© Bob Fernandez / StaffTimi Bauscher
A Pa. egg farmer considered killing half his flock until a woman on Facebook devised a plan to save themHamburg egg farmer Josh Zimmerman faced disaster about a month ago when his bulk-egg processor ran out of storage for liquefied eggs for cruise ships, hospitals, hotels, and school cafeterias. The yellow goo from millions of eggs, stored in bladder bags, had filled all the available freezer space. So processors had to shut off the flow.
With a veritable Ol' Man River of eggs, 60,000 a day rolling out of his hen houses, Zimmerman, 37, faced a hard choice: either euthanize his 80,000-hen flock or find a new market for eggs.
Into that void stepped go-getter Timi Bauscher, 38, who runs the Nesting Box Farm Market and Creamery in Kempton, about 20 minutes from Zimmerman's cage-free spread, both in Berks County. She proposed to sell some of Zimmerman's eggs at her roadside market, offering a minimum of five dozen on flats for a discounted $2 a dozen.
Comment: The do-it-yourself supply chain is being rediscovered all over, but bureaucracies still get in the way: