A Carton of Eggs - Part 4 - Locally Laid

An egg carton is great for keeping a dozen eggs grouped together, and for providing eggs stability and cushioning in transport.  Beyond that, an egg carton is a very useful marketing tool.  All that blank space can be filled up with information, promotional messages, and art.  This is the fourth in a series of posts about the stuff printed on specific egg cartons. 

Also in this series:

Part 1 - Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs

Part 2 – ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs

Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs

Part 5—Vital Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs

For this post, I went to a nearby supermarket and bought a carton of Locally Laid eggs.  In my own coop, the Hipster Hens were in the midst of their autumnal molt and egg production was incredibly low.  Given that we had some house guests who expected their morning scramble, I really did need to buy some eggs anyway.  And in buying the eggs I also got a carton to blog about. So, I killed two birds with one stone, right?  Please don’t tell the Hipster Hens I was talking about killing birds.

Locally Laid is a Minnesota-based, family owned and run egg company that has recently expanded into Iowa and Indiana.  Jason and Lucie Amundsen started Locally Laid Egg Company in 2012 to provide pasture-raised eggs to local markets and as proponents and practitioners of “Middle Ag”.  My backyard flock of Hipster Hens currently tops out at 26 birds.  Cal-Maine Foods, the nation's largest egg producer, the last time anybody counted, had around 26 million hens.  Locally Laid has around 1800 laying hens.  Middle Ag.  Get it?

Winter Non-Chickens

Not all of our feathered friends are chickens.  We’ve got a collection of birdfeeders by our house that draw in birds both winter and summer.  Last spring I posted pictures of the spring migrators that stop by our feeders on their way north in a post I called "Spring Non-Chickens".  In this post I'm sharing some pictures of some of the year-round residents that show up at our feeders in the wintertime.  

Of course in the winter, we don't have the variety of bird species showing up for their sunflower seed or suet snacks that we see in the spring, but quantity perhaps makes up for diversity.  The feeders are busy from sunup to sundown, so we don't have to wait to be entertained - all we have to do is look out the window anytime we want!

Here are a few examples of what we see:

This is a female purple finch enjoying a sunflower seed.  We get both purple and gold finches in huge flocks in the winter.  The purple finch is, of course, really hard to tell from the house finch.  Is the bird in this picture really a purple finch or is it a house finch?  I'm going with purple, but I could be wrong!

Meet the Flock - September & October 2017

Marissa the Cream Legbar sez “Braaaaak! Don’t take that shot! If you hold the camera that close I’ll look RIDICULOUS!”

Here’s a nice shot of Paulette and Marissa the Cream Legbar hens from about a year ago – they were just starting to lay eggs!

Paulette could be the world’s most molty chicken in this shot! She only has two tail feathers left, but she’s really, really proud of them!

Chickens from Outer Space?

I’ve always been interested in ancient sites and have been fortunate to be able to visit a few of them over the course of my life.  Not unsurprisingly, I often meet others who share my interest in timeworn architecture and ancient civilizations when I visit these sites.  I also bump into another whole subset at these old places—those searching for sites imbued with “secret, ancient power”.  Visit Stonehenge, Delphi in Greece, or Machu Picchu and you’ll run into them, alone and in groups, in shorts and hiking boots or robes and beads, seeking healing, omens, visions, or doorways into other dimensions. 

Betty the Transgender Chicken – What Happened Next

Randy's Chicken Blog has moved to a new platform. You can find this story plus all sorts of other chicken info and tales of the Hipster Hens right here!

Sexing Chickens: The Art, Science, and History of Hen vs. Rooster

A farmer wanted to be able to tell which of his baby chicks were boys and which were girls so he enlisted the aid of a scientist.  “Well!”  said the scientist, “It’s really quite easy!  You simply scatter some crickets in the coop.  The boy chicks will only eat boy crickets and the girl chicks will only eat girl crickets.”

“That’s great!”  said the farmer. “But how do you tell the boy crickets from the girl crickets?”

“Why are you asking me about crickets?” the scientist retorted.  “I’m a chicken expert!”

And for the bulk of history after the domestication of chickens, sexing baby chicks wasn’t too far from that mark.  The bad news is that baby chicks are pretty much small, cute, fluffy, and indistinguishable, with their boy and girl parts mostly inside their bodies and out of sight.  The good news is that for a long time, it really didn’t matter a whole lot.

