Eggcellent

This week I decided it would be a good idea to start selling the eggs I'm getting from my seven hens. After talking it over with my husband, we settled on $2/dozen, advertised through my office's email alias.

Tuesday morning I sent my carefully edited marketing message, making sure I was making a strong sales pitch without hinting my concern we might be buried in fresh eggs within the month. Two adults can only eat so many eggs in a week, right?

A few minutes after I clicked Send, I had two takers for one dozen each. Cool.

Several more minutes went by with no response. "I guess I'll have to go make up a sandwich board sign for the road side at home after all," I thought. What a pain.

Whoa, Baby! All of a sudden, the floodgates opened, and by the end of it, I had orders for 9 dozen eggs! Let's see...2.5 dozen in the fridge right now, plus 5-6 eggs per day, divided by 12, times...um, I'm backordered until the second week of June.

Humbled, I headed home, put on my trusty rubber boots, and headed off to the coop to gather the day's eggs. There were four. Four?! Ok, ok, let's not panic. I carefully packaged 2/3 of what I had in the fridge for the first two customers on my list, and brought them to work the next day.

On Wednesday, I got 5 eggs. The sky blue gritty missing egg I expected the day before arrived as a giant double yolker, my first. We're keeping that one for ourselves. Four more eggs for selling, then.

Except I made the mistake of "putting all my eggs in one basket" (my hand) and dropped one. Damn. My outlook for filling my first orders in a timely fashion were looking grim. Thankfully, I have excited (eggcited?), patient clients. The woman who was supposed to get eggs Thursday swapped with the woman who got eggs Wednesday (she would be out of the office on Friday, my new delivery day), and this morning I brought in that third dozen, and yesterday the girls stepped prodcution back up to the 6 eggs I was accustomed to getting. Whew.

Thank heaven for long weekends. Provided I continue collecting 5-6 eggs per day through the holiday, I should be back on track when Tuesday rolls around.

Lesson: You can't count on nature to bend to your sales or production goals. Duly noted.

:)