Heirloom Varieties of Chickens

Some friends and I went to an estate sale this weekend in a small town 20 minutes outside of Saskatoon. The property where they had the sale had a bunch of beautiful chickens. They had the americana chicken that lays blue eggs. The last time I saw one of those chickens was at Ubuntu in California. I asked the land owner if she had any eggs for sale and she gave me a carton for free. She said she has so many eggs that she doesn’t know what to do with them, because her husband likes Safeway eggs so she ends up throwing a lot out. I told her I would buy all her eggs from now on. When we got home we cooked some and they were very good. The yolks were incredibly rich, and they stood very high in the pan, the taste was really clean. I find that factory farmed eggs have a strong taste that lingers in a bad way, I think this taste makes people think that they don’t like eggs. People raised on factory eggs probably don’t even notice this taste. I believe the harsh taste comes from the generic feed and medicine they feed the chickens in a factory farm. These factors may also cause the watery structureless yolk that generic eggs have. The chickens at this farm ran free and ate insects and seeds.

At the estate sale I got another tea cup and a strop for sharpening a straight razor or for finishing the edge on a japanese knife.