And also: goats are cute

HOOD RIVER, Or. -- A few things I learned this weekend while on my favorite family farm in the Willamette Valley:

• Chickens don't seem to mind it when you remove eggs from their nest, unless you try to do it while they're still in their nest, in which case they cluck at you menacingly.
  
• Farm-fresh eggs look like Easter eggs -- blue, striped, speckled -- and taste a million times better than what you can buy at the grocery store.
• 5 am on a chilly morning in April near Odell, OR sounds like Hanoi, 1972: the farmers turn on giant, helicopter-grade fans to keep the fruit trees from frosting.
  
• On even colder nights, they light "smudge pots" -- large ceramic vessels scattered around the orchard -- which are gas-powered, somewhat contentious, and emit a black smoke across the Valley that would make Al Gore weep.
• Berries that are blue, according to a somewhat unreliable Portland source, "generally won't kill you," but watch out for red berries. Unless they're raspberries.
  
• Real farmers don't wear flip-flops.