If you're driving along country roads and see a sign for eggs, stop.

Farm-fresh eggs, laid just that morning by hens who live in coops that give them plenty of room to do the things chickens do, are increasingly available, but they sell out fast.

Patti Popp can't keep her eggs on the shelf. Popp has 65 Rhode Island Reds at Sport Hill Farm (596 Sport Hill Rd., Easton. www.sporthillfarm.com), the organic farm she and her husband run. Although she's closed up the farm stand for the season, her eggs will be available through the winter using the honor system — you can drive up to the farm and buy a dozen, leaving a few dollars in a jar.

The honor system is part of the old-fashioned charm of buying eggs from the side of the road. While taking a scenic drive through Newtown on our way to get ice cream at Ferris Acres Creamery (which closes for the season Oct. 30), we stopped on Hattertown Road at a hand-made sign offering eggs at a nameless, unmanned stand. We were lucky to get the last dozen, and gratefully placed $4 in the box and took 50 cents in change.

Back home, we cooked the eggs in the simplest and truest way possible: fried gently in butter and served with home-cured bacon a friend had given us, and a crusty loaf of bread my husband baked. The first thing we noticed was that the shells were much harder than commercial, factory-farmed eggs. The entire structure of the egg itself was firmer, the white holding its shape when it hit the pan (instead of running loosely the way eggs-of dubious-age do). The bright yellow yolk had a more pronounced sack-like shape. This breakfast, so simple, homey and fresh, was worthy of dinner.

Benedict's Home and Garden (480 Purdy Hill Rd., Monroe; (203) 268-2537, www.benedictsgarden.com) usually sells out of eggs by noon each day. They offer them in three sizes, with prices ranging from $1.99 for a dozen small eggs and $3.50 for large. Most of Benedict's eggs come from big pens out back, where they are fed a combination of commercial feed and vegetable scraps. At the demonstration pens near the garden center, the young people who take care of the chickens answered every question we had about the raising of chickens. Just don't ask them if they eat the chickens. They wouldn't dream of it.