Watercolor and ink, 4” x 6”, Framed

Fresh Eggs

By Carlynn Trout

Eggs in a molded pulp carton: three pale sage, two tobacco, three coffee, and four cream. Such fragile jewels plucked from clucking, unknowing hens. I loved raising my own chicks to maturity in my backyard. I hammered together a henhouse from a kit and enclosed it with chicken wire. Every egg held culinary potential. If you can raise your own chickens, gather their eggs, admire the speckled shells (like oval pearls unbattered by salty waves) before cracking and beating them into an omelete, that’s success. Joy. But as with all things precious, how fiercely you must protect your chickens from the fox who calls at night or the dog next door who jumps the fence and wants nothing more than to tear the feathered dears to shreds. 

Sometimes best attempts and chicken wire fail. 

I bought these beauties, thankfully, at the farmer’s market.