Rachel Bradley- Gomez: In Praise of Eggs from CV Chickens

Every morning, around 5 a.m., the distant, throaty cry of a rooster can be heard from the yawning, misty valley of Castro Valley below.  While I concede that his crowing may not be coveted by the rooster's immediate neighbors, I love it dearly from afar.  The vocals of my feathered friend hearken me back to a simpler time.  He draws a mental image of days bygone when Castro Valley was an agrarian township burgeoning with bountiful farms.  As I hear him cry, I can almost see the horses tied to hitching posts and beyond them, rolling, fertile hills planted with sustenance.

Time has dramatically changed the landscape of Castro Valley and an argument can be made as to whether this change is a boon or not.  Our fertile farmland has been replaced by supermarkets and pavement.  The food we buy from these stores is brought by truck from far off places, grown by nameless farmers on massive farms.  We the residents of Castro Valley largely purchase our sustenance through such retail conduits as Safeway, Lucky's and Trader Joe's.  As I ponder on these changes, I think one thing is fairly certain, Castro Valley has lost touch with its farming roots.

Yet, that rooster in the Valley decries the modernization that I now behold.  He is a bastion of life as Castro Valley once knew it.  He also symbolizes the intrinsic joy of waking early, while mist still hangs heavy in the air, to collect warm, brown eggs newly laid.  Such eggs, made of sunshine, pesky insects and garden scraps are the tastiest, most nutritious that money cannot buy.  These are eggs that taste of Castro Valley's sweet grass and clean air.  They speak of the very soil that is beneath our feet.          

I know this because I too have kept chickens in Castro Valley.  And while I did not have a rooster, a thing forbidden by zoning, my family and I enjoyed a bounty of fresh, flavorful eggs daily.  In the valley, with our mild winters, and excellent gardening conditions, keeping chickens is, shall we say, second nature.  The biggest issue that one might encounter is predators, in particular, raccoons.  However, precautions can be taken to keep a flock safe at night.

We fed our small flock almost solely from our fertile vegetable garden and table scraps, which would otherwise have gone to Waste Management.  Rather than fill our green bin, we offered the scraps to our insatiable hens.  The "girls" would also scurry about eating offensive slugs, snails, and whatever green leaf they could glean from between the fence boards of our vegetable garden.  Their soft cackling and antics were a pure joy to behold. 

Yet, all of these benefits paled in comparison to the miracle that were their freshly laid eggs.  One must only crack the thick brown shell to expose the golden treasure within.  Upon tasting their first, "farm fresh" egg, my children quickly denounced supermarket eggs as tasteless and insipid.  They savored the egg's full flavor and said they could taste Castro Valley's "terroir".  My pancakes, souffles and eggs Benedict made with our "Castro Valley eggs" never tasted so good.