We gather eggs at 11am and 4pm every day. They are washed after lunch and then packed into egg cartons. The cartons are stamped with the Julian date. Day one is 1st January, today's number is 259 2010. The eggs are then stored in our cooler until we pack them for your delivery. At that point we label the carton and stamp it with a four week sell by date. Check your eggs today and see when they were laid, it could be as much as 14 days ago. The reason for this is that I keep about seven days supply in the cooler at all times. I do this to make sure that we have enough eggs should the chickens get stressed and stop or reduce production. Stress can mean very hot days, the first winter storm or some members of the Dixon High school football team arrive in the night and take pot shots at the girls. Having this buffer in the cooler means that I can sleep at night and not wake up at 3am dreading calls from customers asking me why they did not get all the eggs they ordered and what am I going to do about their child's brain development with no pasture raised eggs to feed them. Don't laugh, it has happened.
We are registered egg handlers with the State of California so we have to follow their procedures. In this country an egg can be sold as 'fresh' up to three months after it was laid...scary but true. Some of you may have seen eggs in Europe not in cold cabinets in the stores, they do not need to be refrigerated if they are from healthy chickens and are less that one month old. That does not mean you can leave them on a hot windowsill and expect them to be good, a little common sense is required. Once they have been refrigerated like ours please keep them in the refrigerator.
If you have any questions send me an email to organic@eatwell.com