In the early hours before the sun rises, especially on a rainy day in the Oregon mountains, the lucky insomniac can find a place of unspeakable, timeless bliss in his alone hours, with only a cat for company.

They used to be gods in Egypt, but in 21st Century America, they’re just companion animals and living, shedding indoor decoration. Yume (it means “dream” in Japanese) is resting on the windowsill, pushing away sleep like me. He neither writes, nor does he toil or spin, but his presence is conducive to the flow. Occasionally, we have long discussions. Recently, I discovered that we both like eggs. He suggested that I write about it.

Yesterday, I made an omelet with three eggs. The bald fact of it would seem to be no big deal, except: These eggs were one day old, with huge orange yolks, laid by free-range hens. But wait, there’s more. Those chickens live on the farm of a world-class artist. Don’t know how much you pay for eggs, but this dozen was delivered to my door for the amazingly low price of $2.50, and they’re such good eggs that I’ve taken them to local, secret restaurants and paid for my breakfasts with one dozen — green, brown and utterly organic, seething with good art and wholesomeness. These are not ordinary eggs.

By doing so, I’ve probably violated some ordinance or other, relating to public food. OK. My conscience is clear; I watched those eggs being picked from under happy, free-range, bug-eating chickens, and put into recycled cardboard cartons by the hands of a genius artist. Then I hand-carried them in a cooler to a little restaurant that is locally famed for excellent breakfasts, talked with someone, and that’s how a dozen eggs went into the food chain without government authorization. The diners who ate them probably felt better all day, without knowing why.

It is becoming fashionable to raise chickens, even in urban environments. I happen to know firsthand that the city of Forest Grove, Ore., prohibits keeping “farm livestock” within the city limits; yet, I also know outlaws who do so. And there is a movement afoot to change the rule, if it has not already been rescinded by now …

Chickens. Eggs. Manure for the garden. If there is a downside to the ownership of chickens, someone please explain it to me. In her classic book, The Egg and I, author Betty MacDonald made a hilarious case for not living on a chicken ranch. A thousand chickens is arguably too many. But everyone should have a dozen chickens. They’re far more soothing to the jangled city psyche than colorful fish swimming in a tank on a bookshelf. Hens make a soothing clucking noise, and they give you eggs on your breakfast plate that are better and fresher than Bill Gates eats, unless he also keeps chickens.

I'm trying something new: starting a "grass-fed eggs" movement as a way of promoting great-tasting eggs from happy outdoor hens. People have become cynical about the term "free-range," which often doesn't mean what people want it to mean. Everyone wants free-range eggs to be eggs from happy outdoor hens who have something better than a barren yard to forage around in, but that's not what they get. So I'm hoping my as-yet unsullied "grass-fed eggs" term will fare a little better.

You probably already know that grass-fed eggs are the best-tasting eggs ever, have superior nutrition and are environmentally friendly. And the flocks are way more picturesque, aesthetically pleasing and fun than the alternatives. But lots of people don't know this yet! It's an easy sell, though. We just have to spread the word.

I picked the term "grass-fed eggs" because it doesn't quite make sense — eggs don't eat grass, or anything else, for that matter. So when people see the term, they have to ask about it. (Of course, it's the hens that eat the grass, not the eggs.) The cartoon was chosen for the same reasons: to evoke the idea of happy outdoor eggs (or maybe chickens) in a way that has some appeal, but which still makes people ask the question.

Once they ask the question, we can pony up the answers without boring them. Much better than button-holing people and talking to them about eggs when they haven't asked!

I don't like rigid definitions, so my take on grass-fed eggs is that the ideal is "great-tasting eggs from happy outdoor chickens who get lots of fresh green plants to eat." But mostly the key is to acknowledge the ideal, while doing the best you can under the circumstances. It's hard to have grass-fed eggs or happy outdoor chickens when there's 6 feet of snow on the ground. It's hard to have free-range hens in a suburban backyard. Do the best you can, and don't let people tell you that your approach isn't pure enough.

This is also my answer to the supply-and-demand problem. Hardly anyone is making a living from growing grass-fed eggs, so consumers need to hook up with people who are doing it as a sideline — or raise a few hens of their own. The small scale of most operations blurs the difference between consumers and producers: many people have hens some of the time, but not always. So this is not a consumer movement or a producer movement, but a "people who like grass-fed eggs and happy outdoor chickens" movement.

