Today marks the end of darkness. Starting tomorrow the days lengthen and the nights shorten. For me, tomorrow seems like the beginning of a new year.

On this, the darkest day of the year, some of the chickens are on the roost for the night before 4 p.m., like the mother and chick below. The chick is too large to fit between its mothers feet, so it snuggles as close to her as possible. In a few more weeks, it will have the confidence to roost on its own.

These are solstice eggs, the last of the old season. It won’t be long before the lengthening days brings new life to the hens and they start laying eggs by the basketful.

Speaking of eggs, I wrote a letter to Gabrielle Johnston, Public Affairs Specialist at USDA-FSIS, asking about the USDA-FSIS statement “many eggs reach stores only a few days after the hen lays them”. I had a pleasant phone conversation with her on Friday, and she is looking into how that statement got placed on their website. I’m looking forward to her response, and will let you know what she says.

This is what I emailed her today:

Dear Gabrielle,

I hope you had a pleasant weekend. It’s nice to reach the winter solstice and have days getting longer again.

Back to the claim on the USDA website that “many eggs reach stores only a few days after the hen lays them”, I did a little research recently and this is what I found:

On December 12, I looked at the eggs at Haggens, a supermarket chain in this area, and found eggs packed from 6 to 39 days ago. The average on all the egg cartons was 25 days. When you add in the 2 to 3 days minimum it takes eggs to be trucked from the farm to the egg processing plants, the typical egg at Haggens was laid 28 days, or 4 weeks ago.

Here are the results of stores I checked on December 21:

Bellingham Food Co-Op: 4 days to 25 days, an average of 20.3 days

Trader Joes in Bellingham, WA: 8 days to 12 days, an average of 10.7 days

Fred Meyer in Bellingham, WA: 5 days to 17 days, an average of 11.1 days

Those are the packing dates, so a typical egg in those stores is 2 to 3 weeks old at the least. The USDA allows eggs to be packed up to 21 days after being laid, so on the outset the eggs could be up 5 to 6 weeks old, not likely, but not impossible.

I called several Whole Foods stores in Seattle and asked their grocers if they had any eggs that were just a few days old. They said no. They told me that even though they get a few eggs from Pacific Northwest egg producers, the bulk of their eggs come from Wisconsin and Texas. Based on that, it sounds to me like their eggs are easily 2 to 3 weeks old. The next time I am in the Seattle area, I will check their eggs.

So, I’m baffled as to how the USDA decided to put on their website that “many eggs reach stores only a few days after the hen lays them”.

I hope you were able to find out how this statement was posted on your website. Maybe some one at the USDA can provide a list of supermarkets that sell these mythical 2 to 3 day old eggs. According to the USDA, there supposedly are many of them on store shelves. I’ll keep looking. If I find any, I’ll let you know.

Sincerely,

Clear a stack of wood, and the chickens move in like the cleaning crew. They scratch through the remaining debris, bark, and leaves, looking for any bugs and worms to eat. They can be very helpful. I’m convinced that a flock of chickens make excellent flea control. Fleas don’t stand a chance against a flock of keen-eyed fowl.

When you’re this beautiful, you have to spend a lot of time primping. After a very wet rain, a patch of late afternoon sunshine, provides an opportunity to preen. I have two young roosters who look like this. Based on their features, I am guessing they are a cross between a Swedish Flower Chicken and an Americauna. The amount of green and blue on their feathers almost makes you think a pheasant meandered through one day and had a dalliance with one of the hens. Could a pheasant and a chicken breed? Evidently so: see Gamebird Hybrids.

Eggs in December. These days, no one ever thinks how odd that is. Before electric lights, eggs in December were like tomatoes in December. Stop any one in the street and ask, “Are eggs a seasonal food like fruits and vegetables?” The idea that eggs are seasonal sounds absurd. No matter what time of year you go to a supermarket, you will see carton after carton of eggs.

Yet, egg laying hens are sensitive to the amount of daylight. As the days shorten in late summer and fall, their egg production drops. In December and January, the hens here lay only a sixth to a fifth of the eggs they do in spring and summer. The number of eggs the hens lay starts to increase in February, and by March, they really go into overdrive.

The way the large egg producers keep egg production up year round, is by keeping laying hens bathed in artificial light. They also don’t keep laying hens very long, from 18 to 24 months. Then the hens are done with. A hen is born with all the eggs she will ever produce. You can either get her to lay all those eggs as quickly as possible using artificial light, or let her take her time laying her eggs over a longer period of time.

Which makes you wonder how it is that year round, we are able to buy most any type of produce in supermarkets. None of it comes out of thin air. Someone has to plant it, tend to it, and pick it. Here is an interesting article as to how much of the fresh produce in our stores is produced: Hardship on Mexico’s farms, a bounty for U.S. tables