OK, right up front we need to admit that proud as we are of our amazing, rainbow colored, humanely raised, llama protected, free range, Certified organic fed, soy bean free heirloom chicken flock.....we’re plum sold out through roughly Christmas week, 2012.

When we recently announced to our CSA members that we now offer our eggs as an “add-on,” we were expecting 5 or six families that would choose the option. Really. We’ve raised chickens as pets for many years, and doing so isn’t a profit center for us. Which is why only CSA members can order our eggs. Anyway, it’s the “humanely raised” part of Humanely Raised Chicken Eggs that really ups the anty. Even organic egg growers wack the heads off of their older hens as their yields wane. It’s a feed vs. production decision, and doing so makes dollars and cents but that part of egg production ruins it for many vegetarians and animal lovers.

Also, if you have a minute; google “space required to call chicken eggs “free range.” I think when we hear “range” most of us are thinking, well vast. As in out they’re in the open. But that’s not the case in the actual industry. Chickens are animals of habit, and if they are not exposed to an outdoor option early on in their development, they are unlikely to go through the barn door when they’re adults. But regulations don’t require producers to provide outdoor time to non adult hens. So how does that really work out in the real egg laying world? A “free-range” producer can have a small area open to her hens, that her hens don’t use, and she can still call her flock “free ranged.”