Local egg prices on the rise; area supply holds on

While there was some empty space on the refrigerated shelves at Freshtown in Amenia on Feb. 14, eggs were available in a range of prices and varieties.
Photo by Krista A. Briggs
While there was some empty space on the refrigerated shelves at Freshtown in Amenia on Feb. 14, eggs were available in a range of prices and varieties.
With avian flu continuing to compromise the wellbeing of domestic American fowl, egg shortages have been reported across the United States.
Some shops with eggs in stock are increasing prices and imposing limits on the number of purchases per customer. But it’s not just consumers who are feeling the pinch of egg shortages and pricing increases. Restaurants are also being impacted.
In Northern Dutchess, eggs remain for sale, be it at the gas station, the market or a farm.
In the local area, eggs for sale are at price points higher than the national average, which generally tends to be the case with New York state. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor as reported on USDA.gov in January, the average national price of a carton of eggs was listed at $4.95 per dozen — up $0.81 per dozen from December 2024.
According to a statement on the USDA website posted on Jan. 31 regarding New York eggs, “Prices are up 7 cents for extra-large and large and 9 cents higher for medium ... Demand is moderate to good. Offerings are very light. Supplies are very light to moderate. Market activity is active.”
Locally, egg prices are mixed within a certain range with no clear explanation as to the variables in pricing, product and venue.
Local egg prices
On Feb. 12, eggs could be found at Cumberland Farms on Route 44 in Millerton for $7.99/dozen. A few doors down at the Gulf station, prices were not displayed, perhaps in response to fluctuations in the market, but eggs were stocked on their shelves.
On Feb. 14, Freshtown in Amenia featured multiple refrigerated shelves of eggs with pricing contingent on size and color. A standard carton of medium eggs was listed at $7.49/dozen while a carton of jumbo eggs was listed at $9.49/dozen. Extra-large brown eggs were listed at $8.99. Specialty eggs were also found on their shelves. Legacy’s large brown free-range eggs were priced at $6.99/dozen. Eggland’s Best organic brown eggs were priced at $8.49. Vital Farms pasture-raised large brown eggs were listed at $9.99/dozen.
That same day, local eggs from the Sharon Farm in East Canaan, Connecticut, were spotted for sale at Sharon Market at $7.99/dozen. While the number of cartons was limited in comparison to Freshtown, farm-fresh eggs were ready for purchase in varying shades of brown. Egg size was not listed on the label.
Peck’s Market in Pine Plains offered plenty of eggs on its shelves and featured pricing ranging from under $6.00 for a dozen large white cage-free eggs from Noah’s Pride to $7.59/dozen for brown free-range Grade A eggs. A dozen eggs, size indeterminate, at Millbrook Beef & Dairy listed at $8.00/dozen. The cashier stated their eggs are gathered fresh and sold on the same day. Indeed, only one carton remained available for purchase on Friday, Feb. 14 in the afternoon.
Sandy Sherman, proprietor of the Talk of the Towne deli in Millerton, has witnessed past price jumps in eggs. Sherman noted previous fluctuation in egg pricing typically resulted in decreases as avian flu ran its generally seasonal course, but she is concerned about the 2025 increase, which she doesn’t anticipate trending downward anytime soon. According to Sherman, she is now paying $90 for 15 dozen eggs as opposed to $50 per 30 dozen, which is what she paid last year. Sourcing eggs has been an issue for Talk of the Towne, but only because one of its suppliers is no longer in the business.
While Sherman hasn’t revised menu pricing and would prefer to steer clear of price increases altogether, she hasn’t ruled it out entirely, saying, “If it [egg supply pricing] keeps going, we’ll have to.”
As with Sherman, Jessica LeJeune, manager of the Oakhurst Diner in Millerton, has also seen previous pricing fluctuations with eggs, but costs remain the same for its customers.