Six Things to Do When Introducing New Chickens to Your Flock

Remember your first day at your new job?  You walked in carrying your little file box containing not much more than your coffee cup and your potted plant and found your way to your new office.  Everybody’s stared at you and you didn’t know any of them.  You didn’t know where the break room or the bathroom was—you didn’t know where anything was, and you weren’t sure what you were supposed to do next. 

Now, imagine that all your new co-workers had beaks and were crowding around to maliciously peck at you and you’ll be pretty close to what it must be like to be that new chicken you’re introducing to your flock.  Which is why you can’t just open the coop door, toss in a few new chickens and hope for the best.  It will be a stressful time for you and your flock, but with a little planning and strategy you can make it a little less stressful.  

The Life and Times of Betty the Transgender Chicken

Randy's Chicken Blog has moved to a new platform - you can find this story plus all sorts of other chicken info and tales of the Hipster Hens right here!

A Chicken Feeder, A Waterer, and Other Odds and Ends

A Feeder

I've had a lot of problems with feed billing. I'm not talking about getting annoying notices in the mail from the feed store that my payment is overdue. "Billing" is a kind of confusing term poultry people have given to a behavior chickens engage in - they use their beaks to scoop a lot of chicken feed out of the feeder and onto the floor. I reached a point where I would have chicken feed an inch deep on the floor around the feeder whenever I would clean the coop. I kept telling the Hipster Hens that chicken feed is NOT chicken litter. It costs a lot more than pine shavings, and it's makes me really grouchy when I have to shovel all that feed mixed with litter and poop onto the compost pile. I turned to the internet for help and found lots of advice - some of it not so good. For instance, starving your hens to alter their behavior seems both cruel and sort of dumb. Chickens are chickens and will act like chickens. Scratching at and billing their food, is just what chickens do. I did find a number of recommendations for commercial and homemade feeders that would make billing food out of the feeder difficult - which seems like a good logical approach.

The one that made the most sense was a recommendation by Jason at "Locally Laid". He waxed ecstatic about a plastic gravity feeder made by Kuhl Corp and sold by Stromberg's Poultry Supply. (It's worth mentioning that neither Jason nor I have any sort of relationship with either company.) Without any further deliberation, I ordered one and installed it in my coop. It has been a miracle. The amount of feed the chickens manage to bill onto the floor is a fraction of what it used to be with my old feeder. The secret is the extra-deep feed pan and the inward curve at the edge of the pan. The chickens still noodle around in the feed with their beaks, but the feed stays in the feeder. I'm saving so much at the feed store that maybe I should go out and buy the large screen TV for the coop that all the Hipster Hens have been asking for!

 

Kuhl feeder.  Inset - feed pan with curved edge.

Meet the Flock Roundup – August 2017

Snowball the Silkie Rooster:  Feeling very modern and sophisticated in his fancy new hen pen.

Emile the Bantam Cochin Roo: "You conniving scoundrel! Here you are in my coop with that menacing camera contraption again! You've been warned! If you harm my hens in any way you will feel the wrath of my fierce spurs!"

When the Rooster Crows at the Break of Dawn - Why Roosters Crow

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Look out your window and I’ll be gone

You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on

Don’t think twice, it’s all right

"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bob Dylan

It is a warm and humid morning in mid-August and not yet light.  Wakefulness is coming to me this morning before the sun, and I open my eyes to look around the room, lit only by alarm clock glow.  A slight breeze blows through the open windows and all is quiet.  The nights sounds of owls and coyotes have ceased and the birds have not yet started their songs of daybreak.

Then I hear the first morning sound floating up the hill, “Err-err-eeeeeerrrrr!”  Emile is awake.  “Err-err-eeeerrrrr!”  In a bit Emile’s call is joined by another one, a bit flatter and raspier, “Err-err-Rup!  Err-err-Rup!”  Snowball has added his morning commentary. This duet continues for a while and then is joined by another voice, more shrill and abrupt, “Errrrr-errrrrr!”  Now Paul is chiming in.  I swing my legs over the side of the bed and start my day—the sun is just beginning to lighten the eastern horizon. 

Meet the Flock Roundup – July 2017

Suddenly, after celebrating her one-month birthday, Paula the Salmon Faverolles chick is starting to look like a teenage chicken. Look at the feathers sprouting all over her legs & her pretty salmon colored wing feathers!

Squawky the Speckled Sussex chick looks longingly out the window at the great wide world. A week after this shot, the chicks had their first opportunity to go outside!

