Farmer Tei left for tour Tuesday (with Baryshnikov, who is acting in a crazy Russian play which requires many suitcases full of wires and projectors and bing bongs and noodles)—but enough about Tei, the poor guy just missed a very big day at Peebottle: our first egg.

My dopamine spiker went through the roof when I opened the door to the nesting boxes yesterday evening to find a lovely brown egg waiting for me. Tei recently showed the chickens where these accommodations were, since it seemed their small brains had yet to notice them. (We had to do the same thing when we first got them and they didn’t notice the stairs leading to their house from their run. We dragged one up the stairs and the rest followed. Now they go in at bedtime every night.) Although I really didn’t do much work (changing the water and feeding them are so easy, it really makes a person rethink all those non-egg-laying high-maintenance pets), I was overwhelmed with pride, as well as awe.

I’ve never been so sure I was going to break something as when i was transporting this egg to my sister’s house, where she and my brother-in-law and my nephew shared my excitement.

This is Leo. He was really excited about the egg, until I poached it, when he refused to taste it even though he loves eggs. He said “I’m not eating that. It came out of a chicken’s butt.” I tried to argue with him briefly, but it is true, more or less. Anyway, as a fellow city kid, I understood the feeling, a hundred percent. We pointed out that every egg he’s ever eaten came out of a chicken butt, and then my sister launched into a description of a factory farm where chickens are crowded and stepping over each others’ dead, diseased bodies, but I’m willing to give him a little time to get over it.

Double trouble. This is not very unusual with chickens who are just beginning to lay eggs and haven’t quite got the timing of their cycle right. I’m not mad at that.

A really fresh egg has a very compact white. The longer it hangs out, the more it spreads out.

I wish I knew which chicken to praise and which ones to shame into being more like the egg-pooper-outer, but I’m confident all the ladies will follow suit. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!