Organic Eggs
Our hens are in full production and eggs are readily available. If you have been wanting to try our eggs, now is a great time!
Our eggs are now available in Bellingham area grocery stores: Terra Organica and both locations of the Bellingham Food Co-op. We are very excited to be partnering with a great store that is completely committed to providing local, sustainably produced, organic food. If you'd like to try out eggs combined with other local, organic foods, stop in for breakfast at Pizzazza restaurant. If you shop in Bellingham, we encourage you to stop in at these stores and thank them for supporting local farmers.
Chicks are so cute!
This is an
Araucana chick. When she grows up, she will lay green or blue
eggs.
This one is a Black Star. She will lay brown eggs. How can we tell what color eggs? Each breed lays a consistent color. You can tell the color by looking at their feet! They get the pigmentation for the eggs from their skin.
This is a White Crested Black Polish. We raise these only for show (and amusement).
Ducklings too!
One Sunday morning in January, we discovered a Muscovy duck hen nesting next to the house. It was cold and windy. She was shivering and her nest was blowing apart. We quickly devised a shelter around her and the bushes she was hiding behind.
Two weeks later, she was gone. A predator had dragged her away in the middle of the night. We set up the eggs in an incubator. Of the 20 eggs, only six hatched. One duckling didn't make it through the night.
They then moved on to live in our garage (often called a ga-barn). When they outgrew the garage (read: made it stink), they moved to a hut outside. They now range freely around the farm.
Proven to be nutritionally superior!
Recently, we had our eggs tested by a nutritionally testing lab as part of a study sponsored by Mother Earth News magazine. Misty Meadows Farm eggs had 3 1/2 times the vitamin E, four times the heart healthy Omega-3s, a third less cholesterol, and a third less saturated fat than eggs from factory farmed birds. Across the board, pasture raised eggs are nutritionally superior to eggs from confined birds.
Check out the full text of the study.
Look at the difference!
For more studies on the benefits of pasture raised animals, see www.eatwild.com
Free Range vs. Pasture Raised
We consider our eggs pasture raised, not free range. The
term free range has lost all meaning. In conventional
agriculture, it now means that the barn door is opened a crack and
the 50,000 chickens crammed into the barn could get out into the
small yard if they could fight their way through the crowd. In
contrast, pasture raised means chickens raised on pasture.
They are on the ground, with grass, whenever they want to be.
They can go inside to escape the heat or cold, but are not stuck
there.
How We Got Started with Chickens
We started with three hens as pets. The first day we found an egg, we wanted to throw a party! Immediately, we were struck with how much more flavorful they were than store-bought eggs. We were hooked. We now maintain a flock of about 150 birds of every color; laying eggs of many shades of white, brown and blue.
We were even more amazed when we began studying the nutritional benefits that result from feeding, housing and treating animals the way they were meant to be treated. So many of the nutritional problems we face today come from mistreating the animals.
We love to watch our chickens' antics as much as other people enjoy their dogs or cats. Be careful when you talk to us about chickens, we just may talk you into starting a backyard flock of your own!
How We Treat Our Chickens
Our chickens have continuous, year round access to fresh grass and sunshine. They have homes to keep them warm and dry, but they spend most of their time outside. We rotate their pasture over several acres so that there is always enough grass to keep them happily scratching away.
We feed our chickens as much feed as they would like. Our chicken feed is a custom blend of certified organic soy-free grains. Our grain is milled locally using only organic ingredients. It looks and smells like the beginning of good bread.
We use only the highest organic practices. We do not debeak our birds, confine them, starve them, force them to molt, and never feed our birds unnecessary medicine.
If you live in the Whatcom County area, we welcome you to come visit our farm and see for yourself. Anyone can put a picture of a chicken on grass on an egg carton, but how many of those chickens get to see the light of day and live the way they were created to live?