How To Find Farm Fresh Eggs Near You

Some might argue that it is when you're making a basic dish featuring eggs — like creamy scrambled eggs, a lá Julia Child — that you will need the highest-quality product, because as the sole ingredients, they have nowhere to hide. While you can buy pasture-raised eggs from few different brands at the grocery store and they'll be fairly good, you cannot beat farm-fresh eggs, bought pretty much straight from the source (though we don't advise trying to give chickens your money). Food Republic got the skinny on where to find farm fresh eggs from Trista Best, registered dietitian at Balance One Supplements. "For the freshest local eggs, start at farmers' markets, CSA programs, or food co-ops," she advised.

You can find these by searching on social media (many of them advertise their wares there), or simply searching on Google for "farm fresh eggs near me." If those results are too chaotic for you, try Local Harvest, where you enter your location information and get a neat, organized list of all the places you can find local eggs. Plus, Local Harvest will direct you to actual farms where you can arrange egg pick-ups or find out where they sell their eggs. Finally, it never hurts to ask on social media if friends, or friends of friends, keep chickens and are willing to sell you some of what they lay.

Unless you buy the eggs straight from the farm or see the chickens in someone's backyard as evidence that they are, indeed, fresh, sneaky third-party sellers might try to pass off store-bought eggs as something they are not. "Avoid eggs that look too uniform," Trista Best told us — farm-kept hens lay different sizes and colors of eggs, whereas chickens raised for commercial purposes are used based on their breed to lay specific types of eggs, which then get further sorted for uniformity.

Best also advises against buying eggs that are "overly clean, as they may be rebranded commercial eggs rather than farm-direct." Fresh from a hen, an egg can be speckled with dirt and mud, or sometimes even have feathers, straw, or grass stuck to them (if this is distasteful to you, just give them a rinse, and then be sure to keep them in your fridge afterward). "Truly fresh eggs have firm whites" — both inner and outer — "high-standing yolks, and a rough, unwashed shell," Best told us. The shells also tend to be thicker and more robust than store-bought egg shells.