What if we put all the eggs in the same basket?

    My colleague from Egypt told me once about those times when he was growing up, a child in his village. The men from the cities mounting their donkeys carrying household utensils would go from door to door in the villages to trade their offerings for backyard chicken eggs. They had their designated days for barter, and they knew their potential business partners very well. A win-win situation for both womenfolk in the countryside and door-to-door vendors from afar. 

Back in the South Indian highlands, while I was a trainee teacher, I saw women making a difference with the eggs they got from raising chickens at their homestead and selling them to greengrocers in their hometown. Home-produced eggs always enjoyed better prices than the commercially mass-produced ones. The women didn't have a farmers’ market so they sold the eggs to their favorite greengrocers, who would resell them for a small profit.

A sincere word of thanks goes to Teena Jewel Kuriakose, living on a vast ranch in Atlanta, USA, who shot this edible platter of colorful, glowing eggs for our blog a week ago. Obviously, she nurtures a good number of prolific egg-laying breeds. They thank her back in multiple colors after feasting on weeds and insects in the yard all around. Note: don’t mistake this for a photoshopped image. It is a day’s worth of eggs collected from the coop. Teena gives away her surplus from the farm at church services, where she meets the people in the neighborhood. She is just one of many who are growing a fair portion of their own food even though they strictly don’t have to, as everything they need is readily available, only a few clicks or a call away.

Well, I can quite picture Teena this Sunday, on her knees in the back row of her church, praying: “Lord, help me be the person my chickens think I am”.