What is the Shelf-life of Farm-Fresh eggs?

I recently received a (great) question regarding the shelf-life of eggs. To be honest, I haven't been thinking about the shelf-life of eggs very much in the past few months because the eggs haven't been hanging out in the refrigerator for more than 5 days at a time! Now that's what you might call true farm fresh eggs! 

When you go to (or used to go) the grocery store to get eggs, there's a giant refrigerated section absolutely full of eggs. Chances are, there's probably eggs from Southern egg farms (Vital Farms, ect...), Pacific Northwest egg farms (Organic Valley), Midwest egg farms, and on occasion, local egg farms (example: McIntyre Farms' eggs). On most of those egg cartons, there also might be a label that says "Fresh!" or "All-Natural." (By the way, the true definition of "all natural" would mean that the chickens were allowed to fend for themselves in every aspect of their life:) 

While the eggs in the grocery store say "fresh," just how fresh are they? 

Commercial egg farms collect eggs throughout the week, and then ship them out at the end of the week. All the eggs are stored in massive refrigerated rooms immediately after being cleaned, which keeps egg-aging at a minimum. By the time those eggs get into the giant refrigerated section in the store, they are about 2-3 weeks old, depending on what farm they originated from. Then, by the time you buy them, they are either right at the 3 week mark (if you get them when they're restocked), or about 4 weeks old (if you buy them at the end of that week). So, essentially, once you finish that last egg at the end of the following week, those eggs have aged 5 weeks. After that point, there's about another week or week and a half before those eggs start looking/tasting questionable. 

What about Farm-Fresh eggs? 

Well, all eggs start out as "farm-fresh," whether they come from commercial farms or small local farms. The deciding factor all comes down to how fast the eggs get in the hands of the consumer. The longer it takes, the less fresh the eggs are. 

For example, when you purchase eggs from Happy Hen Farms, you are getting eggs that anywhere from a few hours old, up to 5 days old. That means that you can leave them in you fridge for basically 5 weeks and they will still be okay to eat, but they won't be fresh anymore:) Comparatively, when you buy eggs from the store, you can only keep them in your fridge for 2-3 weeks. While I don't recommend keeping eggs for 5 weeks, buying farm fresh eggs gives you "shelf-life-insurance" in case you get behind on routine egg-eating! 

Another reason why I don't recommend keeping eggs for long periods of time is because the longer an egg is stored, the more nutrients are lost through oxidation. Since the egg shell is porous, and the egg itself is made up of a lot of water, an egg will start to evaporate more and more the longer it's stored. 

Eggs aren't like the ocean. What I mean by that is: when sea-water evaporates, it leaves the salt behind, making the ocean more concentrated with salt. An egg isn't like that, meaning there won't be a nutrient build-up once all the water evaporates out of the egg. Rather, you actually lose nutrients the longer the egg sits. 

All this said, an egg's life depends solely on how fast YOU can get them and eat them!