It is getting to be that time of year again.  I think I look forward to the coming of Spring and Summer just as excitedly as I used to as a child.   Only my reasons have changed. As a kid, I would look forward to sleeping in, and long lazy hot days.

Now, giddy, I anticipate the honor farm’s return.  In the area I live, which is quasi-rural, driving the back roads you’ll see signs that announce that eggs are for sale.  The “honor box” payment system is very common around.  So, my regular weekly shopping includes stopping at a few of these rural shopping sites.   I go to the same place, usually, for eggs. It’s an amazing all freely pastured farm. Chickens hatch and raise their chicks, and everywhere there are chickens milling about.   It’s quaint.   The honor box that I stop at is simple, and you stuff your money down a little wooden slot.  The eggs are fresh, the cartons are recycled (and I bring back my used cartons).   It’s pleasant.

I used to raise chickens, and have chickens, and nightly close them into their coop. Every morning let them out, and routinely clean out the coop. Uggh.  I have one of my original 25 left.  (I call her “survivor”.)

After years of struggling to protect chickens from neighborhood dogs, and marauding raccoons, foxes, eagles, coyotes, and whatever else, I’m tired of it.  But, there is no way I could go back to the big corporate egg farmed eggs.   (They have no taste! They have been in cold storage for half-a-year, or more.   Yuck.)

I also, use a lot of eggs — and try several egg recipes each week (for my “someday” book Too Many Eggs, it’s at 400 pages, now, and still growing).  I like to help support a guy who is, clearly, crazy about chickens.

the egg farmer walking down his driveway