Hens and Eggs - Midsummer Update - TC.Farm - Fine Food Sustainably Raised

TC Farm makes it easy to get deliveries of unique foods. We try to make it easy. And accessible. And maybe even a little fun. (Maybe!).

Home deliveries
Organic pastries
A portal where you can add exactly what you want to your deliveries

That's all great. But sometimes, doing that also makes it easy to miss out on just how different TC Farm is and what we are trying to do!

At our core: we collaborate with our local farms and artisan food makers to create food that doesn't exist elsewhere. Food that we want to feed our families but can’t find in the grocery.

In the case of our eggs, that means we are insisting that they are raised to a standard that goes way beyond what you'll find for almost any eggs anywhere else. (Yes, that means beyond other "pasture raised" eggs you find at the farmers market or the co-op. Really, it's different.)

Raising things the right way means matching the number of hens in our flocks to our members' needs while still keeping the individual flock sizes smaller. (Think "community of hens" not "grocery/industrial scale operation".) Of course that also means if our scheduling isn't perfect or the weather doesn't cooperate, we can feel those effects.

Part of our mission is to make the local food movement more viable. When an old friend called to ask if we’d be willing to support his work by offering the eggs from his new flock, we jumped at the chance. Our members needed more eggs and he needed support at a fair price to keep his work going. We planned ahead based on that farm’s estimated production schedule and expected more eggs to be available for our members in June and July.

These new hens are late to start laying eggs. We think it is because of the extreme heat in June. We are caring for animals here, we can't simply "turn up" the machine. They will be laying when they are laying. So until we are at full capacity, that means we still don't have as many eggs for everyone as our members would like.

For this last week of July through August, we expect that there will be one more month of reduced eggs.

How We've Managed This

We have been adding new members to TC Farm through the spring but letting them know when they come on board that we will not be offering them any eggs until we get to full capacity.
We've proportionally assigned fewer eggs in planned deliveries for members who have been with us longer to make sure there are enough eggs to go around.
Even though we've reduced that number proportionally, we've worked hard to try to make sure that members who have been with us for a while who only get 1 dozen eggs in a delivery still get that 1 dozen eggs (hard to give away 80% of a dozen. I mean -- I suppose you could but that would get messy fast!)

So if you happen to be trying to add extra eggs to your next delivery and getting an error, it isn't that the portal isn't working. It's that there aren't "extra" eggs in inventory.

Just so you know: Our primary egg farm (the one you’ve been enjoying eggs from for years) is also expanding this fall to add a new area for hens. That way we can keep those smaller flocks with higher welfare and quality eggs. So there will be added eggs coming this fall and winter.

We see the light at the end of the tunnel. Soon. Thanks for being members and sticking with us! And helping us raise food that is raised differently!