Leaving Chickhood Behind – The Hipster Chicks Move Out of the Woodshed

On Saturday evening, I went into the woodshed with the bag of dried mealworms.  The chicks know this bag of deliciousness on sight and gathered around for a treat.  Valerie and Squawky, who are not shy, ate some delightful treats right out of my hand while the others blissfully pecked them off the floor.  Then Valerie, as she often does, hopped right into my hand.  That’s when I closed my hand around her and shoved her into the cat carrier that my wife, Kathy, was holding.  I also nabbed Squawky before she could run away and put her in the carrier with Valerie.  Both chicks cried out continuous shrill peeps of fear and alarm, and the others scattered for the corners of the woodshed.  We carried these two little girls down the hill to the pole barn and released them into the new coop that I’d prepared for them.  The time had come for these nine-weeks-old chicks to take the next step towards henhood. 

 

Life So Far for the HIpster Chicks:  They hatched on June 6 and were put in a transport box - I picked them up and drove them to their new home.  Their first week was in the big blue bin - mostly under the heater.  Then they moved to the plastic kiddie pool, where they started roosting on top of the heater.  Finally, at about three weeks old, the kiddie pool went away and they had full run of the woodshed - until last Saturday!

I Don't Know Much About Art, But I Know What I Like - And I Like Chickens!

Fair Use: Photograph of Hahn/Cock in situ in Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - To discuss artwork and to illustrate the appearance of the work in its context in Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Last weekend I finally found time to make a pilgrimage to the cool new gimongo chicken sculpture that has been installed in the Twin Cities.  The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has added sixteen new pieces as part of its recent multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion.  One of them, Hahn/Cock by German artist Katharina Fristch is a giant blue fiberglass rooster standing on a steel base – the base and rooster top out at 25 feet. 

Fristch likes to incorporate not-so-subtle ironic humor into her works, and she's best known for Rattenkönig/Rat King, a group of enormous black polyester rats, shown at the 1999 Venice Biennale.  This is her second edition of Hahn/Cock.  The original was on display in Trafalgar Square in London as part of the “Fourth Plinth” project.

The Hen Pen Project

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

C. Northcote Parkinson

In 2011, as I was reaching the end of my working years, I decided to go part time.  It was wonderful!  All of a sudden, I had extra days to work on my bazillion projects here at the ranch.  It was great for a while, but it was only a matter of time before those extra days also gave me the opportunity to think up even more projects.  Soon, my project list, instead of getting smaller, was actually expanding! 

Then in 2015, I retired.  That also was wonderful!  I once again had extra days every week to work on projects.  Guess what happened next.  Yup.  The project list got even longer!  And now I’m out of options for adding more days to the week unless I start making my own calendar with a ten-day week! 

Meet the Flock Roundup – May & June, 2017

Meet Veronica the Easter Egger, a prolific layer of green eggs. Veronica's in her 5th year and was the only Easter Egger of her generation to lay continuously through this past winter. Such a hard worker! And very pretty to boot!

Spring Non-Chickens

Chickens are not the only birds we feed here at the ranch.  We’ve got a collection of birdfeeders by our house to feed all of the feathered denizens of the woods around us as well as those who just stop by for a snack.  We serve sunflower seeds and suet and add sugar water and jelly to our summer menu.  Our arrangement with the birds is that we provide food for them and they provide entertainment for us.  Win-win, right?  Regularly glancing out the window to see who has stopped by for a snack is just part of life. 

When our kids were young, they learned all of the birds’ names—and not just the last names (e.g. Cardinal, Grosbeak) but also the first names (e.g. Carl and Carla Cardinal, Gary and Mary Grosbeak).  Of course, there were many cardinals and grosbeaks, but the males were all Carl and Gary and the females were all Carla and Mary—this system only presented a problem when multiples birds of the same species would show up at the feeder at the same time and then we could just say that Carl and Carla were entertaining guests.

Watching the birds at the feeder happens the year round, but it is especially fun in the spring as we wait for the first appearance of our migrators and the occasional glimpse of the birds that briefly stop by as they migrate through.  With the Fourth of July behind us, we’re moving out of the spring season—nests are built, eggs are hatched, and fledglings are getting ready to leave the nest.  On to summer!  Here are a handful of springtime bird pictures that I’ve taken over the last several years. 

Rose Breasted Grosbeaks are usually the first spring arrival at our feeders.  They winter in Central America and Northern South America and are ready to chow down on some sunflower seeds when they show up.

