The Front Porch Swing

[Beekissed]

I was going to suggest I take some meds ... I'm thinking that cute little Maran's egg is just about the right size to swallow whole.

WELLLLLLLLLLL ... egg sales. Hmmmmmm.

The members of the buying group (our main customer) do seem to prefer the "soy free organic" eggs, but the farm that offers that option, their birds aren't producing as well as mine are, or the farmer has lots of other clients, so those eggs are "rationed." They tend to sell out first, and then people start to sigh up for my eggs, but it has been a while since that group wanted more than I could supply.

Nobody has reported any "problems" with my eggs (off flavor, broken eggs) and I'm pretty sure that's because I'm being so careful with the feed for the birds and the way I handle the eggs ... I consider those things my responsibility, and I take them very seriously. There have been some problems with the "soy free organic" option eggs from the other supplier, but that doesn't seem to dent the customers' loyalty to that product. I find that interesting and informative!

The more I researched switching to a "soy free" or "organic" feed, the more I discovered those feeds are comprised of things I don't exactly trust ... as in Camelina meal, which is a waste product of the jet fuel industry (!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!) and has only been approved as a protein source for livestock feed for a few years, and is only approved in limited quantities (tests indicate it makes meat from poultry and pork taste bad, and it also makes eggs taste bad). I just don't feel we have the whole story on that yet, so even though I have reservations about soy, at least I know it's FOOD.

I really don't wish to offend anyone who has chosen to use soy-free/organic feeds for their chickens, I TOTALLY understand that ... I just haven't settled on a supplier or formula yet. I'm still looking.

And suddenly, just when I'm getting at least one egg per day from each duck, people have stopped buying the duck eggs. Le sigh.

I think I might do a marketing push for just the duck eggs ... I don't know what to expect from the ducks in terms of productivity. We sell the duck eggs for a lot less than grocery stores charge ... and not many grocery stores even have duck eggs.

I've been able to donate a fair number of eggs this spring, and that makes me feel good and Dad really loves giving things away, too. We decided we'd rather donate our temporary surplus than sign up a bunch of new customers that we'd only have to disappoint when the laying surge ends. That gets stressful for everyone.

I've heard that professional pastry chefs prefer the duck eggs...are there any gourmet bakeries in your local towns that could be a potential market for them? Most folks out here in the burbs and burb-like country think duck eggs taste too oily or are "too orange", whatever that means.

Have you ever thought of selling your eggs and meat birds on a CSA-type setup or like a milk share with dairy cows? They pay a monthly fee for the service/share, they buy into it yearly like a membership and they are made to understand that payments stay the same even when production of the product is low.

Do you have a local feed mill that will grind specialty mixes for people? If not, maybe investing in your own personal use feed mill and mixing your own organic mix might be more cost effective in the long range. You could even defray the cost for the feed mill by advertising to grind specialty mixes for other people and charging a fee.

They can be small and affordable, but hand cranked and only grind 6 lbs per minute or they can be bigger, more professional and more expensive at $1500-$3,000+. http://non-electric.lehmans.com/search#w=grain mill

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/feed-grinder-mill

https://www.strombergschickens.com/prod_detail_list/feed-mills

An article about feed mill designs: http://www.world-grain.com/Departments/Feed Operations/2012/12/Feed mill design tips.aspx?cck=1

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: I am like you Bee.... That includes fruit. I like room temperature fruit.

I went to visit my Dads Niece Charmaine once. She used to work for the DOD as a project manager. Only living things she has are cats and a veggie garden. I went to get her something from the cupboard in the kitchen. And I burst into laughter.... She said "What!" then she looked at what I was looking at and said... "oh that..." and she chuckled. Her canned goods were arranged by height and content and run in rows front to back that were spaced wide enough to get her hand in between. Each row had one of those printed labels that have a sticky back on them. those labels were affixed flat to the cupboard shelf. Same went for the refrigerator except for the labels....

deb

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Leslie... I have probably already asked you but... how much do you get for your chicken and duck eggs and what do you do about cartons?

We sell the chicken eggs for $4.25 unless you buy 5 or more dozen in one order/delivery, then the price is $3.75. Yes, we deliver. I'm not someone who likes people dropping by. Prices are all over the place in this area. And if our eggs were "organic" or "soy free" or "corn free" we could charge a LOT more.

