The Amish Way to Keep Eggs Fresh for 6 Months — No Refrigerator

📖 Get my book "Annie's Amish Kitchen Wisdom" — 66 plain methods, every saving backed by real prices: https://amishkitchenwisdom.com I cracked an egg this morning that was laid last spring. Near enough a year in the cellar — no refrigerator, no freezer, nothing humming in the corner — and it fried up for my husband's breakfast like the hen had just left the nest. Most folks would have thrown that egg out months ago. They would have read a date stamped on a carton and trusted it over their own two eyes, and into the bin it would have gone, good food and good money with it. My name is Annie Stoltzfus. I am Amish, from Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, and I have kept eggs through the whole year the way my mother taught me, and her mother taught her — across the same gray crock that sits in my cellar to this day. Today I will show you both ways we did it, and I will be honest with you about what each one can do and what it cannot. Here is the one idea that makes the whole thing work. A fresh egg comes to you already sealed. When a hen lays an egg she leaves the faintest coating on the shell — we call it the bloom. You can hardly see it, but it closes up the shell against the air and keeps the spoiling out. Your only job is to not break that seal. Which means the first thing most kitchens get wrong is this: do not wash the eggs you mean to keep. The moment you take water and a cloth to a fresh egg, you scrub that bloom clean away, the air gets in, and your egg will not keep a week, let alone a winter. The long-keeping way is the lime crock — one ounce of pickling lime to each quart of cool water, fresh unwashed eggs set down gently, covered so not one is peeking out at the air, and stored in the coolest darkest corner you have. Six months without a thought, and many a time clear past a year. I will tell you true what changes and what doesn't, because I would rather you hear it from me than be surprised at the crock. The second way turns the egg into something good to set on the table — Pennsylvania Dutch red beet eggs, that deep ruby color that draws the eye. But the pickled jar and the lime crock are not the same thing, and I will tell you plainly which one is built to last and which one is not, because it touches whether your family stays well.