The Afton 4th of July Parade

My thoughts while doing the Afton 4^th of July Parade: “Beautiful day!  The rain they predicted never materialized.  It’s maybe eighty degrees – a little warm in the sun, but perfect in the shade.  Blue sky with just a few little fluffy clouds and just enough breeze to keep the streamers on the float fluttering.  Perfect spot in the staging area in the shade of some towering cottonwoods.  My spot is in the last third of the parade, behind the string of classic Corvettes and in front of 'Tony Jurgens for House of Representatives' and Pinky’s Sewer Service.  My support crew folks show up en masse, Kathy arrives in the truck with the buckets o’ candy and the Silke hens, we get them transferred to the float and we’re underway.  There are a few folks lining the street right outside the marina, but when we turn the corner onto Main Street, we are engulfed by the throng—solid masses of people lining the street and actually spilling over the curb onto the street in several places.  The crew is busily handing out candy to eager youngsters—it’s obvious that the $85 worth of candy is not going to get us through the route!  This is the epitome of festive!  The noise:  music, shouting kids, sirens, hot rod engines!  My boombox is belting out the chicken-themed hits, but nobody can hear it in the midst of the general cacophony!  Everybody loves us!  Kids smile and point at the little hens.  When the parade halts on occasion, moms bring their toddlers close so they can see the chickens close-up.  I get lots of 'Hi Randy!'  and 'Way to go, Randy'—I don’t know any of the people shouting my name, but 'Randy’s Chicken Blog' is displayed prominently right on the float!  We drive Main Street, turn at the coulee, drive Main Street again, and then it’s all over.  But what a memorable day!"

The thoughts of Emily and Courtney the Silkie hens while doing the Afton 4^th of July Parade:  “Aaaaaaaaarrrrgh!  Squaaaaaaaaaak!  What is going on???!!!  The crate we’re in shakes around.  We seem to be moving!  Who are all these people?  Why do they keep pressing their faces up to the crate?  It is so noisy and scary!  When we get back to the coop nobody will believe our horror stories!  We will never forget this day!"

But they did just fine.  Once they got settled in, they handled it just like seasoned professional chickens!  I’m ever so grateful to these little hens for helping out with the parade.  I couldn’t have done it without them!  And I’m also grateful for the support and assistance of my seasoned professional crew:  Katie, Eric, Madeline, Josh, & Kathy!  Thanks guys!  You were very brave in facing the hordes of candy-crazed youngsters!  You too were vital to the success of this endeavor!

Without further commentary, here are a few pictures from the day.

Afton, Minnesota: A Town! A Parade! A Chicken Float!

Welcome to Afton, Minnesota, USA—my hometown!  Afton is a diminutive and bucolic town located on the pristine and federally protected St. Croix River and is one of Minnesota’s oldest towns.  Back in territorial days, when there were no ferries or bridges crossing the river, there was (and still is) a large sandbar, the Catfish Bar, which allowed for an easy and shallow crossing.  Afton formed at this crossing point. 

But Do Elephants Tell Chicken Jokes?

Elephant jokes first showed up on the scene sometime in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s.  Over the years their popularity has waxed and waned, but they have been and no doubt will continue to be discovered by subsequent generations of delighted kids.  The main elements of an elephant joke are (1) an elephant and (2) an absurd situation.  That’s all it takes—they are not, after all, anywhere near the pinnacle of sophisticated humor.

Isaac Asimov, in his book, Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor, suggested that elephant jokes would remain forever "favorites of youngsters and of unsophisticated adults."  He did not mention young or unsophisticated chickens, yet Snowball the Silkie Rooster has the hens in my coop, especially Angitou the Golden Polish Hen, falling off the roost with laughter.  Is there any possibility Snowball will stop telling elephant jokes?  Probably not.  I think he’s got a million of them, and he keeps getting so much positive feedback with all those “Braaaak ak ak aks!”  

Chickens of the Woods Are Not Really Chickens

This happens a lot:  You're about to try some unusual food for the first time and the self-anointed expert slides up and knowingly announces "Oh - it tastes just like chicken."  Well this post is about one of those foods that tastes just like chicken. Hopefully, the Hipster Hens won’t find out. The food up for discussion in this case is the incredibly delicious sulphur shelf mushroom.  We’ve had a little rain and they’re popping up out in the woods like, well…like mushrooms—much to my gustatory delight. 

