The story behind your supermarket eggs

There are lots of catch phrases on the front of your supermarket eggs today. Phrases like; free range, cage free, natural, and so on. The truth is none of these phrases are regulated, they are simply phrases put on the package to get you to buy them. When you read cage free, or free range you probably think of something like this. Lots of green grass lots of room

But, this is what really happens

So many chickens crammed into a dark factory chicken house with no room to move much less spread their wings. Oh, and so called "free range" just means they open a door for 45 minutes a day, but the chickens never get to go out.  The fact is that extra money you are shelling out for cage free or free range, is just money down the drain, those eggs are just the same as the standard supermarket variety. Those chickens that lay your eggs will never see the sunshine, never scratch in the dirt, never run around, they live out their productive lives on a space no larger than a sheet of paper. 

   What can we do, you might ask? Well buy your eggs from a farmer, go pick them up, get in touch with your food, after all what we eat becomes a part of us. We should at least see how it is produced. If going out to a farm is out of the question consider a farmers market, there are many that are open year round. You will find that the prices are not that different from those false statements from the grocery store. It's time we all start buying our food from local farmers and producers. The average morsel of food travels an average of1500 miles before it reaches your plate. Think of the gas we could save if we just bought our eggs from your local farmer

Exactly what is a micro-farm?

We have been asked from time to time what a micro farm is, and that's a very good question. If I was pressed into giving a definition it would be this; a farm that produces agricultural products for sale to the public on less than 10 total acres. The federal government defines a small farm as "those with less than $250,000 in gross receipts annually on which day-to-day labor and management are provided by the farmer and/or the farm family that owns the production, or owns or leases the productive assets."

    That's a broad definition if I ever saw one. If that is considered a small farm we are definitely a micro farm. There are lots of successful micro farms around the world, past and present. One of the most popular is the farm of masanobu Fukuoka. It is no larger than 1/4 of an acre and yet he produces enough to feed himself and to sell. There are countless 1/4 acre farms across America that sell their produce to local restaurants. There is a farm on bainbridge island that is able to farm full time on 8 acres of ground. 

   

    There is one term that gets my hackles up, hobby farm. Our farm is anything but a hobby. It provides food for my family and a handful of other families, it's not a hobby it's a way of life.

    It has been a dream of mine to farm since my teen years, I had all but given up until we bought this place. At the time we thought that was more than enough. As we learned and grew we realized it wasn't enough. Farming on just three acres has its own set of challenges. We have to be careful we don't overload the land, too many animals can kill the pasture. We have to always be space conscious, using every corner, and finding ways to utilize land that may not be ideal, such as the pig barn being down in a gully with a path to the pasture. We have to choose ventures that compliment each other. An example is the chickens and the garden. The chickens are fenced in with a hoop house in the garden where they scratch around and spread their own fertilizer. The pigs eat the extra eggs we have in the spring. One of the best books I read when I first began to dabble was "You Can Farm" by Joel Salatin. He inspired us to start where we where instead of just wishing for more, and that we did.