One of these days, someone will figure out a business model that allows people of ordinary ability to make a living at grass-fed egg farming. When that happens, the eggs will become a lot easier to find in stores. But that hasn't happened yet. Not even close. I certainly haven't quit my day job! So let's start with the problem in front of us: popularizing the notion and hooking up consumers and producers. With enough demand, commerce on a larger scale will follow.

To help get the ball rolling, I've ponied up three sets of resources:

• A website at http://www.grass-fed-eggs.com. This is the clearinghouse of information that's coming from me. It's still sort of skeletal, but check it out anyway.
  
• A discussion group at Google Groups. This is the clearinghouse of information from everybody who cares about grass-fed eggs: producers and consumers. Topics will include how to find grass-fed eggs, how to sell them, backyard housing, predator control, dealing with neighbors who don't like chickens, and so on. Post your questions here!
  
• A line of Grass-Fed Egg merchandise. As I already mentioned, when someone sees your "I Heart Grass-Fed Eggs" T-shirt, shopping tote or mouse pad, they'll ask you about it. This gives you the chance to give them your spiel and maybe press some eggs into their hands to ensure their conversion. It's also a good way for people who are already sold on the concept to identify each other. We're pretty scattered!
  Anyway, check out the website, the discussion group and the goodies. I'm hoping we can change the world one egg at a time, with a totally grass-roots, non-hierarchical movement. I expect it to be great fun.

I’ve been telling people for quite a while: Real environmentalists eat white chicken eggs. That’s because white-egg layers are almost always more feed efficient: Hens that lay white eggs are lighter weight and eat less feed to produce the same amount of eggs as brown-egg layers. So, brown chicken eggs require more resources to produce.

Here’s an Example

Hy-Line is a large poultry genetics corporation. Their website says that Hy-Line W-36 hens (the “world’s most efficient egg layer,” according to the site) consume 1.82 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (white eggs). Hy-Line Brown hens eat 2.02 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (brown eggs).

For reference, a dozen large eggs weighs about a pound and a half. So if your family eats 50 dozen eggs a year, it would take 15 pounds less feed to produce the same amount of white chicken eggs as brown chicken eggs. (See calculations below.) Multiply that by all the families that eat brown eggs, and we could produce much less grain to produce the same amount of chicken eggs.

Then, I watched this video:

Whether we eat conventional, industrial brown chicken eggs or conventional, industrial white chicken eggs, the male chicks of these egg-laying strains are destroyed at the hatchery because they’re not good meat-producing birds — they’re inefficient at converting feed to meat.

I’m not prepared to become a vegan, for a bunch of reasons I won’t mention here. So, what’s a meat-eating environmentalist to do? Buy eggs from a farmer who raises dual-purpose heritage breeds. Heritage breeds aren’t as specialized as commercial breeds of egg-layers. They’re pretty good at producing eggs and pretty good at producing meat, so raising the males for meat and the females to produce eggs makes sense — without discarding half the chicks.

Some of these heritage breeds lay white eggs and some lay brown eggs, but the biggest factor is management. It’s time to start telling people that egg color doesn’t matter. Real (omnivorous) environmentalists eat pastured poultry from heritage-breed, free-range production systems.

Using pasture farming methods, giving the birds room to roam, access to sunshine and all the bugs and seeds they can eat (in addition to necessary supplemental feed), produces the most healthful eggs and meat. And, if heritage chicken breeds are involved, you can enjoy the eggs knowing that half the birds weren’t simply discarded.

For more information on egg labels and the benefits of pasture farming methods, read Free Range vs. Pastured: Chicken and Eggs and The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat.

Calculations

50 dozen eggs x 1.5 pounds = 75 pounds of eggs

75 pounds of eggs x 2.02 pounds of feed = 151.5 pounds of feed to produce brown chicken eggs for your family for a year

75 pounds of eggs x 1.82 pounds of feed = 136.5 pounds of feed to produce white chicken eggs for your family for a year

151.5 – 136.5 = 15 pounds of feed saved

"Free range" refers to chickens being allowed to range freely outdoors where they can eat whatever grass, weed seeds, insects and worms they choose. This results in more nutritious eggs and meat for consumers, and more healthy, humane conditions for the birds. Some producers abuse this term and label their eggs as “free range” when in fact all they have done is open a door to allow their chickens to range in an outdoor area of bare dirt or concrete, with no pasture in sight. 

