The year old egg

I often get asked: “How long are the eggs good”

Now ‘good’ can mean a lot of different things. 

Best taste.

Highest nutrient content.

But I think when most people are asking that, they mean not rotten. No one wants to crack open a rotten egg, so I understand wanting to know where it goes from being ‘good’ to DO NOT crack.

We wanted to try to find that line…so we started an experiment on May 19th of LAST year. Asa gathered a bucket of eggs, making sure they were clean and not cracked and we set them in the garage. 

The garage has no climate control and minimal insulation. The freezers are in there, so when they are working hard in the summer the place is extra hot and in the winter quite cold. We left the bucket there through it all.

We checked the eggs after 30 days of sitting out. 

We cracked a few open and they were like normal eggs. We ate them for breakfast.

We checked the eggs at 60 days. 

Still mostly like normal eggs. Starting to be a little thicker and a bit harder to get out of the shell.

Did a check again in September, by then they had been sitting in a bucket in the garage for the hot 120 days of “summer.” They were pretty thick, not a lot of egg white and the yolks were sticking to the shell a bit. Still no off smell. I can’t remember if we ate them but it would have been possible.

Then life got a bit crazy, we moved my mom to the farm full-time. A bunch of stuff ended up piled in front of our experiment bucket and it slipped to the backs of our minds. 

And then about 10 days ago Asa pulled out the bucket. Which has now been through all the temperature shifts a Colorado Mountain year has to offer. Eggs that were 372 days in a bucket in a farmer’s garage. 

It was time to see how ‘bad’ the eggs were…

We found clothes pins to hold our noses…

We dawned safety glasses to protect our eyes…

We looked for hazmat suits but only came up with our regular barn clothes…

We gathered extra buckets in case we needed them…🤢

Finally, we cracked open the YEAR-OLD eggs….And…Nothing shocking happened. 

We took the clothes pins off our noses to see if we could smell anything at all…Nothing 

The safety glasses were unnecessary as were the spare buckets…😍

Inside the much hardened shells were completely dried out yolks. Not even the slightest smell of rotten egg. We even set the bowl with the cracked eggs on the table to show people. We ate our next 5 meals with them right there. 

Did we try to rehydrate them to eat them?? 

No, I had a stack of fresh eggs sitting on the counter, but I’m fully confident we could have eaten the dried-out yolks had we had a reason to. 

It goes to show how with the egg, nature built a natural house for bird reproduction. Eggshells have tiny pores that allow the exchange of gases necessary for the growing chick inside. When the egg is not fertilized and brooded by a hen, the eggshell protects the nutrients inside that are intended to feed a growing baby bird but often in our world, are fried up for breakfast. 

Over time, because of the porosity of the eggshells, the inside loses moisture. If harmful bacteria don’t get in, the egg doesn’t go “bad,” it just dries out. 

When the egg is laid, it is covered with a microbial coating called the bloom. It seals the egg helping to keep out harmful bacteria and slowing the loss of moisture. 

In the United States, eggs are most often washed to be sold. We are required to do so for the eggs we sell to restaurants and grocery stores. 

The washing removes the bloom stripping away one of the eggshell’s tools for preservation. Of course with refrigeration, we are able to keep those washed eggs ‘good’ for a fair amount of time, but it’s opening up the shell to the world that makes eggs go ‘bad’.

The majority of eggs we sell are washed, but you can always request unwashed if you want the bloom in place to keep the eggs longer. Even washed eggs should be good for a few months in the fridge, though over time they will also start to dry out. 

Thanks for reading my somewhat dramatized story of the year-old eggs.

Have a wonderful week,

Aila