If you’ve never foraged for mushrooms before, this would be a good one for you to start with.  Unlike other mushrooms that hide under the leaf litter on the floor of the woods, these guys grow on stumps and trees.  And unlike other mushrooms that are camouflaged by their color, these little fungus dudes, with their orange and yellow coloring, can’t be missed.  It’s almost like they’re jumping up and down, waving their little mushroom arms, and yelling, “Here I am!  Here I am!  I want to be sautéed right now!”  Also, because it is so hard confuse this mushroom with another mushroom that might be less edible or even poisonous, mycologists include it in the list of the “foolproof four” that beginners can safely forage.  Exactly which four mushrooms are included in that list of four seems to differ depending on which mycologist you’re talking to, but everybody includes sulphur shelf mushrooms among the four on their list.  (The term “foolproof four” which so many mycologists bandy about was coined, as far as I can tell, by Clyde Christensen in his 1943 book Common Edible Mushrooms.  His list: morels, puffballs, sulphur shelf mushrooms, and shaggy manes.)  

Getting Your Ducks in a Row for Raising Baby Chicks: Eight Questions and Answers

The expression "taking them under your wing” is one of about a million idiomatic phrases that originated with poultry keeping.  I’m sure you know what it means and I’m willing to bet that you’ve used the phrase yourself more than once.  But just in case you’ve never heard the expression, it means to nurture and protect those who are inexperienced, young, or in need of protection—just as mother hen nurtures and protects her baby chicks and gathers them under her protective wing.  When you adopt baby chicks, you’re taking these small, helpless, peeping balls of fluff under your wing.  It’s a big responsibility, and if you’ve never done it before, you should make sure you understand the list of basics before you undertake this big venture.  If you have done it before, it’s good to pull out that list and review it just to make sure you have all your ducks in a row (I’m mixing metaphors here, but it does present an interesting mental image!).  Raising baby chicks is not hard, after all, but there are a few things you have to consider and a few things you need to do right. 

I'll be publishing this post on June 5, and shortly after I post it, my wife, Kathy, and I will get in the car and set off on our quest for baby chicks.  If you’re reading it the day I post it, you can imagine us somewhere on I-35 headed south from Minnesota to Webster City, Iowa to pick up chicks at the Murray McMurray Hatchery.  Or maybe we’re on the way home and I’m holding a box of peeping fluff balls on my lap.  You can be sure that getting these babies was not a spontaneous decision.  What follows is a list of the questions I've asked myself and the answers I've come up with before getting these babies. I think these questions and answers will be useful to you if you're considering getting chicks for the first time, or if you're adding to your existing flock. There’s lots of useful information on the web about caring for baby chicks, and every time I’ve gotten chicks I’ve taken the time beforehand to sample from the collective knowledge of all those people who have raised chicks and written about it.  I’m including a lot of links to all those folks in this post.  It takes a village, don’t you know, to raise a chick. 

1 - Do I want chickens?  This is the obvious first thing you consider. If you’ve thought about owning chickens, you probably already realize that becoming a chicken owner will put you at the forefront of the local/sustainable food movement.  You’ll be producing food right in your own backyard!  If you already produce food in your backyard with a garden, chickens are a natural complement to that garden—the chickens will happily devour any leftover vegetable scraps and weeds you give them and all that composted chicken manure will make for some very happy garden plants!  Also, any chickens you keep will, without a doubt, be better treated and happier than the majority of the hens laying the eggs you find at the grocery store.  So, does it make you happy to imagine a small flock of hens clucking contentedly in your backyard?  If you immediately answer “yes” to that question, you’ve jumped the first hurdle!  That was the easy one!  Of course if you already have chickens the question becomes, “Do I want more, chickens?”  The answer to that question is always “yes”, naturally.

How ‘Bout Them Apple Trees!

Hen fruit is not the only food we harvest here at the Hipster Hen Ranch!  We’ve also got apples!  A couple years after we moved from the city out here to the ranch, we decided that any good homestead needed apple trees and that for this homestead, the time had come.  So I picked up my Gurney’s catalogue and ordered four trees which Gurney’s then sent through the mail.  They could come through the mail because they were bare root trees.  “What are bare root trees?” you ask.  Well, when you go to a nursery and buy a tree, it will have a ball of soil around its roots.  Bare root trees have absolutely no soil around the roots—which is exactly why they name them “bare root trees”.  My name for bare root trees?  “Sticks.”   When they arrived and I tore open the box I immediately had deep misgivings.  I couldn’t imagine that these dead looking sticks would actually grow when I put them in the ground.  But that’s exactly what bare root trees do.  Nurseries grow baby trees for one to three years, then in the fall they’re dug up and all the soil is removed from the roots.  They’re stored over the winter with the roots kept moist in a cold environment, then they’re shipped to customers in the spring.  Obviously, bare root trees weigh a fraction of trees with a root ball, so they can be shipped and handled for a fraction of the cost.  Because they can be shipped at a reasonable cost, it allows you to shop for trees from a much broader geographic area and allows you access to tree varieties that you might not be able to find locally.  If you plant and maintain your trees properly, they’ll grow and prosper just as happily as a tree with a root ball.