LeJeune, however, remains optimistic that the situation will change, saying, “We’ve seen this trend before.” LeJeune was quick to point out the Oakhurst periodically enacts slight across-the-board price tweaks due to rising costs. She also maintained the diner has no plans to utilize egg substitutes or other less expensive options.
For anyone who has opted against paying high egg prices, whether in restaurants or stores, there is an alternative, premises-permitting. Kristen Maillet of Agway, in conjunction with her husband, Frank, has been tending her own flock of egg-laying chickens at home for the past 2-1/2 years. While her flock produces fewer eggs in the winter, which is when chickens can molt, Maillet conveyed some eggs have been laid, a number which can double in the summer. Maillet has opted against selling eggs, preferring to share extras with friends or coworkers.
Costs per adult laying hens can range in the region from $20-$30 per bird with monthly costs for feed running around $15/bag. In addition to feed, Maillet also provides fruit and vegetables to her flock whenever possible. She and her husband guard their chickens carefully with a predator-proof coop from the ground to the sky, with Maillet noting, “It’s like Fort Knox.”
For more information on starting a chicken flock, visit: agway.com, navigate to “Events” and select “2025 Chick List.”
While eggs have become more expensive in Northern Dutchess, price points throughout the region are more or less in line with Hudson Valley egg pricing. This past weekend, prices for a carton of large white eggs ranged from $4.49/dozen for Eggland’s Best to approximately $11 for an 18-pack of Vital Farms brown eggs at Foodtown in Cold Spring in Putnam County. At Adams Fairacre Farms in Wappingers Falls, the starting price for a carton of large eggs, white or brown, was listed at $7.49 with prices gradually increasing by egg size.
Sheffield resident, singer Wanda Houston will play Mumbet in "1781" on June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main, Falls Village.
In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.
Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”
Houston has shared the stage with stars ranging from Barbra Streisand to Motown great Mary Wells. “I have had the honor of portraying Elizabeth Freeman for three years in “Meet Elizabeth Freeman” by Teresa Miller. Our first reading of “1781” is in celebration of Juneteenth, which is wonderfully symbolic and poignant.” Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery. Two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, word of their freedom finally reached slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865.
Tombstone of Elizabeth Freeman in the “Sedgewick Pie” family burial ground in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Lonnie carter
MumBet, born in 1742 to African enslaved parents, was purchased at age six months by Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, for whom she worked until her thirties. Ashley helped write the 1773 Sheffield Declaration which stated, “Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.” Rumor has it that MumBet overheard a reading of the document. After a traumatic household experience, MumBet left the Ashley home in Bartholomew’s Cobble, walked four miles to Sheffield, and asked attorney and abolitionist Theodore Sedgwick to help her gain her freedom.
Houston shared, “I live in Sheffield near where she was enslaved, in a house she would have passed on her walk from Ashley Falls to Sheffield. I am humbled by the fortitude and inner strength it must have taken for this woman to defy norms and take a stand for her own freedom.We Americans must still stand and fight for our rights to live free.”
Elizabeth Freeman spent her years as a free woman working for wages in the Sedgewick household, saving money to buy her own home in Stockbridge, where she was a midwife and healer. She died in 1829 and is buried in “Sedgewick Pie,” the family burial plot in Stockbridge. One of her great-grandchildren, W.E.B. DuBois, born in Great Barrington, was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. DuBois founded the NAACP.
Her tombstone reads: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a trust nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good mother, farewell.”
The performance of “1781” will take place Thursday, June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main (103 Main St., Falls Village).Admission is free, donations gratefully accepted.
The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.
Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.
The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.
“When Susan and Gerald brought this to me, I immediately saw it as a chance for my students to make something meaningful and lasting,” said Martinelli. “It wasn’t just about painting a wall, it was about teaching kids to serve their community through their art.”
Martinelli introduced the project as an after-school club for grades four through eight. “I wanted students who were truly committed,” she explained. Interest was so high that she had to divide participants into rotating grade-level groups, with occasional full-team days for collaboration. The mural became a long-term endeavor, stretching across a school year and a half.