We had been selling the duck eggs for $3/half-dozen when they weren't laying so well, but now we've put the price back at $5/dozen, which is substantially less than the grocery stores here charge.

We buy the egg cartons at the local farm store -- we get a discount there. If we buy a lot at once, the price is comparable to what we could get at one of the links found here at this site, but without shipping charges or hassles of online ordering. The feed store just had a special on egg cartons, which made them less than I could get them for from online sources ... again, without the extra shipping.

So ... I paid $0.25 per carton.

I've read about people who pay $0.06 per carton, but even buying THOUSANDS of cartons in a freight shipping container drop the price at the links here doesn't drop that low. If anyone knows how to get cartons for that little, please inform me.

I can legally re-use cartons in Oregon, so used to offer a $0.25 discount for each carton someone gave me at time of delivery, but I got too many dirty & broken cartons, so now I just offer to "recycle" cartons for people. I will reuse the ones that look clean, and try to not think too hard about the others that go straight in the curb-side recycling tote.

I can also re-use grocery-store cartons, but for those I have to black out all the product/brand info, and that's a PITA, so what I do is I just put eggs I'm donating into those cartons and trust people to not make a fuss.

Know what the egg carton people want to charge me for duck egg cartons? $1.00! I just put the duck eggs in regular cartons, but I can't close the lids so people have to be careful. I know that's a LOT to ask of people, but

we all have get used to suffering.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Oh, boy....you guys would freak at my house.

I gather eggs, put them into a basket on the counter and then when that gets too full I'll put some into a carton and give them to family. When I used to sell, I'd put the eggs in the basket on the counter until I had time to place them into cartons then would deliver them to customers. No dates, no knowing which eggs were laid when because they are constantly being rotated out and never an egg stays on the counter for longer than 2 wks. now, and no more than a few days to a week when I had a bigger flock and was selling.

Rarely do they ever stay around long enough to make it to the fridge....I hate the smell/flavor of a fridge egg.

I am like you Bee.... That includes fruit. I like room temperature fruit.

The funny thing is I'm like that, too! I don't prefer refrigerated or frozen foods.

Things don't get to stay in my fridge for long because of that.

My egg storage refrigerator gets NOTHING else put into it but baking soda. Okay, there are a couple bottles of Dad's wine in the bottom drawer, his glaucoma drops in one of the little door shelves, and we keep batteries in another door shelf, but otherwise, it's JUST eggs. I sniff that fridge like a bloodhound.

The buying group people have been a little bit ... slow ... about fetching their eggs from the group organizer's front porch drop point. This means she has to find a way to store the eggs, and wastes a lot of time reminding people to come get them. AND ... the group members had a habit of paying for eggs at pickup, so she'd have to pay me out-of-pocket ... which she often couldn't do, so I'd end up having the "surprise" of getting to wait a week or two for payment ... and then we'd get stuck, which was understandably annoying to her but I stuffed my feelings about it because I knew I'd just go off if I opened my mouth even a crack.

I think the attitude is "It's just eggs." Or "it's not even $4, what's the big deal."

So, the group organizer suggested to the group that they pre-pay for the eggs and then pick up their eggs within a few hours of delivery. THEY countered with "Don't wash the eggs and then they can sit on the porch FOREVER!" And I guess we can all wait for payment forever, too.

I told them it was a nice try, but they were missing the point.

This could be part of the reasoning why people buy the other supplier's eggs first. I absolutely LOATH selling things. I have zero patience for it. I can maybe be polite answering one question one time, and after that I'm snarky. So if you're my second customer ...

I adore sharing my eggs, I hate the weirdness that inevitability comes with the exchange of $. And that's taking into consideration that I actually really love my customers. They're all smart and funny and great to talk to. But ...

I don't write the dates on my egg cartons. I sell out/empty the refrigerator every few days ... and I don't want people being "demanding" about me giving them the "freshest" eggs instead of the "oldest," which is my current rotation ...

Do you remember when you were a kid and would fight with your siblings over who got the "freshest" glass of milk ... I love you, but

 

[Beekissed]

I am like you Bee.... That includes fruit. I like room temperature fruit.

