How did you even get into raising quail?
We were playing with ideas on what to do with this mountainous property, and we didn’t want to use a lot of water or do anything to destroy the landscape. My husband was at sushi one day and his buddy ordered the salmon roe and quail egg. He’s looking at it and thinking ‘huh’ and does about a half hour of research and he sends me this message that says “Hey, do you want to become quail farmers?” I said “Sure that sounds like fun!” He said “Are you serious?” and I said “Yeah I’m dead serious, let’s do it.” So within a week we ordered our incubators, fertile eggs to hatch, and here we are.
Do you have a favorite way to prepare them?
I like them fried on almost anything. For example, I took a piece of my homemade sourdough, put a little cream cheese on it, some sweet garlic jelly, some local sprouts, and put a fried quail egg on top. All the kids were stealing it from me, they kept taking bites, they ate pretty much half of it so I had to turn around and make them all one. The eggs are a little richer than a chicken egg. We do them on a skillet with vegetables and quinoa - we usually just throw them on top of anything. They’re great hardboiled and even pickled - we just made some in a jar of old pickle juice, and they were amazing.
