Skip the shelf. Find the farmer

Last week I wrote about Vital Farms and Wall Street in the chicken coop. Your responses flooded my inbox.

The message was clear: Okay, Cody, so where DO we buy good eggs?

Fair question. I've been thinking about it all week. Here's where I've landed.

Here's the hard truth about grocery stores.

It's really difficult for small farms to get on those shelves. The regulatory hoops, the volume requirements, the margins. The whole system is set up for scale. And trust, in my experience, doesn't scale very well.  So unless your grocery store happens to stock a local farmer (co-ops are a good place to look), transparency is hard to come by. You're likely trusting a label and a marketing team instead of an actual person.

That's not a knock on anyone trying to do their best in the egg aisle. It's just the reality of how the system works. So instead of helping you pick the best brand on the shelf, I want to help you skip the shelf and find the farmer.

Here's what I believe.

If we want a different food system, we have to build it ourselves. One purchase at a time. One relationship at a time.

Every dollar you spend outside the grocery store is a vote for a different kind of food system. It's money that goes directly into a farmer's pocket instead of through layers of distributors, corporations, and shareholders. It's how small farms survive. It's how rural communities stay alive. It's how we rebuild the local food networks that our grandparents took for granted.

I'm not anti-grocery store. But I've seen what happens when we outsource our entire food supply to a system designed for efficiency and profit above all else. We end up standing in an aisle full of pretty packages, paying premium prices for clever marketing, and struggling to know if what's inside matches the promise on the label.

The alternative is relationships. Knowing who raises your food. Being able to ask questions and get real answers.

That's the food system I want to live in. And building bridges between eaters and farmers, making it easier to shop outside the grocery store, that's become my life's work.

Start local if you can. Farmers markets let you talk directly to the person who raised your food. Small health food stores often source locally, just ask. Facebook groups for "local food" or "farm fresh" plus your city can be surprisingly helpful. Craigslist's farm and garden section is another option.

I know that's easier said than done. Cobbling together a grocery list from a scattered network of individual farmers takes time most people don't have.

Our friends in Indiana are offering pasture-raised eggs, delivered fresh and sealed with natural bloom.

If local isn't an option, some farms ship.

I'll be honest. I've never ordered eggs online. We raise laying hens, and when we need more, I buy local. But after last week's conversation, I wanted to test an operation that ships.

Fresh Egg Co out of Indiana. I've actually been to their farm. Walked the pastures, seen the mobile coops, asked way too many questions. I know those farmers and have confidence they're doing it right.

I'll let you know how it goes. The shipping, the packaging, and the real test: what happens when I crack one into a pan.

Fair warning: shipping eggs isn't cheap. We're talking $9 to $12 a dozen or more. That's real money, and I understand it's not realistic for everyone. No judgment here. We're all just doing the best we can.

This is just the start.

Consider this a quick take. We're going to dive much deeper into eggs. What to look for, questions to ask, how to tell quality when you crack one open. More to come.

But eggs are just one piece of the puzzle.

Look, I'm by no means perfect at this. I end up at the grocery store more than I'd like, just like anyone else. But one of my personal passions, maybe it's an obsession at this point, is hunting down the best ingredients I can find and buying direct from the source whenever possible.

And I know plenty of you are trying to do the same thing and hitting walls. 

• Good butter from grass-fed cows. 

• Raw milk, if it's even legal in your state.

• Bread made with real ingredients instead of industrial seed oils and preservatives.

• Fish that isn’t farmed in questionable conditions. 

• Even something as simple as spices that haven't been sitting in a warehouse for three years.

The grocery store makes all of this look easy. Everything's right there, neatly packaged, ready to grab. But the closer you look, the more you realize how much of what's on those shelves is just... marketing.

So here's what I'm thinking. What if I put together some guides on sourcing these things?

I don't want to just hand you a list of approved sources. That's just another form of "trust the label." I want to share the process. How I find farmers. What I look for. The questions I ask. My goal is to make shopping outside the grocery store a little less overwhelming. One ingredient at a time.

And I'd rather tackle your list than guess at it.

What are you struggling to source? What have you basically given up on finding? Where do you feel like you're flying blind?

Send me a message and tell me. I'll do the digging. Test things out, make the calls, visit the farms when I can. And I'll share not just what I find, but how I found it.

If we want a different food system, we have to build it ourselves. One ingredient, one farmer, one relationship at a time.

Your farmer (learning right alongside you),
Cody