THE EGGS-TRAORDINARY STANTONS

For several years, I’ve made a point of buying a dozen or so eggs from two young farmers who are regulars at the Columbia, Missouri, Farmers Market. They look so much alike that I figured they must be brothers, and I used to think they might even be high schoolers, earning a little extra money on their parents’ farm. I was right about their ages—at the time one of them was still in high school. But I was completely wrong about the “little extra money” idea.

It turns out that the young farmers are the owners of Stanton Brothers Eggs, which according to the USDA, makes them one of the largest independent free-range egg producers in the United States. In 2014, the brothers raised 12,000 chickens that laid upward of 1 million eggs. On good days, the Stantons’ mother, Judy, delivers 600 dozen eggs to local grocery stores, college dining halls and restaurants.

The family farm near Centralia, Missouri, is