Making A Change
On the Wednesday afternoon before Valentine’s Day I had an absolutely brilliant idea for a reel. Could I get the Farmer to agree to make it with me?
I could not.
Of course you probably saw variations of said brilliant idea (since there really is nothing new under the sun but I still stand by my version as being truly the funniest.)
It involved eggs. And the price hike and scarcity straight across the board. You can imagine where I was going with my Valentines reel. It was going to be hilarious. I’m not going to describe it though…I’m hoping to pull it out some other time.
So what’s the point of this post? It’s not a political or conspiracy post about what is behind this sudden run on eggs. (Although you should read up on it from different sides of the issue. You might be surprised at what you learn.)
The point to this post is that the time has come for us to raise the price of our eggs.
We have been selling eggs for about 2 years now and we have not changed our price in that time. For some people $5 a dozen has seemed outrageous but we put some thought into our price point and trust me, it was not so we could rake in the big bucks. No one is getting rich off of selling eggs for that.
Like everything else the cost of feeding and caring for the chickens has steadily increased over the last 24 months and we need to allow our price point to meet that increase.
Starting this week we will be charging $6 a dozen.
Again, we recognize that for some people that seems an outlandish amount to pay for eggs.
But one of our core principles is that it is okay for people to pay more to have better.
And right now a dozen eggs will cost you anywhere from $5.50 to well over $8 in the grocery store.
A commercial egg farmer has 30 days from the day an egg is laid to get it into a carton. A commercial buyer for those eggs has another 30 days from that point to put them on the shelves.
This means that the eggs on the typical grocery store shelf can be potentially 60 days old before you put them in your shopping cart.
60 days old.
And don’t even get me started on how far they travel before reaching the store.
We think it is much better if you know that the eggs you are buying from us were collected within two or three days of your purchase and they have only traveled maybe 300 hundred feet to our kitchen.
We have a small flock that we hope to expand to help
meet the community demand for fresh eggs.
Our chickens are healthy and happy girls. Getting new
birds also means waiting about 3 to 4 months before
they begin laying eggs though so it will take some time
to enlarge our egg production.
Can you find eggs somewhere for cheaper? Almost certainly. But sometimes the cheapest food is often produced at the expensive of quality. And that is not how we do things.
For those who either cannot afford the increase in our price or just flat out do not want to pay it, that’s fine. No one is mad at you because we also believe that you have the right to make the best choices you can for you and your family.
For those of you who know us and trust we are not just trying to fund a vacation to the Bahamas or the mountains but are deeply committed to the farm practices that reflect a high regard for how we raise and tend our animals and you still want to buy your eggs from us, thank you.
We promise to maintain the same level of egg-cellence (C’mon, you had to know I would slip in at least one pun!) in everything we offer.
Because we truly do believe that good food should be commonplace.