I went to visit my Dads Niece Charmaine once. She used to work for the DOD as a project manager. Only living things she has are cats and a veggie garden. I went to get her something from the cupboard in the kitchen. And I burst into laughter.... She said "What!" then she looked at what I was looking at and said... "oh that..." and she chuckled. Her canned goods were arranged by height and content and run in rows front to back that were spaced wide enough to get her hand in between. Each row had one of those printed labels that have a sticky back on them. those labels were affixed flat to the cupboard shelf. Same went for the refrigerator except for the labels....

deb

That kind of organization and control is tempting and seductive...I LOVE order...it makes my soul happy to see neatly folded linens on a shelf and a place for everything, everything in its place. I could very well have given in to my love of control and my type A personality...love folding clothing to military precision, towels all have an "e" fold, etc. Then I had kids and they saved me from indulging in that fantasy life of order and control, thank God!

I still dream of order and even try to keep order in some places in my home(towels, washclothes, etc.), but now I will deliberately create disorder and uneven lines just so I won't fall for the seduction of order in my life. It's a habit much like anything else and can take over one's life and cripple them, much like any other addiction. Neatness is enough, order can become an obsession.

Nursing seems to attract those kind of people, though I know not why, as there is nothing orderly about the typical nursing day, and they can never really function properly as a nurse because they are so obsessed with just trying to control all the little, inconsequential things. They usually make those people into supervisors so they can't kill a patient...they make horrible supervisors also but at least they can't kill someone in that position.

Order is for engineers, not nurses...nurses have to adapt second by second without even a noticeable change in gears and an OCD person just cannot do that.

 

[Beekissed]

Quote:
You gots milk?

Big family here...glasses of milk, fresh or otherwise, were not often on the menu for drinking from a glass. On cereal maybe.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I've heard that professional pastry chefs prefer the duck eggs...are there any gourmet bakeries in your local towns that could be a potential market for them? Most folks out here in the burbs and burb-like country think duck eggs taste too oily or are "too orange", whatever that means.

Have you ever thought of selling your eggs and meat birds on a CSA-type setup or like a milk share with dairy cows? They pay a monthly fee for the service/share, they buy into it yearly like a membership and they are made to understand that payments stay the same even when production of the product is low.

Do you have a local feed mill that will grind specialty mixes for people? If not, maybe investing in your own personal use feed mill and mixing your own organic mix might be more cost effective in the long range. You could even defray the cost for the feed mill by advertising to grind specialty mixes for other people and charging a fee.

They can be small and affordable, but hand cranked and only grind 6 lbs per minute or they can be bigger, more professional and more expensive at $1500-$3,000+. http://non-electric.lehmans.com/search#w=grain mill

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/feed-grinder-mill

https://www.strombergschickens.com/prod_detail_list/feed-mills

An article about feed mill designs: http://www.world-grain.com/Departments/Feed Operations/2012/12/Feed mill design tips.aspx?cck=1

Yes, lots of chefs do prefer to work with duck eggs. But I can't sell to commercial users without a license, and I don't have one. I was told I'd have to construct a special building for the egg packing area if I did want to get a license, and then they'd resent me because I wouldn't produce enough volume to make it worth the bother ... or even enough to pay my license fees in whole dollars.

I could potentially sell eggs through an egg broker ... and have been thinking of creating some kind of "Barnyard Chicken Cooperative" where there is a centralized packing facility, and people can sell the co-op eggs by the "each" or by the dozen without quotas, that then get packaged and distributed to local stores and restaurants ... but I really despair at the idea of getting the other barnyard producers to comply with the production standards. People really like to be the exception to any "rule."

The "Buying Group" is as close as I've come to a CSA-type thing. The issue is predictable supply ... much of our flock is now, what? two+ years old?, so they could all just quit laying tomorrow and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. I don't want to be in a situation to have to refund people money. There are plenty of stories about start-up farmers doing CSAs and then having to refund people money. They jump in too fast.

Dad's landscape maintenance business is on a monthly-flat rate fee, but the work is not evenly distributed throughout the year. The amount of time he spends on the phone reading people the paragraphs of their contracts that explain that is impressive. He can be nice while he does it. I don't have the patience.