A Carton of Eggs: Part 3 - Wild Harvest Cage Free Large Brown Eggs

Also in this series:
Part 1 - Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs

Part 2 – ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs

Part 4 - Locally Laid 
Part 5—Vital Farms Organic Pasture-Raised Eggs

Readers:  I'm transitioning my blog to a new platform on Squarespace.  I've updated this blog post and moved it to the new location.  Click here to get there! - Randy

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Meet the Flock Roundup - March & April, 2017

Meet Sam! Sammy joined the flock with a bunch of other chicks of a variety of breeds in 2013. Sam was a mystery chick at first - she didn't fit the pattern for any of the breeds and I was totally kerflummoxed as far as what she might be. I should have followed the rule of thumb, that if you don't know what a hen is, she's probably an Easter Egger - since they're not a true breed (they're a cross of any number of breeds with Auracanas/Americanas). Sure enough, when Sam started growing her distinctive (and highly attractive, I might add) ear tufts, I knew for a fact that she was an Easter Egger girl. Later, when she started laying those green eggs, that confirmed it!

Here's another picture of Sam. This is a picture from 2013, right after her first adult molt. Chickens can sometimes show subtle variations in feather patterns from one molt to the next and after this molt Sam had a delicate "necklace" of light gray feather. She lost this attractive feature after her next molt and it's never shown up again!

Garlic Mustard: Invading Alien, Delicious Treat, or Both?

In the 1978 sci-fi doomsday flick, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" plant-like aliens take over San Francisco by sending out tendrils that attach to people and digest them while they sleep.  Later a large fruiting pod opens up and an exact replica of the digested human creepily steps out and sets about helping other "pod people" in their nefarious plot to take over the world.  The invading plant aliens basically take over by eating us.  It occurs  to me that the movie plot may have had a completely different outcome if we had eaten the aliens!  Don't be shocked by this.  The pod people looked like us, but they were plants! So eating them wouldn't be cannibalism - even vegetarians could participate! And for all we know those pods would be highly delicious.  Think snap peas, or okra, or peppers - all pods!

Defeating invading aliens by consuming them has been on my mind lately as I continue my ongoing battle with garlic mustard, an abominable invasive plant that happens to be as delicious as its name suggests.   Europeans have been eating this plant for a long time.  Archaeologists have found garlic mustard seeds in food residue in 6000 year old sites in Denmark and Germany.  Sometime in the 1860's somebody decided it would be a good idea to plant this culinary herb in their little garden plot in New York.  That person was no doubt horrified as the plant, freed of it's European insect and fungal control agents, grew rampantly out of control.  Garlic mustard is now considered a tenacious alien invasive species in North America and grows almost everywhere in the US and Canada (map).

A Carton of Eggs: Part 2 – ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs

Previously in this series:

Part 1 - Hipster Hen Wonder Eggs

This is part two in my series of posts where I labor to get to the bottom of all that information that covers those egg cartons that reside in our fridges.  Right now I’m looking at an egg carton that was purchased from ALDI a while ago.

ALDI is a grocery store chain that started in Germany and lately has been expanding its presence in the United States.  The company website shows that the majority of its supermarkets are located on the East Coast but that they're also moving into the Midwest and California. 

 The brand logo proclaims these eggs to be “Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs” and the picture shows a white chicken on a background of radiating yellow stripes at the top and green on the bottom.  It is stylized but it the chicken is obviously standing on a grassy hill in the sunshine.  Apparently egg companies like to present a bucolic image.  Check out the names on the egg cartons next time you’re at the grocery store and notice how words like “country”, “sunny”, “brook”, and “meadow” keep popping up.  Following that trend, Goldhen tells us that these eggs are “farm fresh”.  What does that mean, exactly?  In this day of backyard chickens, the freshest eggs may actually come from the coop in your urban backyard – far, far away from the nearest farm.  Of course raising hens on a commercial scale in the city is not practical, so these eggs no doubt came from a farm somewhere out in the country.  So how fresh are they?  Well, there are “sell by” standards that must be maintained.  Were these eggs laid yesterday?  Probably not.