Steep Hollow Farm

My friend and neighbor (aka Godsend) turned me on to a local farm that delivers beautiful eggs to your door every week for only $3.50 a dozen, or, as the farmer joked, the bargain price of 10 weeks for $35.00.

My first delivery arrived on Monday. It feels scandalous to be getting fresh eggs from happy hens so easily.

Except not all of them are happy.

The owner of Steep Hollow Farm, home of the Sustainable Chicken Project, e-mailed me to explain:

Broody Mysteries

We have about 90 hens right now. 14 of them have gone broody, which means they think they are/want to be incubating eggs. They stop eating and drinking, stop laying eggs and just sit in the nest boxes, with their wings a little spread and feathers all puffed out. They keep other hens out of the nest boxes and are generally grumpy. We take them out and set them on the roosts at night but they simply hop off and motor back to the nest boxes, clucking steadily, like little robots. It’s such a phenomenon! We collect the eggs three times a day, so they are seldom actually sitting on any eggs. It’s just a hormone induced trance that they have gone into...these are a heritage breed called Black Australorp, and they are very good at some of the normal chicken activities which may have been bred out of more modern domestic chickens. For instance they are very good at foraging, which is why we chose them. They eat grass readily and scratch and find lots of bugs, which are a good source of protein.

This was an explanation I asked for in an e-mail exchange, but I was still impressed that this very busy lady took the time to write out a thoughtful answer.

We are full circle now, as that was the first thing I noticed about Ithaca--how much of that precious commodity people have here--and are willing to share.

Time is on my side. Yes it is.