Yes, there is a local feed mill. They have insisted there "is no such thing as GMO-free", etc., so they aren't the place I'd have custom blend my chicken feed. There is a mill further away, where the woman is a genius with animal nutrition and is SO informative and we are on the same page about a lot of the various concerns surrounding poultry feeds, and I've spoken with her a lot about the kind of ration I want to feed to my birds, but that mill is not very well organized and she doesn't answer my e-mails so that hasn't gone anywhere yet.

There are local mills producing "gmo-free" or "organic" poultry feeds ... they use camelina meal and also seem to be a little bit casual about sourcing their ingredients. They rely on outside certifiers to "test" the products for compliance ... and there is a LOT of fraud in that business. Some say "we buy most of our ingredients from local farmers," but ... really? What does that even mean? I haven't yet extracted complete answers. I'm still trying.

Yes, I've considered buying a crimper/cracker and then sourcing the ingredients through the local feed mill, but the local feed mill has been a little bit difficult about helping me identify ingredients and getting me prices. They literally do not answer my simple questions. They just stare through me when I ask them something they don't want to bother answering. And that's the better of the two local feed stores ...

If we milled our own feed here, we'd have to invest a lot in grain hoppers, etc.

It is an idea I've been thinking about, though. I've been thinking about it a lot. I've looked at hoppers and grinders, I've thought about where I would put them. I could grind the feed to exactly the consistency I want for the fermenting process. Grind it a bit more for wee chicks. And grow a lot of the ingredients right here on the farm.

Too bad I don't have an endless supply of time and money (and cooperation), huh?

I'm pretty good at answering those "Have you ever thought about _____?" questions with BIG answers. I'm kinda a thinker. Unsolved problems here are not unsolved due to a lack of thinking. Perhaps due to a lack of DECIDING or DOING, but rarely is it a lack of thinking.

 

[BCMaraniac]

Oh, boy....you guys would freak at my house.

I gather eggs, put them into a basket on the counter and then when that gets too full I'll put some into a carton and give them to family. When I used to sell, I'd put the eggs in the basket on the counter until I had time to place them into cartons then would deliver them to customers. No dates, no knowing which eggs were laid when because they are constantly being rotated out and never an egg stays on the counter for longer than 2 wks. now, and no more than a few days to a week when I had a bigger flock and was selling.

Rarely do they ever stay around long enough to make it to the fridge....I hate the smell/flavor of a fridge egg.

LOL!!! Bee, I do the same thing. I have a wooden box with a towel lining it that I put my eggs in after they are washed. I always fill it in the same order, so I know which eggs are the oldest. When I get too many I put them in cartons and give them away or put 4-5 dozen in a pot and boil them, then make pickled eggs. I take many of the pickled eggs to the owner of my feed store(he likes my jalapeno garlic ones......

) and he gives me plants for the garden from his greenhouse. Works for me!! When I have someone who wants to buy eggs, I gather them one day(since I am getting 2 dozen eggs a day) and deliver them the next.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

You gots milk?

Big family here...glasses of milk, fresh or otherwise, were not often on the menu for drinking from a glass. On cereal maybe.

Oh, yeah!!!!! I used to drink several big glasses of milk every single day, a couple with each meal. I was so spoiled with milk.

This farm used to run a small dairy. My father got a milker machine for his 10th birthday. It drastically reduced his work load. But he said it was about that point in time where he decided "We will never have animals on this farm again once I'm in charge." He likes to remind me of that story now that we've got chickens. He said I could have 6 chickens ...

After they shut down the dairy we used to get milk delivered by the milk man from another local farm. Delicious farm-fresh milk that would separate into skim milk and cream. Once that stopped, I had to quit drinking milk because store-bought milk tasted so foul to me ... so much refrigerator taste in it.

 

[BCMaraniac]

You gots milk?

Big family here...glasses of milk, fresh or otherwise, were not often on the menu for drinking from a glass. On cereal maybe.

We didn't have a cow when I was growing up. I was the youngest of 5 kids, so when I was little I had two brothers who were big football players(linemen, no less) and they would drink 2 gallons of milk in 2-3 days. So my mom would buy 2 gallons of milk at the store, then mix one gallon half and half with powdered milk(because it was cheap back then), and the boys had to drink that, then the other gallon was for my dad and me(I was a scrawny anemia prone kid back then) and anyone else who wanted milk. You would not imagine the food those two would put away!