You Got Eggs!
Anyone living in a city might never be aware that the egg is a seasonal product. Beyond the metropolis and throughout Ireland, however, there are strategies to buy home, or farm-reared eggs, whether it be from gateside honesty boxes or under-counter subterfuge from shops who enjoy selling eggs without a date stamp.
Our eggs come from our neighbour, as well as from small holdings in West Cork. Our neighbour’s eggs are either bartered, or delivered to our front gate, placed in a beat up coldbox (next to an old post box that is now a wren’s nest) with a piece of metal that, upon delivery, hooks into the box like a you-got-mail emoji. You got eggs!
Alan Davidson once described the egg as “the acme of food packaging” but this benchmark standard in protecting a foodstuff actually has a secret: the eggshell is porous. Fresh eggs take up the odours around them, and back in the day Cork Buttered Eggs, which were rubbed with melted butter, were one of the signature treasures of Cork’s English Market. The city actually had a butter and egg market as far back as 1760, but you won’t find a buttered egg any more, unfortunately.
This week, our neighbour mentioned two things - the worrying absence of the chicken man in Bantry market, who used to sell chickens once a week, but is now scarcely there, and the fact that they’re now supplementing their chicken’s (and dog’s) feed with blackberries.
Talk of blackberries made a lot of sense. We remember leaving our chickens, hoping that the fox wouldn’t arrive while we were away for a week setting up Electric Picnic. On return, the chickens were fine, but our three blueberry bushes were shredded. Every fruit found and devoured.
Blackberries are as good for animals as they are for humans, delivering an immunity boost, as well as a dose of anti-viral and antiseptic compounds, and best of all, they make the eggs taste great.
This is surely the best season for eggs, when real chickens are foraging in hedgerows that are filled with life. Enjoy them now, because the winter will be upon us soon enough, and the only eggs available will be those from the supermarket, from chickens that have no direct contact with nature and seasonality.
I don’t think many people, in particular city folk would have any idea that hens do not lay 12 months of the year. My father loved his chooks which were pretty good layers and my mother used to rub a preserving oil on the eggs so they would keep, but honestly I don’t think we ate that many eggs when I was growing up. Nowadays we would have eggs for breakfast at least once a week and I certainly use them a lot in cooking.