Geraldine, thanks for your comprehensive and well written information.
Seems like I learn something every time I'm on this forum. I didn't know that refrigeration affects egg white thickness. And I was brought up on a farm!!
It's also good to know that all my old recipes for keeping eggs over the winter packed in sawdust or waterglass (to mention only a couple) are as valid now as they were a hundred or more years ago.
I have really lucked out in the egg department. A couple of months ago I discovered a woman who keeps a flock of free range, organically raised hens and sells their eggs. Wow. I had forgotten how wonderful real eggs taste. These are the eggs of my childhood: rich, upstanding, and utterly delicious. In fact, I've even stopped reading the morning paper while eating breakfast, the better to enjoy my eggs - a real departure for this certified 24-7 bibliophile!
Furthermore, it seems that this gal has an organic farmer friend who keeps cows . . . omyomyomy
I found my egg lady when our local paper (I call it the Daily Endeavor, which conveys a rough idea of my opinion about its overall quality) ran a front-page story in its Easter food section, about--what else--eggs, which was beautifully illustrated with a photograph of colored-by-the-hen eggs perched in some lovely cut glass egg cups.
Being interested in obtaining some egg cups of my own, I called the article's author to ask about the egg cups. She told me they were family heirlooms belonging to a friend who had lent them for the photograph and that she herself had brought in the eggs. One thing leading to another, I inquired whether she ever sold any of her eggs. Bingo! She not only sold eggs, she sold a LOT of eggs, and even offered to deliver them.
So I'm now getting 2 dozen beautiful, wonderful eggs every week, and extra if I need them, at $2.00 a dozen, and consider them a very great bargain.
She also grows organic veggies. I can hardly wait!!
P.S. (Did you know that eggs are the most nearly perfectly balanced protein there is? I didn't either, until I read Frances Moore Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet". Excellent little tome, that.)