Preserving Eggs

Here are other ideas that could save you a lot of money and ensure you have high quality protein and Vitamin A after your chickens stop laying this season.

Right now is the time you get the most eggs from your chickens. ( If you are having problem getting egg production up and have limited conditions for your chickens then I suggest you get some chicken minerals from Environmental Fertilsers).

We have 6 Golden Wyndotte hens for the 2 of us and they will all go clucky over the Spring but right now are all laying everyday. We choose Golden Wyndottes because they lay pretty well, they go clucky and raise their replacements, and provide meat very easily as well. They are also very easy to keep inside a low fence because they are heavy bodied chooks and importantly they are very friendly and relaxed chickens.

If I pickle or store all those extra eggs so that we can eat them over the lean egg period it will make a difference for us.

I remember as a child my parents storing fresh eggs in the laundry in a kerosene can filled with something called “glass water”

I’ve checked out Bill Mollison’s book Ferment and Human Nutrition to see how other people stored their eggs (I’m not keen on any industrial processes being used or products from industrial processes). There have been many many solutions found for storing eggs to be eaten at a later time,  eg the Chinese hundred year eggs, although well known, may not be my idea of a delicious thing to eat. I’m trialling several ways to store them and I’d love to hear from you if you have a tried and true way that uses no industrial products.

Pickled Eggs

Firstly we have pickled them in jars .. fill a sterilsed (with boiling water) jar with still hot shelled, boiled eggs then fill the jar again with unheated naturally brewed vinegar (organic apple cider vinegar if you’re buying it),, and arrange of spices garlic cloves, salt, peppercorns, mustard seed and chili. We will just leave the jar well sealed and test occasionally to see how long the eggs stay good to eat.

Salt Stored Eggs

I can’t wait for next winter to see how my raw eggs have kept in the other trials I’m doing. I have clean fresh eggs simply stored by coating them with either butter, coconut oil, lard or wax to prevent the salt absorbing moisture through the egg's porous shell, next they are sat on a layer of sea salt, without touching, then covered with salt again, this process is repeated until the container is full, I found it's best to cover the final layer of salt with wax to prevent the salt forming a rock hard layer through moisture absorption!  They are reputed to last a year like this! I’m using our home grown gourds for containers, they have been cleaned out well sanded down to make smooth surface then coated with hot beeswax. They look stunning and it feels great to be able to find yet another way t avoid adding to the plastic pollution in the ocean.