Organic Brown Eggs $2

We just returned from what I’m calling our ‘farmcation,’ (similar to the popular and economical staycation, but instead of staying home for our summer vacation, we stayed on Grandma’s farm.)

The hand-made brown wooden sign down the road from Grandma’s was painted in white, hung from a tree, and advertised “Organic Brown Eggs $2.” The new neighbor had around 50 beautiful Isa Brown laying hens; he also had new baby chicks only a few days old. My little girls adored seeing the chicks under a heat lamp in a cardboard box in his garage. The neighbor told us they were even hatched by the hens. (We didn’t have chickens on our farm when I was young, but all our neighbors ordered their chicks from a catalog and they arrived in a box by mail.) The lone rooster, it was reported, crowed every morning at 4:17!

My baby was so excited to see all the fluffy brown hens running around – and also, no doubt, to know where the eggs she was about to eat came from – she screeched with joy! We bought two dozen of the beautiful brown eggs for $4.00. (We would have paid $10.00 at our local farmers market.)

At home, I curiously conducted a taste test against conventional store-bought eggs. At 20 months and 4 years, the members of my tasting panel did not have most discerning palates; they liked all the eggs hard-boiled and scrambled. My husband and I also participated. Here are our results:
· Egg shells: Conventional – pale brown; organic brown – darker, but still relatively pale brown with (pretty) brown speckles
· Egg yolks both when raw and cooked: Conventional – yellow; organic brown – brighter orange-yellow
· Taste: Conventional – the egg-y taste I’m accustomed to and adore; organic brown – richer, deeper egg flavor