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!