An attempt at pickling eggs

Winter is traditionally a time of decreased egg production. The overwhelming abundance from a fruitful laying season (spring to fall) can yield too many eggs to eat, sell, give away, etc. Enter preservation methods for eating eggs later on in the winter when the egg yield is just not as prosperous as it once was.
We queried our homesteading community to see what methods we should employ and two stood out in our minds as interesting preservation methods. The first method was water glassing. This is where you take clean, unwashed, eggs and place them in a pickling lime solution. Eggs are said to be able to last 18 months. Some folks touted they have had eggs that were still good at 2+ years old. The only difference that we have heard was that the whites of the eggs were more runny as compared to a fresh egg. Although water glassing seemed like a relatively easy method to pursue, we had one problem… our ladies cannot, for the life of them, stop pooping on their eggs. Since this method requires unwashed non-poop covered eggs, water glassing was off the table. Enter pickled eggs. This method requires more work up front with a return of two months preservation without being canned. I am sure there are multiple ways to obtain the said pickled eggs, but I went with a simple pickling solution as this was our first time. I boiled the eggs, sanitized the jars, and made the pickling solution at the same time all on my 1990’s stove top. It was an interesting sight to say the least. Once boiled, the eggs were cooked and peeled. Nicely peeled eggs were placed in the “to be pickled” pile, and not so great ones were put into an egg salad pile. Once the piles were divided, the sanitized jars were filled with herbs of our liking (or just experimentation) and the pickling solution was poured into the jar (warm). The lids were screwed on and the eggs were allowed to cool before being placed into a fridge for safe keeping. We have not tried them yet, but we are hopeful they turn out well! Update to come in a future post.