You probably don’t know this about me (unless you’re family), but I like chickens. Do I decorate my house with ceramic chickens or farm scene wallpaper? No. Nor do I actually own real chickens, but I grew up with a stuffed chicken companion that never left my side. She made quite the impression.
I guess that explains why I enjoyed this assignment so much, and probably sent in way too many photos of the chickens I visited. Chickens are so photogenic!
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that recently I visited Vital Farms in south Austin for the Statesman. Vital Farms is a free-range chicken farm that produces organic eggs.
It’s free-range in the traditional sense, as in pasture raising, so the hens actually walk around in the grass outside all the time. They eat a combo of grass and feed, and from what owner Jason Jones (photo at top) says, this lifestyle really affects the taste, texture and nutritional content of the eggs.
When I arrived at the farm, hens were wandering inside a few large, fenced in areas. Jones told me they have to move the hens from one area to another about once a week because most of the grass gets eaten. Farm hand Billy Hoode was there to take on that task.
Did I mention it was a beautiful day to be outside? It was! So I hung out with the chickens for a while.
They have a Mobile Chicken Unit (MCU), which is basically a coop on wheels, where the hens lay their eggs. It’s that thing hooked to the tractor in one of the above photos. It sits in the middle of the grassy area and hens can come and go as they please.
I realize that you may not love chickens as much as I do, so I’ll end the chicken montage here and move on to our next stop.
After a probably inappropriate amount of time with the chickens (I could’ve hung out there all day), I was set to go to the processing facility. Vital Farms only deals in eggs, so there wasn’t a slaughter house or plucking facility, or anything that I would imagine companies dealing in chicken meat require. Just a small area to wash, inspect and package eggs.
Basically, eggs arrive to the facility, they are rinsed, then put on a conveyor belt.
Then they pass, one by one, over a light to see if they have any imperfections like cracks or defects inside. this process is called candling.
Then the eggs go through a machine that washes them thoroughly, and they come out the other side ready to be separated by weight and packaged for distribution.
That’s the end of our tour, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Now, go hug a chicken.
Click here to read the story by Statesman reporter Lori Hawkins, and view photos.
4 Comments