Did you know commercial egg producers are allowed 4 weeks from the time an egg is laid to get it to the store? The store is then allowed another 4 weeks for the eggs to sit on the shelf and get sold. Once you bring that carton of eggs home, the FDA recommends using them within 5 weeks.

So the eggs you buy at the store — even the expensive organic, free-range eggs — could be anywhere from a month to two months old.

You may be shaking your head right now, but it’s really not that bad. Eggs apparently don’t really go bad, according to animal scientist and nutritionist Patricia Foreman, author of the great new book City Chicks. Pat, an area local, gave an informative talk about the wonders of eggs and chickens at a restaurant here in town last night. (Okay, the eggs will go bad in 6 months to a year!) But otherwise, eggs are perfectly safe to eat within one or even two months of purchase. It might not be the most delicious egg you’ve ever eaten — hello, Walmart eggs — but from a health perspective, it’s fine.

The only major change in an older egg is dehydration — there’s a significant loss of water content within the shell.

How to tell an egg is old? If it floats in a glass of water. That means it’s less dense than the liquid surrounding it. A fresh egg, on the other hand, will drop like a stone. Try it next time you bring a carton of eggs home from the store.

Conversely, this is also why freshly laid eggs make the WORST hard-boiled eggs because there’s too much water in them to separate the inner membrane from inside the shell; trying to peel a fresh hard-boiled egg can be like peeling down to the yolk, it’s not pretty.  If you do want to use fresh eggs to make deviled eggs, for example, it’s best to wait a week or so before boiling them.

Another thing I learned: Store bought eggs and farm eggs are two totally different food products, according to Pat. She said that nine different studies have shown that fresh eggs have:

• 1/3 less cholesterol

• 1/4 less saturated fat

• 2/3 more vitamins

• twice the Omega 3 fatty acids

• thrice the vitamin E  (”thrice” — love using that word)

• and 7 times more Beta Carotene

than commercial eggs.

We all received a copy of Pat’s book. I really look forward to reading it because she walks you through the steps for how to properly use nitrogen-rich chicken waste as compost for your garden (for instance, I discovered that if you don’t immediately cover chicken droppings in a layer of top soil, 30 to 90 percent can volatilize within 24 hours — oops! I see Jake and I will have to  amend our composting operation). She also explains how best to use chickens as natural weed and pest eaters while protecting your plants.

Should make for great reading.