The painting was created on canvas, a nearly 4’ x 27’ roll, donated by Incandela. The paint came courtesy of school principal Ed Goad. With materials secured, the students dove into research, studying maps, landmarks, and city history to inform their designs. “They worked to capture the spirit of Torrington,” Martinelli said. “But also, to match the whimsy of a candy shop.”
The result is a mural that features a playful “candyland” version of the city, where important buildings and landmarks are sized according to their importance to both the client and the community. “They created this hierarchy of bubbles and buildings, this joyful visual story,” Martinelli said. “It’s full of life.”
Beyond art skills, Martinelli witnessed her students develop qualities often harder to teach: teamwork, communication, resilience. “They learned to scale up sketches, mix large batches of paint for consistency, and adapt their work when it overlapped with someone else’s. They really respected each other’s contributions.”
The project also reflected the Academy’s Catholic STREAM (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts, and Math) approach to education. “This was STREAM in action,” Martinelli explained. “They used technology to scale and transfer designs, applied math for proportions and spacing, and worked collaboratively to problem-solve. But they also lived their faith — through service, solidarity, and joy.”
Martinelli believes the mural speaks as much to the process as it does to the final product. “Some of the kids who worked on it have already graduated, but they’re coming back for the unveiling. That says something.”
The unveiling of the mural will take place at The Nutmeg Fudge Company on June 11, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., where families, friends, and community members are invited to celebrate the students’ achievement.
Asked what stood out most from the experience, Martinelli said, “For me, the most rewarding part was watching a diverse group of kids work together — different grades, different friend groups — all collaborating with respect, flexibility, and positivity. They created something beautiful, together.”
Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute
For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.
Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”
Curator and owner Klimowicz and both artists spoke of the physicality of making art, revealing an abounding intimacy with their materials. Podmore recounted seeking the perfect bare branches to use in her “Fall,” the piece that dominates the center of the space.She would find those that most suggested figures slipping into a fall, and mimic them herself, as animators do for accuracy, before admitting them into the crew now lying on the floor.Each isunique, but all are united by their red-socked feet, which, though tiny, are touchingly rendered in adult proportions. For art professor Podmore, they signal how “failing in public” is a phenomenon today’s students must learn to navigate.
For Varadi, whose background is Rusyn-Carpathian, the main medium is Karakul sheep’s wool, a particularly robust variety used in Persian carpets. Her process of felting the fiber involves extremely hard labor; she wryly expressed hope that technology would ease the burden of this long-term project, best seen in her huge wall piece, “With Their Backs to the Mountains.” The title refers to the staunch resilience of her ancestors — stateless but proud, subject to historical violence.
In Varadi’s video “Hunia-Permission to Be,” the color red amid the chiaroscuro of snowy winter forests offers a mesmerizing counterpart to Podmore’s floorpiece.Wearing the traditional, oversized red felted coat called the Hunia, the artist silently plods through the lovely scene, suggesting cycles of effort, disappearing and reappearing.
Podmore’s video adds the aural element, with the creaking of trees rubbing against each other at various tilts.The title “Fifteen Degrees” indicates a tree’s maximum safe angle from vertical. Reflecting this, two silhouetted jointed figures lean against each other — by turns intimate and aggressive — a shockingly apt metaphor for current society.
“As a younger artist,” Podmore observed, “I was very serious about the human condition; now I see that it is just bizarre.”
Another of Podmore’s works, “Audience” — now on view at Mass MoCA — gives a nod and a wink to our strange time.Hundreds of unique plaster-cast baskets mounted along an 85-foot wall, some fitted with single mechanical eyes, offer viewers the experience of being viewed, to the quiet cacophony of eyes popping open.A must-see through Nov. 30.
The Re Institute exhibition can be seen through July 5, with hours Saturdays 1 to 4 p.m. and by appointment.More information at the reinstitute.com.