First, we LOVE eggs! We've got 10 chickens (1 roo, 9 laying hens), and they provide us with more eggs than we could consume in a year. Second, why this post? I would like to inform anyone that doesn't know, how you can store eggs long term, not forever, but def for a few months.
Did you know that when a hen lays an egg, there is a film/protective coating over the egg that protects the porous calcium from absorbing anything in the air. Living on a farm, you are always aware that mom or grandma may have kept the eggs on the counter until ready to use. When I was little, I never really thought of why they were there, but I was a bit put off from the poopy ones and why they weren't washed. The reason? When you wash an egg, you remove the protective coating from it, thus, needing to store it in the fridge afterwards.
Before we got chickens, it was store bought eggs for us. Watching an episode of Doomsday Preppers (and a lot of google), I realized what I could do to store eggs longer without having to keep them all in the fridge. Being prepared is not only for survival in our home, it's a way of life.
Your typical cheap dozen eggs are ran through a wash and mild bleach to get them clean and looking like a perfect little white egg. Normally, these eggs are already a couple weeks old before they get to the store shelf, depending on where you live. They come from production hens. Which means that no rooster was involved, so they are not fertile.
So a trip to the store for a 5doz package of eggs, and down the medicine aisle for some mineral oil. I set all the eggs out on the counter to sweat. This is what eggs do when their stored in the cold, and then back to room temperature. Put on some vinyl gloves, poured a tablespoon of mineral oil in a bowl, and started coating the eggs with the oil. The mineral oil will plug the pores, while keeping out anything that the egg with absorb. I didn't need a lot of oil for each egg, and it went very quickly. I placed each egg upside down in the cartons. Then set them to store in the pantry (cool and dark). I waited a month before getting into them. Pulled a dozen out to refill the carton in the fridge. Upon eating, they were great! We did this for years, until we got chickens last year. Remember I placed the eggs upside down? Every month, I would turn them over. One, it helped me recognize which ones had been in the pantry the longest. Two, I wanted to make sure that everything was all ok with the eggs. I eventually started putting them into individual cartons and writing the dates on them so i didn't get them mixed up. I know they could have been kept longer if we weren't eating them all the time, but the longest that I stored a dozen was 5months, and they were delicious!
Now we have our chickens, and they lay 6-8 eggs everyday. I have an egg basket that I keep hanging under the counter where all the unwashed fresh eggs go. When it gets full, the eggs go into a carton and into the fridge. Why the fridge instead of storing them in the pantry? Well our eggs are fertilized. If we store them before refrigerating them, we get embryo in our egg. With chickens we don't have to store the eggs anymore, and we end up selling more than we eat too. If we wanted to store our fresh eggs, I would wash them, refrigerate them for 2 days, oil them, then place them in the pantry. I could get away from oiling them if I didn't wash them, but I prefer not to put any nesting box or poopy eggs in the pantry for that long. Luckily, our girls are very good on hygiene, and we don't get poopy eggs from the chicken house.
In short, when the power goes out, don't worry about using that water to wash your farm fresh eggs. :)
