$4 a dozen.

Some (probably most) of my readers know that I am a Montana girl and that I grew up on a farm.  Well, truthfully, I was a town kid; our farm was 6 miles "out of town", but I spent a lot of time out there playing with  my cousins and hanging out with my Gramma.  On a side note, one of my all time favorite memories is laying by the heat register on the soft carpet in my Gramma's living room after lunch, reading comic books until I was so tired I'd just have to shut my eyes and take a little nap....ahhh.....

Back to the point.

I was driving home the other night and happened to spot a sign posted to someone's tree/fence.  As I was whizzing by at 5 mph over the speed limit, I noticed it said "Farm fresh eggs - $4 a dozen".  I didn't think much of it, until I started thinking about how much our eggs cost us at the grocery store - which I think is possibly more in the range of $2 a dozen?  I don't really keep track, I just buy them.  But $4 a dozen!  Wow!  It made me think of spending the night at a friends house in elementary school and our 'chores' in the morning were to go out and collect the eggs from the chicken coop.  So out we'd go, each of us with our coffee can to the chicken coup that smelled like hay and chicken poop.  I was always fairly scared of what those hens were going to do to us - but turns out they were always a little more scared of us so would flee their box when my friend would stick her hand in to retrieve the eggs.  Seems like each little box had 1-3 eggs, and we'd load up the eggs in our cans (trying hard not to break them) and take them back into the house.  Then we had to wash them, since sometimes they were covered with chicken poop and put them in the fridge.  Talk about farm fresh eggs!  I didn't realize what a luxury I was growing up with...and to think that they could have sold those eggs for $4 a dozen...I think it would have blown their minds...granted, they were a fairly big family, with 4 kids, so I'm sure they used all those eggs to feed themselves.

Another thing I've been hearing about lately is 'raw' milk...and again - growing up, we one of the local ranchers had a milk cow and would bring us milk every few days...I remember HATING the taste of it...and wishing we could just buy store milk, until my mom decided she could just boil it and we'd drink it...  Yep, a good ol stroll down the pasteurization highway and we were good to go!  It shocks me now to think that people actually have to buy a very expensive 'share' of a milk cow to get unpasteurized milk, when we complained about wanting store bought milk!

I guess my point today is that I have all of these experiences and memories of things that I absolutely take for granted, and that the people that I meet/know in the land of paved streets and no mud have never experienced, and possibly never will....which could quite possibly include my own children.  I hope for my kids sake that they will get to enjoy some of those things that I grew up with, and love it and always look back on it fondly, and like me, always dreaming of my next trip to the Big Flat in Montana.