Eggs

Hello All,

   Since our first farm to restaurant product was eggs I thought I talk more about them. I feel like I’ve been back in school the past few weeks as I’ve been learning so much about the foods we serve in our restaurant. I’m amazed to learn new things everyday about stuff that I have always taken for granted. Eggs are an excellent eggsample ;-)

   The first batch of eggs Kevin brought in still had chicken feathers and straw stuck to them. I washed them in the sink real good before cooking them. I’ve never had to wash an egg before. I’ve always counted on them to already be washed when I buy them from the store. Is just a good rinse in tap water enough? Should I use soap or some kind of sanitizer? I have no idea how the big chicken farms do it, I just know they are clean when I get them from the carton. We cook our eggs over hard (thoroughly cooked) so I feel washing each egg individually in cold water is enough before cooking. I need to do more research before I start offering eggs over easy or sunny side up.

   I had to add 50¢ to the cost of each breakfast sammich to cover my additional costs from Kevin. At first I wasn’t sure if folks would pay the additional amount. It’s real important to LaValle and I that our food be affordable on an everyday basis for our customers that live and work in the area. But we sold all 3 dozen eggs the first day. So why do Kevin’s eggs cost more? I know he needs to make a living, and farming on a smaller scale can be more labor intensive per unit of output. But as I found out today, there is another reason that folks living in the city might not think about so much. Kevin informed us that when he walked outside this morning one of his 6 guinea hens was walking around the yard calling to her sisters. When he investigated he found that one was dead, and the other four were missing. These are just chicks still and don’t even have all their flight feathers yet. These are not his egg laying hens, those chickens are all fine. Guineas are notoriously territorial and will collectively attack invaders. Kevin had bought them to act as protectors for his egg laying chickens. Unfortunately something got to them first, and now he’ll need to buy more to replace them. LaValle took a picture of them when we were out at the farm last week. It’s hard to see them, but they are in there.

   The other big reason organic eggs cost more is feed. Kevin needs to supplement their diet of insects and small plants with a high protein feed so that they’ll grow healthy and lay good, quality eggs. Organic feed is expensive, and that is the only feed he’ll buy. We’ve actually come up with a very ingenious idea to reduce this cost and provide us with a better alternative that gets us to the closed loop farm that is our goal, but I’ll save that story for another issue of this blog. Nothing goes on the farm except that which came off the farm. It’s the only way we can guaranty the total story of the food we sell.

   Last week when I was telling one of our customers that the chickens were “free range”, he mentioned that the legal definition of “free range” was simply that the chickens had at least 2 square feet of ground to walk around in. I'm not sure about this, so I think I’m going to stop saying “free range”, and start saying “pasturized” because the only fences other than property line are meant to keep chickens out of specific areas where new seedlings are growing. Here are pictures of one of Kevin’s roosters and two of the chickens that lay the farm fresh eggs you eat here at the Purple Bean, they seemed very happy to us J

    I was curious to know if there are any differences in quality between factory raised chickens and Kevin’s chickens. To be sure, the Kevin’s chickens lay eggs with a darker yolk, and I’ve noticed that they cook a little differently too. But are they healthier? A 2003 study by Penn State University researchers found that eggs from pastured hens have higher levels of omega 3 fatty acids and vitamins A and E. Our customers are telling us they taste better too. Maybe that better taste is our body telling us what the science confirms (or the other way around). Maybe these eggs really are better for us… It makes sense to me anyway.

   Finally, these little ladies not only give us eggs, but they also eat the bugs that are harmful to the veggies Kevin is growing, and they fertilize the ground the veggies grow in. Both of the chicken coops Kevin built are on wheels, and he moves them around the farm to fertilize each part of the land on a rotating basis. It’s using all the beauty of natural relationships to find a scenario where humans can benefit with minimal negative environmental impact. LaValle and I are definitely excited to be offering them to you.

Creating a Closed Loop Farming System...

