Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan-Claire Mayfield. This is day three hundred and twenty of that project.

This quilt block is a corner block. There is a patch of grass in the bottom right corner, stretching from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. It has a green bold stitching across its top. There are two chickens on the grass, one a brown patch of fabric, and one a black patch of fabric. The black patch is larger than the brown patch, and is the rooster. There are pen markings on each patch to indicate feathers and a wing. The brown patch is a hen that is looking back at the rooster. — Click To Enlarge

Cock-a-doodle-do! The rooster crows.

Some free-range farm flocks have a rooster or two; if they do, you can be sure you will hear them tell the world they are there.

I think roosters can be beautiful creatures. They can also be mean, aggressive, and hard on the hens. We don’t have roosters at Sisu Farm.

That means, of course, that we don’t have fertilized eggs.

Here are a few things to know about fertilized eggs.

Eggs that are fertilized are not more nutritious than their unfertilized counterparts. Nor do they taste or cook up any differently. A fertilized egg will not become an embryo or chick unless it is incubated by a hen or incubator. So you do not ever need to fear cracking a fresh egg.

Some eggs have a blood spot, and I have heard people mistakenly assume it is because it has been fertilized. Blood in an egg is from a broken blood vessel that has happened somewhere along the line in the formation of the egg. It is not harmful or defective, just a fluke.

Unfertilized eggs have a blastodisc, a tiny white spot in the yolk. Fertilized eggs have a blastoderm, and the little white dot looks more like a white bullseye.

So enjoy one of nature’s foods that comes in its own little stay-fresh container.