Saw this pickup today where Bald Pate Road meets the highway. Never saw it before. Turned around, pulled over and trotted up saying, “How much for brown eggs?”
The tall thin older man, wearing flannel and a farm cap (more squarish than a ball cap), extended a very dry, cold and toughened hand. “H'are you today?” he asked. (In the country you don’t run up and demand to do business right away. You greet the person. You look into their eyes and get to know them. And you give value-added. City habits still plague me.)
I said, “Your hens laying already?” (I know they start laying in earnest very early in the year.)
“Mine do year round,” he said. “These eggs yesterday morning and the day before. Three dollars for one dozen.” His egg cartons were a miscellany from all sorts of places and there weren’t many left. He opened a carton and showed me the eggs. I wanted only one carton. But I got my value-added. “What you do with these,” said the farmer, holding the carton and demonstrating, “is turn ‘em upside down and leave ‘em that way every seven days, if you remember to do it, and the eggs stay fresh for 30 days same as now.”
“I never heard that,” I said, appreciatively.
“I grew up on a
farm,” he said, “and my mother and me went to seminars, and if you listen,” he
said, tapping an ear, “you learn somethin. Don’t hard-boil these. You’ll never
get the shell off.” (That’s true when an egg is too fresh.)
He thanked me for my $3 and wished a Merry Christmas to me and my family, and I wished him a Happy New Year.
