A few weeks ago, the best eggs at my farmers’ market started selling out before I got there.
I do not rise at dawn on a Saturday to be at Union Square with David Chang, badly as I fangirl him. My general approach to Saturday morning is that there’s an internet out there, and it’s not going to read itself. (Note to self: this is not strictly true.) But hiking the two blocks to my neighborhood Greenmarket at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon was suddenly much too late for my eggs. 11:00 wasn’t cutting it, either.
Our chickens are free to pasture graze daily
In the interest of both breakfast and journalism (ha ha), I got there yesterday at 8:30. I got my eggs. I also interviewed the farmer responsible for them, Ron Samascott of Samascott Orchards.
I started by asking the question with the biggest impact on me personally: why were the eggs were selling out so early? I assumed that my unworthy neighbors had caught on recently to the superiority of the eggs and were snapping them up before I got there out of sheer competitiveness.
On a larger scale, I was worried that this was a symptom, that the size of the city (even just the premium-egg market) was out of proportion to the size of the farms bringing the good stuff.
That’s probably true, as far as it goes. Obviously there aren’t currently enough small, truly free range egg producers to supplant the modified-battery “cage free” traffic at the supermarket. But it’s not really Ron Samascott’s problem. The story Ron told me turned out to be a little more cheerful, if you don’t mind a little beast-on-beast violence.
First of all, he explained, the change wasn’t primarily in demand. They just weren’t bringing as many eggs. They have a seasonal store at the farm (in the Hudson Valley, about half an hour from Albany), and they were selling some of the eggs there during the summer “pick your own” months.
But they also had fewer eggs to sell. They’d started out with 200 hens, earlier in the year. But, because they let the hens graze all over the place, they’d lost quite a few to predators.
“Coyotes?” I asked knowingly.
“Yeah,” Ron answered, speaking at half my speed and a couple octaves lower, “But just about everything eats chickens. Hawks. Owls. Dogs.” He looked down at a full-blooded pug who was tied to the table by a leash. “Even this one.”
Ron Samascott, Samascott Orchards, Kinderhook, NY
“I guess you can’t use dogs to protect them, then?”
“Well, there are dogs who are supposed to do that,” he answered, smiling at the pug. “But we don’t have that kind.”
Ron explained how their chicken operation works. They built a mobile coop, about eight feet high, with a series of round beams near the roof – that’s how chickens like to perch to sleep at night. They drive the coop to different parts of the farm each day and let the chickens out to run around and graze. At night, the chickens go into the coop. I asked if someone had to “herd them” in. He said no, they just head on in when it gets dark. Once they’re inside, they’re safe. But during the day, and especially at dusk, they’re in danger.
Not all alike
“The main part of the farm” (with the orchards and the cultivated fields) “has a deer fence around it. From late fall to early spring, we keep the chickens in there, where they’re better protected.” In the summer, though, the chickens can’t be in that part of the farm. Because not only does everything eat chickens — chickens “really do eat everything.”
“They eat grass. You see a big difference where the chickens have been. They pick out bugs. They dig in the dirt, looking for stuff. If they find a rotten log, they tear it apart to get at the insects. They’re carnivores, too. If a chicken dies, the other ones will immediately start to peck at it. If there’s an animal around, they’ll eat that, but they also eat vegetables. You can’t really have peas or strawberries around them.”
So the chickens can’t stay in the cultivated part of the farm in summer. They’ll eat the crops, not to mention poop on them (“sanitary reasons,” Ron says, more politely). “So then we move them to other parts of the farm that don’t have the deer fence, where there’s grass and woods. We have quite a few cows in the woods, but nothing attacks cows. They’re big.”
Orange yolks, like in a kids book
Ron says they’ve bought another 600 chickens, who are 2 weeks old right now. He said they’ll raise them the same way, but there was some hesitation. I don’t really see, realistically, how they can go on losing chickens at this rate without some modification. But clearly there’s a way they like to see their chickens live, and I’m hopeful that the solution will still be good for both the chickens and the eggs.
Samascott usually also has a few dozen eggs for sale with bluish or green shells. These are from a group of 25 chickens who live in the lawn by their house, who are a different breed. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to buy any to photograph for you. And by the time I went back, they were sold out.
More info:
Samascott Orchards participates in these farmers’ markets:
Albany, NY
Lenox, MA.
New York City:
- Upper East Side (82nd Street)
- Columbia University (114th St & Broadway)
- Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
- Inwood Hill
- Rockefeller Center
- Stuyvesant Town
- Union Square (Fridays)
List of Farmers at NYC Greenmarkets
Lucy’s Greenmarket Report. Frequent updates on who has what at the market, as well as news and policy matters affecting the market.
ETA: I think I’ve fixed all the links. Let me know if you still have trouble.
This is not a post about how to cook eggs. It’s just a recipe for a very nice egg dish that I made for me and the HDGF last Saturday afternoon, back when my camera had a battery – good times! These are poached eggs on a bed of spinach and green garlic.
