NASH COUNTY, N.C. – The Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House has been an American tradition since the 1870s. This year, a farm out of Nashville, North Carolina, is supplying the 30,000 eggs that will make the trip to D.C. as the guests of honor.
What You Need To Know
- Thirty thousand North Carolina eggs are heading to Washington, D.C., for Easter
- Braswell Family Farms is donating the eggs for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll
- This is the second year in a row the farm has volunteered to boil and dye eggs for the holiday
Trey Braswell, the president of Braswell Family Farms, remembers going to the Easter Egg Roll as a child and now has the opportunity to give that same memory to other kids this Easter.
“I hope I can lead my kids to when they go up there, they'll get to understand and have some pride and excitement — I mean, these eggs came from our farm, right here in Nashville, North Carolina,” Braswell said. “We’re so thankful as just American egg farmers to be able to do this for the citizens of the country.”
His family’s farm has donated eggs for years but just recently took up the boiling and dying side of the operation as well, with a little help from chef Andrew McMillan of The Stocked Pot.
“Last year, they asked us to hard boil and dye 12,000 eggs when they first asked me,” McMillan said. “Two weeks later, it went up to 14,000, and then three weeks later, 16,000 and a week before 18,000 eggs. This year they said, ‘Hey, look Andrew, we're just going to tell you it's 30,000 eggs.’”
His hardworking team spent an entire week boiling and dyeing the eggs according to White House specifications. They use 12 gallons of vinegar and more than 16 gallons of dye to get the perfect coloring on the eggs. Trial and error in a home kitchen paved the way for the smooth operation that churns out eggs timed out to the minute.
“And there's a chart here that shows the ingredients, and how it's supposed to be done and how long and how many we do every 30 minutes,” McMillan said.
A team from Braswell personally delivered the eggs to the White House ahead of the celebration happening on Easter Monday. At the end of the journey, the eggs will have traveled nearly 500 miles.
“Every egg feeds and provides nutrition to families, so you know, every journey of an egg is very honorable,” Braswell said. “But it is cool to be the egg that you get to roll around on the White House lawn.”
All the eggs used at the White House as part of the celebration will be composted and returned to the soil. They’ll be used to grow things like soybean meal and corn, which in turn gets fed to chickens who lay the very eggs rolled around on the lawn.
“It’s such a cool thing that, you know, eggs have become the symbol of Easter, a symbol of life, and they're nature's perfect protein,” Braswell said. “So as our family celebrates Easter, it's really cool to be able to tie that in regardless of who's in the White House.”
