You may have heard talk of an egg crisis the first few months of 2025. Bird flu, rising production costs and the rising demand for eggs (especially during Easter season) combined to make for an eggs-asperating time (sorry).
Shelves bare. Two-dozen limits per consumer. The cost per dozen soaring close to $10 in some places.
Know where there are plenty of eggs? Briscoe Family Farm in Dracut. The only time there’s a shortage of eggs is at the end of the day, when folks have cleaned the farm stand out of the 30 dozen or so Briscoe sells every day.
“The demand far outweighs the supply,” said John “Jay” Briscoe III, who owns Briscoe Family Farm with his wife, Kristie.
Briscoe Family Farm, 274 Nashua Road, is the Dracut Economic Development Business of the Month for May, which also happens to be National Egg Month.
A dozen eggs at Briscoe is $6.50, and you can be sure the chickens laid them earlier that day or the day before. The eggs at the supermarket? Who knows when or where they were laid?
“Nothing is on the stand for more than two days,” Kristie said.
The Briscoes own 450 chickens that produce about 2,300 eggs a week.
The only thing they have more of than eggs is bees. Jay keeps 75 beehives, each of which contains tens of thousands of honeybees – that’s millions of bees on the 3.2-acre farm, producing 2,000 pounds of honey a year.
Newcomers to farming
Briscoe Family Farm’s stand, just about 20 feet off Nashua Road, is open year-round – and 24/7 – but during the colder months, they only stock eggs and honey harvested from the bees.
Soon, the operation will expand, as it does this time every year, when the crops come in – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, zucchini, squash, summer squash, carrots, lettuce, beets and, finally, apples. Last year, they started growing and selling flowers – zinnia, dahlias, sunflowers and other long-stem varieties.
Jay operated his own construction company, Briscoe Remodeling Group (his father, John Jr., taught industrial arts at Dracut High School), until he caught the farming bug in 2015. By 2019, he had given up the remodeling business and started farming full time. Kristie works full time for a health-care company in addition to working the farm.
“We’ve been learning since 2015 what to do and what not to do,” Jay said, adding that Dracut being a Right to Farm community has been a big asset.
“One of the great things about it is that other farmers in town have been helpful,” he said, mentioning Dave Dumaresq at Farmer Dave’s, Warren and Mark Shaw at Shaw Farm, and Steve Hall at Nallie Pastures.
“It’s surprisingly more challenging than I ever anticipated,” Jay said. “I’ve had to use skills from my construction background and employ them in farming. I figured I’d grow some zucchinis and sell them. But there’s a lot of planning and management.
“Part of farming is renovating,” he added, his arm sweeping across the farm.
One of the upgrades folks will notice this season is a semicircular turnoff he added last fall that eliminates the danger of cars pulling over on the side of busy Nashua Road to get to the farm stand.
On that turnoff, as the summer season gets going, Briscoe will have four stands where folks can shop. And if you’ve never been, you should be aware that there will likely be nobody manning the stands. Honesty is truly the best policy (and cameras don’t hurt).
“It’s self-serve, the honor system," Kristie said. “It does work, and it would cost us far more to have someone man it.”
Everything sold at Briscoe family Farm is produced on the farm, with one exception – corn on the cob in the fall.
“One of the major highlights of the operation is that everything is fresh,” Kristie said. “It’s picked and on the stand. We’re all-natural. We grow everything organically. We use sustainable growing practices.”
Stung by the bee bug
Which brings us to the bees.
Jay decided he wanted to keep the insects a few years back despite a childhood fear.
“I was terrified of bees as a child,” he said.
The fear has been conquered and replaced by a healthy respect.
“As a beekeeper, you learn how to raise queens, and how to make new colonies,” he said. “You can always tell what’s blooming by watching the bees.”
Jay has even started to introduce the couple’s 4-year-old twins, Jack and Quinn, to the bees.
As part of their goal of being a year-round farm, the Briscoes also raise turkeys for Thanksgiving. Each year, they raise 80 turkeys – 40 heritage turkeys and 40 of “the classic, broad-breasted birds” that most folks prefer for their holiday spreads.
“We sell out of turkeys every year,” Jay said.
Then come the turkey pies, chicken pies and apple pies, made by Kristie.
Providing freshly produced food products is what got Jay interested in farming, and why he keeps at it.
“I’m trying to give the community clean, healthy food,” he said. “There are a lot of people who don’t know where their food comes from. A big portion of it is highly processed food that you get at grocery stores and restaurants. With fresh produce, you get that sweet and flavorful taste compared to what you get at stores.
“It’s sad for those in the community who live off the dollar stores, but I understand how it happened.”
This year, Jay started experimenting with a different method of growing garlic, covering the ground in black plastic in addition to the traditional white plastic.
“That’s what you do as a farmer is experiment,” he said. “I began growing some garlic in black plastic in addition to those grown in white plastic. The black plastic keeps the soil warmer, so you get the solar gain. Sure enough, there’s a telltale difference.”
A crew of two
Other than high-school students who help over the summer, Jay and Kristie are the only employees of Briscoe Family Farm.
“The students help us plant, and they help us pick the strawberries and raspberries. Without that additional help, we’d be underwater,” Jay said.
Speaking of underwater, the farm – like all farms in the area – were literally that two summers ago, when the rain wouldn’t let up. It serves as a lesson for those who want to start their own farm.
“It’s fun. I enjoy it,” Jay said. “There are a lot of rewards in farming, but there are a lot of soul-crushing moments, too. Like two years ago, all that rain we got. And the year before that, the drought. All summer, no water. Then the next year, nothing but water.”
But as long as they maintain the desire to work the land, Jay and Kristie plan to continue to grow food and their own knowledge of the farming lifestyle.
“Our dream is to have a farm stand with a kitchen,” Jay said, “so Kristie can teach people how to can, bake bread, and not be reliant on highly processed food in the grocery store.”
And isn’t that eggs-actly what farming is all about?
For more information on Briscoe Family Farm, call 978-764-3852, email briscoefamilyfarm@gmail.com, or stop by the farm at 274 Nashua Road.
CAPTIONS
- Jay Briscoe farms 3.2 acres on Nashua Road in Dracut. (DRACUT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PHOTO)
- Jay Briscoe checks out one of his 75 beehives. Each hive contains tens of thousands of bees. (DRACUT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PHOTO)
- Autumn brings the chicken and turkey pies baked by Kristie Briscoe. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Briscoe Family Farm has a large selection of fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes (no matter which category you put them in). (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Apple pies are a Briscoe Family Farm specialty in the fall. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Last year, Briscoe Family Farm started growing and selling several varieties of long-stem flowers. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- The 75 beehives provide 2,000 pounds of honey a year, which you can purchase at Briscoe Family Farm. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- During the height of the year, these signs will be out along Nashua Road to let folks know what to expect if they pull over at Briscoe Family Farm. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Jay has added a semicircular turnoff to cut down on the safety hazards at the farm stand. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Turkey, anyone? Be sure to place your order for your Thanksgiving bird in plenty of time. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)
- Briscoe Family Farm stocks the eggs every day. But get there early, before they’re gone. (COURTESY BRISCOE FAMILY FARM)