Fort Bend County, in which I live, is on the edge between the Houston Suburban Infestation and the Texas Outback. Thus you wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to find someone in the Outback portion selling fresh eggs from yard chickens. But you’d be wrong.
It’s been two years since I had a good source of organic eggs. And back then, the only thing that made it a good source was the fact that I had free company transportation and a job that regularly took me 30 or 40 miles into the next county.
Since then, I’ve had to make do buying brown eggs from so-called free-range chickens raised by one or another giant ag operation, allowed to allege free-range by a government decree that says if there’s a tiny door in the hen house through which the frightened and overcrowded indoor birds could theoretically walk, then you can call it free ranging regardless of reality.
Today I’m happy to report that Elenora will be supplying the One Acre Ranch with its eggs.
Elenora keeps a healthy flock of chickens behind a big dog kennel full of little chihuahua puppies behind her house on a cul-de-sac next to her brother’s goat sheds across from a cow pasture about half a mile away.
I was taking a shortcut to the highway two weeks ago, but got stuck behind an exceedingly slow-moving pickup and so took a shortcut around my shortcut, which took me past Elenora’s cul-del-sac, where I thought, as I flashed by, that I saw the word “eggs” on a home-made sign nailed to her mailbox post.
After whatever chore I was on had ended, I took the shortcut-shortcut past Elenora’s on the way home, and found that she indeed was advertising yard eggs for sale. I called her on the spot, but alas she was at work.
Another week elapsed before I was able to get over to Elenora’s, this time on an emergency run because I’d already begun making a fritatta before counting and learning we didn’t have enough eggs to finish the job.
Unfortunately, when I pulled up the sign was conspicuously absent from her mailbox. A man I would later learn was her brother was clad in overalls and trudging back and forth between his collection of goats and elderly ponies and his little sheds, hauling out buckets full of feed. A car was in Elenora’s driveway, so I went to the door and knocked, but no one came. So I walked over to a gate near the brother and his sheds.
“How you doing?” I said. “Um-hmm,” he said, hauling buckets. “I was looking for some eggs, but I guess the lady isn’t home. No one answered the door.” Brother said nothing, not even glancing up from his hauling. “Do you think she’s out of eggs?” I asked. No answer. “I guess so, because she took the sign down.” No answer.
So I got back in my car, backed out and started to go up the road. In the rear view mirror I could see brother, now walking rapidly to the gate, shrugging his shoulders in that broad gesture known to mean “what the hell?” So I stopped, backed up and parked again, and explained again that I had been looking for eggs but noticed the sign had been removed and figured there weren’t any.
“Elenora’s out back,” the brother said. “Elenora!” he yelled, not very loudly in my opinion. Then he went back to hauling his feed. OK.
I went around back of Elenora’s house, which is how I know there’s a kennel full of chihuahua puppies and yappy parent “dogs,” and a chicken pen and yard full of good-looking chickens behind the “dogs.”
Elanora was inside, cooking up something good with peppers and onions and maybe some sausage. She hadn’t heard the doorbell. She would not let me buy eggs. Not this time. I had to take five of them home, free, to try them out and see whether I liked them. She took my number and now I am on the egg list, unless I call and cancel due to not liking the freebie cackle fruit.
That won’t happen. The fritatta was great. The egg yolks were orange, full of beta carotene and omega-3 fatty acids. Another $2.79 a week I won’t be spending at Kroger’s anymore, and another $2.50 a week flowing into the über local economy.
