Eggs-cellent

This is a sequel to my last post about eggs, and a shout-out to Heather, my co-worker, friend, and favorite hippie farmer.  Besides being just generally and genuinely awesome, Heather is extra cool because she moved from a crowded Brooklyn apartment out into the middle of nowhere and basically started a farm with her husband.  They've become quite self-sufficient already.  I've been looking forward to checking out her abode, and so I was super excited on Friday when Heather invited us to her house after school for some well-deserved drinks.  I'm completely in love with her home.  It's a straight-up storybook, stolen from the pages of the Secret Garden.  Her house is one of those old farmhouses with the solid wood floors and capacious rooms.  Her yard is surrounded by a whimsical assortment of wildflowers and herbs spilling out of raised beds.

AND... I got to meet her chickens-- whose eggs I eat.  Awesome!

                                                                   This is their coop.

Their eggs are golden, huge, and delicious because they get to live outside and eat grass and bugs instead of grain, which makes them happy.

I wondered what it was going to be like to eat an egg after I had met the chicken.  I found out that it makes the eggs even more enticing.  

Look at the freakin' size of that thing!!!

You can't get much fresher than that.  I don't have a picture of a cracked egg, but my experience is that the yolks are a brighter yellow, and the whites less firm, than a store bought egg (and my opinion is that Heather's are more delicious, texture included).  I hear that they bake really well, too.  Unfortunately for YOU (unless you are lucky enough to either know Heather or hang out at my house enough for me to cook you breakfast ), Heather does not sell her eggs at the market... yet.  But keep your eyes peeled, and hopefully someday soon you'll find a variety of products available from Cottonhill Farms.  Heather and her husband not only have chickens, but an herb and veggie garden, a beginning apiary, and a goat (hmmm chevre anyone?)

"Although I cannot lay an egg, I am a very good judge of omelets." George Bernard Shaw