What is a Good Egg? It’s almost Easter, so is an Easter Egg considered a Good Egg? Easter does make me think about Easter Eggs, which in turn reminds me of my childhood. Of course, the Easter Bunny always came to my house leaving all sorts of fattening and tooth decaying chocolate and candy treats, chocolate eggs amongst them. However, when I think about eggs, more specifically I remember picking eggs with my father.

I grew up on a farm, and at one time my father was in the egg-producing business. We had a chicken barn with 10,000 chickens—NO EXAGGERATION FOLKS—and that meant that the 10,000 chickens laid about 9,900 eggs every day of the year. Can you imagine picking close to ten thousand eggs a day? Well, we did.

Every summer I had a job picking eggs with my father, and every weekend during the school year, I was at the chicken barn working away with my dad. I actually loved picking eggs! I used to walk down the aisle and talk to all the chickens, listening to their clucks and imagine that they were talking back to me. Mainly, I liked picking eggs because it meant quality time with my dad; plus, he paid me. Money has always been one of the driving forces in my life, as I have always loved the art I call ‘shopping’. Chickens do not take a vacation from laying eggs, so there was always work to do,  eggs to pick, and money for little Janell to make!

As a consumer, you have probably never thought very much about egg production. All you look for is the size of the egg, or the color of the egg, or if it is organic or comes from Free Range chickens. There are many eggs to choose from when you go to buy your eggs, and I am sure that you have never thought about it much more than that. However, in the egg producing world, there actually is such a thing as a good egg.

Other than the small, medium or large sizes of the eggs that we have to choose from at the grocery stores (and FYI brown eggs come from brown chickens – duh if you didn’t know that), I want to let you know that eggs are as different and unique as people. Some eggs are born without a hard shell, they have just their embryo of a soft shell and obviously are not for sale. Younger chickens sometimes lay eggs that are very tiny, smaller than the size of your thumb. And some chickens have multiple births, laying double and triple yolkers. Of course, there are some eggs that come into the world in a traumatic way, and they are covered in blood or in feces.

Picking eggs was always an exciting adventure for a young child, as my father turned egg-picking into a game. I would pick eggs and be on the hunt to find all of the peewee eggs, and the double and triple yolkers, separating them into a special container and leering over my loot of misshaped eggs each day. My dad was smart to turn this into a game for me, as these eggs had to be separated from the rest, since they were not saleable.

We didn’t waste these eggs, we took them home and ate them. And, as you can see from the picture below, my mom didn’t waste these eggs either, as she painted beautiful paintings on many of these eggs, making Easter Egg gifts for her friends and family. My basket of my mom’s homemade Easter Eggs is one that I treasure and proudly keep out on display all