Eggs (A Four Letter Word)

It was heated time in our marriage, this past fall. It would go something like this—Daniel would walk in the door and I would ask him if he brought me any eggs. He would glance around uncomfortably and say no but hopefully tomorrow. Sometimes he would bring me a half dozen in hopes of keeping my irritation at bay and I would stare at them utter in disbelief. I would find myself saying things like–I don’t even want to live on a farm if you refuse to give me eggs. Having eggs is the ENTIRE POINT of living on a farm! The entire point?!?, he would dangerously question me. Yes, the ENTIRE POINT! We actually banned the word from being spoken at our house because tensions were so high over the matter. We started referring to it as the “E- word” like it was an actual form of cursing. I would hum a new version of that old Cake song to myself, “To me, coming from you, friends Eggs, is a four letter word.”

How did it come to this you wonder? We had an abundance over the past few years. I already loved eggs but having a seemingly endless supply allowed me to build my world around them. Scrambled eggs every morning for breakfast, quiche once a week for dinner, boiled eggs for snacks and on and on. We had so many that we threw caution to the wind and let our own personal flock of chickens become fully free range. If you don’t make a habit of putting your chickens up at night, it can be difficult to figure out where they choose to lay their eggs. The other issue is, the chickens themselves become an easy snack to every predator around. Needless to say, we lost our yard birds pretty quickly.

And because things just happen to chickens, by the beginning of the fall, the farm was down to only around 50 egg layers. This attrition combined with less egg production due to shorter days and the beginning our new CSA delivery that includes two dozen eggs per share left me with only meager portions.

The very good news, both for you and my marriage, is that we added 300 more egg layers this fall and again 150 more this winter. That means that we have eggs once again in abundance. More than I can even eat!  If you have never eaten a farm fresh egg, I would encourage you to try them. They truly are better, habit forming even!

And just to be on the safe side, we added sixty baby chicks to our own little barn yard.   Very soon I will be able to once again send the kids to get me eggs whenever we need them. After all, it never hurts to have a back up stash.