Stealing eggs

If the saying, "we are what we eat" is true, then we need to stop eating chickens. Chickens are the cutest things as baby chicks, ugliest as toddlers that only a mother could love, look pretty good at adulthood and then get their necks wrung when they no longer produce eggs.


No wonder they have a pecking order. Its the only chance they get socialize.



So, what really did come first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer, A god farted and there they were.

Wife of the god took one whiff, "Gawd, what is that fowl smell?"



Rodney Dangerfield comes home one night, "Honey, what are we having to eat tonight?"

Wife looks at him while she's sharpening her blades on her knives, "Chicken shit."


Alight, enough with the jokes. Besides, I'm terrible at it.

Some one day at the Farm, My Grandmother, Aunt Clara and I had talked and I said I would love to know about the workings of a farm. She looked at my mom and dad and said, "He welcome to stay over."

Then she looked at me. "Get prepared to get up at 4am."

I didn't sleep. I was so excited!

Well, after she showed me how to milk a cow, she told me to gab a pail, we were about to go after eggs. So, we enter into a long building. The first room is the warm room. That's where the fertalized eggs are kept to hatch the chicks.

The second room hand a round area with ultra-violet light and an army of little chicks who swarmed around my Aunt thinking she was their mother. She threw some corn seeds at them and they scurried away like GIs do when someone yells "fall in".

Going into the next area, she closes the door behind me, opens the outside door and throws more corn seed out on the ground and I witness the pecking order in a no hold free for all.

After she closes the door, she bends down and says, "Richard, when you go grabbing eggs from under the hens, never hesitate or the will peck you."

"Yes, Aunt Clara."

I didn't get pecked and we filled the pail up with dozens of eggs.

"Aunt Clara, what's the last room for?"

"Oh, that's where we put the old hens that no longer lay eggs. Time to clean, test and weigh the eggs."

She didn't want to explain what happens to those hens on death row who no longer lay eggs. Wasn't until I was older that I realized what does happen.

Anyway, so down in the cellar we go. We was the eggs off in cold water inspect them using an black light for possible fertilization and then size each one.

Dark eggs went into one carton while the white ones based on weight:

Size	Minimum mass per egg		Cooking Yield (Volume)
Jumbo	70.9 g	2.5 oz.
Very Large or Extra-Large (XL)	63.8 g	2.25 oz.	56 ml (4 tbsp)
Large (L)	56.7 g	2 oz.	46 ml (3.25 tbsp)
Medium (M)	49.6 g	1.75 oz.	43 ml (3 tbsp)
Small (S)	42.5 g	1.5 oz.
Peewee	35.4 g	1.25 oz.

 
 What I also remember down in that basement was the old Ball containers that looked like this:

But they were filled with all kinds of deliciousness. Grape, Apple, STRAWBERRY and peach jelly and jam. Plus some natural peanut butter.



These are the things I remember about a farm this kid from Moorestown knew few other kids in town would never experience or know in their lifetime.