Egg washing

There's really no way to predict what nature's going to throw at us. I've seen snow in June and 70 degrees in February. The couple feet of snow we've received in the last month has put a serious damper on garden progress, but we're still grinding along. In the face of such a powerful force, all we can do is adapt, and that's what we'll do.

Any real progress towards planting came to a screeching halt a couple days after my last entry. We got about a foot of snow overnight. The next week, another blizzard. A third dumping of snow shortly after that left us with just as much snow as we had in February before it all melted. Hopes of an April planting have disappeared, and as the snow slowly melts, it's looking more and more like it'll be the 2nd week of May before we get anything in the ground.

But, regardless of the snow, the days are getting longer and that's got the layer chickens laying eggs at breakneck speed. Over the last two weeks, our six hens have averaged just over 5 eggs per day. This is great news to a teenage boy who recently learned how to cook eggs and has decided to eat them for nearly every meal. We've finally reached the volume of production we hoped from those six girls, we have all the eggs we will ever need with enough to give a few away to family. That's a welcome state of affairs after a winter filled with very sparse egg production.

A question that has come up around the house several times lately is the question of washing eggs. Ideally, we wouldn't have to wash eggs. Sometimes they are just laying there nice and clean and go right into the carton. Other times, they  will have some volume of mud or chicken poop on the shell. This is especially an issue recently, as one of our hens has decided to build herself a nest right at the bottom of the ramp leading to the roost in the coop. She lays an egg there, and then every other hen follows suit and lays their eggs in the same spot. Then each hen walks over the top of the nest on their way up to the roost. We've got a nest box in the coop, at this point I think my only option is going to be to put something there so she can't make a nest there, hopefully forcing her to use the nest box. But, back to the point, this leaves some dirty eggs. About 45 seconds of searching the internet brings up two methods for cleaning eggs. The industrial method of rinsing them in a very diluted bleach mixture, or simply rinsing them in warm water.

Now, I know that there are people who do not wash their eggs. It's possible to just scratch or rub off any soiling and then put them in the fridge. I don't want to do that primarily because I have two young children in the house, and I don't want them exposed at all to anything in that chicken coop until they're older and their immune systems are better developed. The reason people don't wash eggs is because there is a coating on the eggs that keeps anything on the outside from getting inside. As soon as the egg gets wet, that coating is washed off. The problem with washing eggs occurs because under certain circumstances, a vacuum can be created inside the egg, and without that protective layer, bacteria on the outside of the semi-porous egg shell can be drawn inside the egg. This situation can be prevented by washing the eggs in water at least 20 degrees warmer than the inside of the egg. You can imagine that the bleach/water solution also solves that problem by making sure that there is no bacteria on the outside of the egg to be drawn in. However, the idea of putting bleach on my food is rather distasteful, so I discarded that idea almost immediately.

The method we use to wash eggs is to bring all the eggs into the house after collecting. We have a special egg carton for dirty eggs, and any eggs that need washing go in that carton and go in our second refrigerator. This fridge is used for non-food things, like storing fishing bait, so there's no sanitation issues here. After several hours we know the eggs are cooled to about 40 degrees, we take them out and rinse them quickly in water slightly warmer than room temperature. We then scrub off any soiling with our hands, and give them one more quick rinse to make sure they're clean. At this point, they're wiped off with a clean paper towel and placed into a clean egg carton. No chemicals and no wondering if they're safe to eat.

You may have a preference for a different method, or even one of the commercial egg cleaning solutions on the market. I haven't tried other methods so I can't say that my method is the best, only that it works well for our family. I would be very interested in any other methods that readers would like to share.