organic or locally-grown white eggs ?

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

i'm having no joy finding organic or locally-grown white eggs, can anybody point me in the right direction ?  the white eggs at the local stores all seem to be industrially farmed and, my pangs of first-world yuppie guilt about battery farming entirely aside, the shells are so fragile they break if i look at them funny.  speaking of which, pointers to a decent optometrist wouldn't suck, either (but the eggs are more important).

thanks!

Comments

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

There's a farm in Hubbardston that stocks some of the grocery stores up here in the 'burbs north of the city, hang on....*googles*

Ah, yes. The Country Hen (http://www.countryhen.com/).

[jadelennox]

Dave's Fresh Pasta has local eggs all year. in the summer, Davis Farmer's Market.

[lslapiko.livejournal.com]

Both Shaw's and Market Basket carry cage-free organic eggs. Don't think the Market Basket ones are local, but the Wild Harvest ones from Shaw's might be.

a non-response...

[zenala.livejournal.com]

Coming from a default-white-egg part of the country, I tried to keep up what I was used to for a while after I moved here, but finally I just learned to love brown eggs, since it just gives me more options. (obviously, for dying purposes, white is definitely superior...)

Re: a non-response...

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

My companion, Masshole born and bred, told me that it took him years to accept white eggs at all because when he was a kid "brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh" (it was a TV commercial). So it's not surprising that it'd be harder to find local-grown white eggs if that commercial has even an ounce of truth to it. (I assure you, the color of the shell makes not one whit of difference)

[magid.livejournal.com]

If you do find local/organic white eggs, I'd love to know where. So far, I've found brown eggs over the spectrum of egg possibilities, and white eggs are non organic/free-range/etc.

(It makes a difference to kosher consumers, since white eggs are more accurately candled, so there are many fewer eggs with blood spots in them.)

[beezy515.livejournal.com]

Pemberton Market carries the Country Hen.

[ron_newman]

For the optometrist, try the eye care tag.

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

Hiya. Not sure what color they are, but Joc (wife of a certain person we used to work for) is bringing many dozens of eggs down to Diesel tomorrow. You might ping her and see if these would suit.

Relevant post here: http://goddessfarmer.livejournal.com/383526.html

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I don't think they sell white eggs, though. Most local eggs in Massachusetts are going to be brown eggs, because those breeds of chicken are the most popular. (Though I bought some local eggs out in Hubbardston recently--not from Country Hen, but random yard-hen eggs from a farm stand--and four of the dozen were beautiful pale-turquoise Araucana eggs.)

Re: a non-response...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Those adds were ubiquitous and earworm-y. "BROWN eggs are LOCAL eggs and LOCAL eggs are FRESH eggs!" Gah.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Oh! You got there first! I was going to point them to goddessfarmer.

(i_leonardo, she'll likely be waaaaay in the back of Diesel, if you decide that you want to look for her)

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Addendum (http://goddessfarmer.livejournal.com/384089.html?nc=1&style=mine).

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

have you tried white hen (convenience store) or either local whole foods, or trader joes? That'd be where I tend to see organic, cage free eggs. I haven't noticed their color though.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Why is the color of the eggshells so important to you?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the original poster, but for me, it means that it's much less likely that there are blood spots inside, since it's easier to candle white eggs. That makes it less likely I'll have to discard some for kosher reasons.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you could find blood spots without breaking them open! That's nice, since it means you could potentially give them away to someone else.

Re: a non-response...

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Same.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

They do it this way at the factory too, but as someone pointed out above, the brown eggs are more likely to have blood spots even after they've been factory-candled because the process just isn't as accurate.

That said, I've probably eaten a half dozen brown, local eggs a week on average for my entire life (I'm 28) and I think I've encountered a blood spot once, so the risk just doesn't seem that high to me.

Re: a non-response...

[etana.livejournal.com]

DAMN YOU!!!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not what I meant: at the farm/factory/whatever, there's a process of candling, to weed out eggs with blood spots. This is more effective when the eggs are white. Once they make it to my kitchen, the way I find the blood spots is by breaking them and looking at them, at which point they're ditched if they have any.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've found blood spots a lot more than that, and noticeably more in brown eggs than white eggs (I once ditched four out of a dozen, which made me rather unhappy). Perhaps our definitions of what a blood spot is differ, or I am just much unluckier.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

While I am inclined to believe that because I do not keep Kosher I am probably less likely to be looking for them or remember them when I do see them, they are a pretty high-contrast anomaly on the egg surface and I feel like if I did see them, I'd be inclined to examine them more closely just to make sure they were what I thought they were, and I don't remember finding myself doing that at all.

Of course it is also true that I do not turn the yolks over to look for blood spots so I may have missed a few that way.

At any rate I think I can safely say that the rate of blood spots in the Whole Foods store brand extra large organic eggs that I buy is lower than the local average for brown eggs. :-)

Re: a non-response...

[unsi-sempai.livejournal.com]

Good lord, that jingle immediately popped into my head when I read the OP.

[obie119.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately for you, the hens that are most often used for commercial laying in this area lay brown eggs.
However, maybe call up Andy from Silverbrook Farm (it's in Dartmouth, MA but he sells at farmers markets in Boston and Cambridge) and ask about this - I can't remember offhand what color his hens' eggs are, but he may know which farmers are raising which types of chickens. He has a good amount of chickens and they are living a pretty great life on his farm - I've been there!
Good luck - I'm from NJ where the eggs tend to be white, so all the brown was an adjustment, even without actual practical reasons (like yours) to want white eggs.

Re: a non-response...

[masswich.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

thanks !

Re: a non-response...

[syntheticnature.livejournal.com]

yep, me too.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Hmm! I didn't know that egg-producing places checked them for blood spots. What do they do with the ones that have them?