Thus you need to confirm if your eggs or chicken comes from "true" or "pastured" or "grass-fed" free-range conditions. Also, some producers choose a modified system that involves keeping birds safe from predators by confining them in pens or inside electric fencing, and moving the pens frequently onto fresh pastures. Thus, pastured birds may be true free-range or penned, but either system is correctly referred to as “pastured.” And either system is a better choice than products that come from industrial factory farm conditions.

To learn a great deal more about all the terminology you might have to decipher on egg cartons these days (like "cage free" or "enhanced with omega-3s"), check out How to Decode Egg Cartons.

See also:  USDA definition  

If you knew me growing up you’d probably be surprised to find out that after a perfectly normal suburban childhood, I ended up standing in a chicken coop at 5 a.m. ankle-deep in straw and chicken poo.

After all, that was never the plan. I grew up in the complacency of small town America. We had a fine house with a beautiful back yard, neighborhood friends, and wonderbread sandwiches. Once a year near Halloween, my parents would take us three kids to a small family farm with a pumpkin patch. I’m fairly certain that annual trip was the closest I ever got to the farmlife.

Now, 26 and on my own in rural Vermont — things have changed. Bread comes from my oven — not plastic bags with twist ties. Eggs come from the chicken coop — not a styrofoam container. And vegetables come from the garden not the produce section (though technically, the garden is the produce section of the property, but you know what I mean.) My life went from an urban design job in the city to the path of an apprentice shepherd. While I still have a 9-5 job, my weekends are spent at sheepdog clinics and lambing seminars. The dream is to raise lambs up here in the gambols of Vermont. And the road to that reality is a lot different than the one I’ve been trained for in college. (They don’t teach you how to pull out an inverted lamb from a stubborn ewe in typography classes, just a heads up for any designers-turning-farmers out there.) Anyway,  I’ve been sweating, tilling, and stepping in random feces for a few years now and whenever someone who knew me before all paths lead to sheep runs into me, they always ask me the same question.

Why?

Why would a perfectly normal middle class gal, who had a nice city job, and a pleasant apartment pick up her life and shake it till trowels and feed sacks fell out? Why spend a year learning to raise chickens and keep bees and nearly pass out of heat stroke in the garden when eggs, honey, and broccoli are all for sale at the grocery store for less than the cost of that hoe in your blistered hands?

There are a lot of canned answers to this and you know them already. As fellow homesteaders (or friends there of) you get the whole “homegrown-satisfaction-quality-of-life-green-living” bit. All those reasons ring true for me too, but there’s something else writhing below those surface answers. Something deeper that makes me smile in the garden or laugh from my belly in the bird yard.

It’s the honesty of knowing what I do everyday directly helps keep me alive.

It’s that simple.

Gardening, farming, raising animals — these are seen as labor or hobbies to most. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me “Farming isn’t my thing” which is always said with flippant arrogance masquerading as either city-slicker inadequacy or self-effacing ambivalence. Which is fine. If it weren’t for people not wanting to farm, farmers wouldn’t have any business in the first place. But here’s the thing. If you ever ate anything that had to be raised, slaughtered, or planted — farming is definitely your thing. Actually, It’s the only thing.

We can sit on the porch and talk all day about philosophy and religion and what people want. But the conversation about what the human animal needs is pretty short — food, shelter, water, protection. While I love the literature, art, and amazing questions people ask about ‘what we want’. I find true peace and purpose taking control of what I need.

Raising and growing your own is more than a lifestyle — it is life. Contrary to popular belief there is nothing altruistic about it. Homesteading is the most self-involved way to live. But it’s exactly how most animals do live, and there’s no logical reason for any of us to think we have the world figured out better than anything else stumbling around the planet. Animals live a wild life of procuring food and creating life. The shepherd with a lamb in his arms is no different than the wolf with a lamb in his jaws. Two animals with food being the center of their present lives. I love that so much about farming, you just can’t know.

So I suppose that is why I homestead. The correctness of survival. The wildness of understanding basic needs. It all draws me in and keeps the bit between my teeth. It lets me feel more a part of the world in the most basic sense. Thanks to the egg, garden, and lamb — I too can gain all the satisfaction I need from being in charge of my own life. You know, there’s a reason eating a salad you grew yourself tastes so good, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask that wolf.

Jenna Woginrich is the author of the forthcoming book,  Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, from Storey Publishing. Visit her Web site at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com.