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Scrambling for a Living

Every Saturday morning, Barry and Teri Jones wind their way through Milwaukee County's South Shore in a maroon 2006 Scion, leaving fresh eggs and frozen chickens on porches and doorsteps.

Customers put out coolers the night before. Empty egg cartons are swapped for cartons filled with a rainbow of eggs - beige to dark brown, robin-egg blue and military green. One customer leaves an old-fashioned basket for her eggs.

The delivery charge is a quarter. Eggs are $2.50 a dozen. Payment is cash only, but the honor system works, too.

It's a flashback to simpler times, when eggs came from an egg man - not a supermarket. Forty years ago, everyone knew the farmer who raised the chickens that laid the eggs. Sheds and barns throughout Racine and Milwaukee counties were filled with chickens and cows that fed the locals. Today, most of those barns are empty, falling down or gone.

"Most eggs come from large industrial farms - corporations - that house thousands of chickens," said Barry Jones, who grew up in Franksville and now earns a living off a small farm in the Town of Raymond.

"There are so few small farms left," Jones, 54, said as he gathered eggs in an 1880s-era hen house before he and his wife began Saturday's delivery of 100 dozen eggs to about 40 homes.

The hens didn't seem to mind parting with their eggs as they marched around the coop, clucking and scratching the straw floor. Chickens don't naturally lay many eggs this time of year.

"They're animals; they operate on the sun," Jones explained. "When the days are short, they'll go into a molt and stop laying."

So Jones fools Mother Nature.

"If I leave the lights on in the barn until midnight, they think it's summer," he said. When the wind chill is 10 below zero, as it was overnight Friday, he leaves the lights on all night.

"I think it gives them a psychological boost," he said.

The hens stay inside on bitter-cold days. Otherwise, they wander the farmyard and only head for the henhouse at dark, or when a rooster sounds the alarm that a hawk is circling above. Dinner in warmer months is grass, bugs and an occasional frog, plus corn that Jones buys from a local grain elevator and grinds with soybeans. Farmers market regulars

The winter egg route serves about 100 customers, but not everyone orders each week. The most devoted customers are regulars at the South Shore Farmers Market in Bay View, where the couple sell their eggs and frozen chickens on Saturday mornings in warmer months. They've been at the farmers market for three years and plan to expand the booth this year to cook and sell eggs for breakfast.

The egg route is in its second winter, and they haven't missed a Saturday, no matter how cold, snowy or icy. Demand has spread by word of mouth, Teri Jones said.

Several weeks ago, the couple left about 30 half-dozen cartons of free eggs on front porches near existing customers as a marketing pitch.

"We want our customers on the same streets because that way, delivery is faster," Barry Jones said.

"Farmer Jones," as Jones is known to customers, puts his picture on every egg carton. The farmer in the cream-colored straw hat is an icon to those who frequent the farmers market and subscribe to the egg route. Even the neighborhood dogs recognize him.

Jones doesn't label his eggs as organic.

"The only thing a label guarantees is you're gonna pay a lot more for it," he said.

The couple's customers appreciate them. One woman baked them muffins. Others have left cookies, cards and thank-you notes.

"Please keep the change toward gas," read one note taped to a door Saturday.

"My mom forgot to leave check, she is at work, she will pay next week," read another note.

"Owed 25 cents delivery last time," read a third note, explaining why the customer tacked on an extra 25 cents.

Teri Jones, who navigates and does the bookkeeping, accepts phone orders until the couple leave to start deliveries. One order Saturday was left on the answering machine at 5 a.m.

"There's no business model, so we had to make this up on our own," Barry Jones said. "We had to figure out how you get customers, how much you charge and whether people would be friendly."

Teri Jones maps the route on laminated, enlarged maps with sticky-note arrows. She keeps a clipboard by the phone to write down orders. A change of careers

As a boy in Franksville, Barry Jones rode his bike to a next-door poultry farm to earn extra money by gathering eggs. He grew up to become a home inspector. But he never forgot the farm.

Six years ago, the couple bought their century-old farmhouse with a barn.

Then two things happened: Demand for home inspections took a dive. And a neighbor gave the couple 20 hens. Teri Jones' friends raved about the multicolored eggs. Suddenly, they were in business.

"My farm experience from my childhood is going to save my bacon," Barry Jones said. "With the economy being as it is, home inspections are down, but the farm is on the rise."

Their flock of hens has grown to 500. Egg route orders have doubled this year. Teri Jones also works as a graphic artist.

One young egg customer wants to follow in Barry Jones' footsteps.

"I want to be a chicken farmer," 4-year-old Salim Lubbad of South Milwaukee said as he accepted a container Saturday that held the two largest eggs laid by the chickens last week.

"I saved these for you," Jones told the wide-eyed boy, who said he likes chickens "because they lay eggs."

Salim's dad, Ali Lubbad, and his mom, Sara Alauf, are planning a family trip to the Jones Family Farm this spring. They ordered several dozen eggs and a few frozen chickens Saturday, including some for friends.

Were the frozen chickens killed, Salim wanted to know.

"No," Ali Lubbad said with a fatherly smile. "They were old chickens that died in their sleep."

Salim and his sister, Luma, 7, have a better childhood for knowing where eggs come from, their parents said.

"They're growing up with the idea a farmer comes to the door to give us eggs, rather than us going to a supermarket," Ali Lubbad said.

He wants to pry open the milk chute on the family's 1930s bungalow, which was painted shut decades ago after milk delivery routes disappeared.

"People always talk of that golden era," Ali Lubbad said. "We could bring back the chute."

Barry and Teri Jones hope to add bottled milk to their delivery route. Teri Jones' childhood memories include a milkman.

"We just have to find a farmer that still has cows," she said.


Is this cool or what ???

Very cool!

That is so freaking cool!