Bass casually scooped up some feed from the trough and popped it into his mouth, encouraging me to do the same. He mills and blends his own, using grains he buys from midwestern organic farms after visiting them and quizzing the farmers. The feed was gold-green, rather than the corn color I had expected, and ground to a medium grit. Bass several times rebuffed my questions as to what the mixture included, insisting on proprietary secrecy. The mixture did not taste fishy, as I had suspected it would.
Many poultry farms give fish meal to chickens, resulting in fishy-tasting chicken and eggs.
Micalike chips of oyster shell glistened in the dark, loamy stacks of the farm's carefully turned compost, which Bass plans to sell to urban gardeners for a pretty penny. Country Hen eggs can be labeled organic anywhere in the country, because of Bass's feed. But standards for organic eggs vary by state and by certifying organization. The ramshackle henhouses were half open to the pecking yard, and feed troughs were filled with organic corn, soy, and wheat to supplement what the birds could forage. A sniff told me that muckraking was given low priority.