Natural Egg Dyeing at the Columbia Farmers Market
by Public Relations VISTA, Erin King
For KOMU's coverage: http://www.komu.com/news/ccua-teaches-kids-to-dye-easter-eggs-naturally/
For the past two months, we’ve been hosting educational activities at the Saturday Columbia Farmers Market, located in the ARC parking lot. It’s a great way for CCUA to still be visible at the market while we’re waiting on things to be ready to harvest and sell. It also helps out our sister organization through the AmeriCorps Missouri Local Food VISTA project in its efforts to educate market goers and their children about the things they find at the Farmers Market, and their uses, (not to entertain children while their parents shop).
Well, this second one was an encore activity from last spring. Dyeing eggs with natural dyes was such a hit when we put it on last year, when we had to think of some educational activity for this April, it was a no-brainer.
We did struggle briefly with the fact that everything that we were using – the white eggs, cabbage, beets, and turmeric – was out of season, or from Hy-Vee. But natural dyes don’t quite show up on the brown, local eggs, and our motto is “Food is Good”, so we weren’t going to get too tied up in the details.
It was a really fun activity, but not without its faults… Last year, we made all of our dyes the night before and just worked with the kids decorating their eggs. To keep the dyes more warm, and thus, affective, we decided to make the dyes on the spot, save for the test dyes we made the night before. Unfortunately, it was a windy day at market, and the burners weren’t staying on, being gas burners and all. We’re pretty sure that was why the dyes we made on site were less potent than the dyes we brought. The water never got to boiling, so we never got the reaction we needed.
Also, as pretty as the red cabbage (blue) dye is, it takes way more time than any kid has the patience for. We had to start telling parents and kids not only the colors of each dye, but the “wait time” for how long before the egg would look that color. Needless to say, the turmeric won the instant gratification contest.
We recommend that you look at the other natural dyes listed on this page: http://www.bhg.com/holidays/easter/eggs/natural-easter-egg-dyes/, and consider not conducting this activity outside in the wind on open flame burners.
Finally, whenever you dye eggs, you end up with a lot of hard-boiled eggs, so familiarize yourself with all of the many options of salads that use them. Or just make lots of delicious deviled eggs.
