by Tara Laidlaw, Farm Director

Considered by many to be the “perfect food”, eggs have been a part of the human diet for thousands of years. Today, over 6 billion hens around the world lay eggs for human consumption. Considering that each chicken can lay about one egg every day and a half, that’s a lot of eggs!

At Burgess Farm, eggs are a highlight of the winter food production. Hens need a certain amount of daylight hours to lay an egg, so they lay fewer in the winter months when the days are shorter. Even though they’ve slowed down, they’re still producing several dozen eggs each week. Visitors to Camp have been enjoying them in egg salads, as eggs benedict, and hard-boiled on the salad bar; customers at the farmers’ market have loved finding fresh eggs laid so close to home. Our laying flock includes a variety of different breeds, so we get a variety of sizes and colors of eggs. I’m hoping to add a few more hens to the flock soon, and I’d love to get some heritage breeds that lay blue and green eggs to round out our egg rainbow.

In order to make collecting our eggs easier, our fantastic maintenance guys Jesse and Angelo built an addition to the hen house: they made a platform right outside the nest boxes. Before, we had to balance on cinder blocks (well, I did, anyway, because I’m so short), but now it’s a breeze to peek into the coop, check on the hens, and collect any eggs they’ve laid.