   My wife and I own, "The Purple Bean Cafe" in Austin, Tx. We sell breakfast and lunch sammiches and recently added a dinner menu. It’s never been easy deciding what to add or subtract from the menu. Ingredients are only the beginning; we still need to source the ingredients, calculate total cost of goods sold and figure out where and how long we are going to store the ingredients. We do our best to create as many delicious combinations as we can from a manageable core group of ingredients. Once we think we have a winner, my daughter Dasha and I eat it for a week straight. If at the end of that week it still sounds good, it goes on the menu. That is part of the reason almost all of our sammiches have tomato, onion, and basil. It’s a bonus that this tri-fecta tastes fantastic on both our breakfast and lunch sammiches.

   The other day I was heading back to our restaurant supply store for the third time in three days to get basil because the previous two days they were out and they weren’t sure which truck the basil was coming in on. I had just planted 8 basil plants in pots on the patio of the restaurant as an emergency backup, but they weren’t ready to harvest yet so my fingers were crossed that there would be basil at the store this time. The whole way there I kept thinking, “There has to be a better way”. My wife and I had been to local small farms and farmer markets, but we could never be sure they would have what we needed when we needed it. The big supply store was our best bet for dependability even though it isn’t perfect either. It was on this drive that it occurred to me that one of our customers, Kevin Titus owned a small self sustaining farm out near Bastrop and he might be able to grow enough basil to guarantee a steady supply for us. Then my imagination ran wild for a few minutes and I wondered if he could grow ALL of our vegetables for us. I sent him an email to see if he would be interested in talking about it. I don’t think her fully understood what I was asking for. Kevin replied back letting me know he’d be happy to sell me his current surplus of whatever he had. But I had moved well beyond just wanting whatever he had availlable at that time. I wanted to know if it would be possible for him to produce all of the vegetables, eggs, and chicken for our restaurant on his tiny 1.3 acre plot of land. Just how much can he squeeze out of that tiny plot?

We met the following Tuesday and Kevin brought 3 dozen eggs with him. They were $3/dozen. Way more than the $1.20/dozen I had been paying when I bought them buy the case. I would have to add 50¢ to each breakfast sammich these eggs went on to cover the additional cost and that made me nervous. What if folks don't want to pay the extra? We sat down and I asked him if he could grow enough fruits, vegetables, and chickens on his small farm to meet all my needs. He didn’t know, but he was interested in trying. As we talked, we realized we both had the same beliefs on what are the fundamental responsibilities shared by both farmers and restaurateurs:

• Maximum positive environmental impact
• Organic, no pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, growth hormones or anything else. Everything that goes into the farm must come from the farm (except the initial seed and animal stock). We want this to be a “Closed Loop System”
• Heirloom varieties (No GMO products EVER!). We want varieties that grow well in central Texas and that have been farmed here from traditional seed stocks.

   We both believe we have a responsibility to provide affordable, healthy food to our community that is part of an economically viable system, self sustaining, and has an overall environmentally positive impact. The question is, “can we do it?” Neither of us really knows for sure, but we both got very excited about the possibility and are determined to give it a try. We shook hands, Kevin went to his day job, and I commenced to cooking the eggs he brought. We started offering the, “Farm Fresh” eggs right away and to my surprise, all but one customer ordered the more expensive eggs. We sold out of all three dozen eggs by the end of the day!! I emailed Kevin requesting more eggs as soon as he could. Two days later he brought four dozen eggs and by the end of the day we had sold out of all of them as well. It was at this point I felt like we were on to something positive. We made arrangement to have me, LaValle, and our baker Ben visit Kevin at his farm to survey the farm and talk more about the possibilities.

   I was blown aware by marriage of old and new farming techniques that Kevin was employing on his tiny little farm. It was by far the most efficient, ecologically beneficial farming I had ever seen. I was impressed by everything from his compost tea system to the chickens running around the lot as if it belonged to them and we were just visitors on their farm. Water retention, soil retention, fertilization, and pest control were all carefully planned out and operating for self sustainability. He has everything from crop rotation to shade farming on his land and we could see clearly that he was only just getting started. The vegetables that were growing were young and incredibly healthy for the poor rocky soil conditions in the area. He explained to us how he is able to pull all his learning together to make that happen, and over the next year I plan to use this blog to tell you if it can indeed be done, how he does it, and how you are going to benefit from it by dining at the Purple Bean Café.

Cheers!

Troy Twibell

The Purple Bean Cafe