Yesterday while I was making dinner, firing up my massive new grill that must have used 16 large logs and 42 small ones, a little lady, pushing eighty, came to the door of my kitchen in Pereto, asking me if I would like to buy eggs in the morning. This morning she came with the eggs. “How much can I give you for them,” I asked her. There were 14 eggs. “I have to feed my chickens, you know,” she said. “It must cost a lot to feed a chicken,” I said. To the tune of 9 euro for 14 eggs. I had no idea. I thought if you lived with chickens out back, the chickens ate the fruit scraps and the vegetable scraps, and maybe corn that seems to grow with abundance in her yard–but I don’t know, maybe they are fed an imported and high tech diet and massaged at dusk and shipped off to the hot springs once a week.
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