their first egg yet.  All but the pullets are roaming free over their 3 acre pasture, rooting around for bugs and worms, scratching through cow patties on a quest for tasty morsels.  Oh, they think it's heaven.

Spring Green

Like people, they enjoy their freedom.  They can stretch out and go where they like, do what they like, and when they like.  All within reason, of course.  We have one Aracauna hen that shimmies her way through the hog wire and she's gotten into a bad habit of scratching the mulch away from the base of our blueberry bushes.  I've got to break her of that habit somehow.

Over the winter, the reduction in protein and nutritive quality of the forage coupled with shorter daylight hours results in a drastic reduction in egg production.  Oh, we could keep lights on in the hen house and purchase laying pellets to supplement and feed the girls, but we're trying to do things a little more naturally and abide within the seasons and cycles of life as God intended.  This practice also extends the productive life of our laying hens.

Anyway, the fresh, tender grasses of Spring, bugs, worms and other goodies and longer days, flip the hens' "switch" and they begin to lay eggs abundantly.  Let's look in on one of their nesting places in the hen house:

One vacant nesting box

The hens, at their appointed time each day, mosey into the hen house, or barn, or chicken tractor, or hay bale, or any other various and sundry places they decide to lay their eggs, and they'll sit in the soft, clean hay and produce some of nature's finest and most quality protein of any food available. 

Hard at Work

Once done, they'll sing a little song.  It's a happy tune and although I'm not conversant in the Chickenese language, I would assume that they are proudly exclaiming that they've just done a good thing - just as you do when you finish mowing the lawn or completing a project that you are passionate about.  Then they plop down and scurry back out to the pasture to chase bugs.  Now that's REAL "fast food!"

A solitary brown egg

That one egg quickly becomes a beautiful collection of eggs of all shapes, sizes and colors, representing the collective work of Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Black Stars, and Aracaunas. And though each egg might look different, they are all delicious.

A nest of assorted fresh eggs

It's Benjamin's job each afternoon to grab his wire bucket and head out to the pasture and gather eggs before he goes to track practice.  Egg gathering requires lots of skills.  One must be curious as a detective, careful as an archaeologist, have the keen eye of a surveyor and the sure, steady hands of a surgeon.  Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little.  

A tisket, a tasket, a red wire egg gathering basket

The basket full of eggs is brought to the back patio where they'll be sorted and packaged.  On beautiful dry days, Benjamin just puts them into the cartons.  You really don't want to wash them because the chicken puts what's called a "bloom" on her eggs and this, in effect, seals the egg and keeps bacteria from entering the porous egg.  

On wet, rainy days, however, the eggs require some clean-up.  You see, when the chickens jump up into the nesting boxes, their feet are muddy and they tend to step on the eggs, making them dirty. Friends and family members give us their egg cartons and we use them again and again to package some good old country eggs in.

It's nice to have delicious eggs in abundance.  If ever the words ring out, "What's for supper?" and nothing's in the pot, eggs provide a quick nutritious, versatile protein to start the conversation. Although the color of the eggshells doesn't affect the flavor of the egg, free range, pastured chicken's eggs are far and away better tasting than the 'factory eggs' you purchase at the grocery store. There's no comparison, really.