farm box wednesday... and a bonus.

in today's csa box:

~ heirloom tomatoes (supposedly the last of the year)

~ grapes

~ red potatoes

~ a huge bunch of basil (we really need to get on the pesto-making train)

~ sweet peppers

~ peaches 

~ sharlyn melon

all good stuff. we cooked up some older potatoes to make room for the new ones--we'll have them for breakfast tomorrow along with some guilt-free eggs. that's right, we finally found a source for "eggies" as lucy likes to call them--from a family living about 12 miles from our home. they are raising 12 hens and sell the eggs for $3 per dozen. lucy and i drove out today to pick ours up. well, due to a wonky nap schedule on lucy's part, we were an hour and a half early, and the mama that runs the whole operation wasn't home. so we didn't get to meet the chickens this time around. rather, her school-aged boy handed us the eggs though a barely opened door. it was a little strange! but the eggs are big and beautiful--we even got a green one which reminds us of our old chicken named plum who gave us lovely pastel eggs. 

from what i could see through the partially open fence, it looks as though these chickens are raised in the exact same manner as our own: able to enjoy a fenced-in run with access to an open coop. a couple of the hens were scritching around in a pile of hay. i'm fairly certain that these birds are fed non-organic chicken food (as our chickens are) and vegetable scraps. thus, the eggs that they lay are technically non-organic. but i feel that all of the other benefits of supporting truly cage-free, humanly-treated, locally-raised hens are worth going non-organic in this case.  

i was hoping to pick up 3 dozen eggs, but all that was left was a single dozen which we feel lucky to have gotten. the upside is that our new egg suppliers live very close to lucy's good playmate who we happen to visit weekly. so dropping by frequently to pick up eggs shouldn't be a problem at all. 

lucy was unbelievably enthralled with our carton of eggs--so much so that it was a bit hard to get them away from her for the ride home. somehow the idea of my rear-facing toddler alone with 12 eggs in the back of my semi-clean car just didn't sit well with me, you know? sorry lucy!