Orchard Los Cabos

Almost everything on a plate in Los Cabos arrives by truck across the peninsula or by plane. That is not a scandal — it is a desert with a tourist economy. It is also why a working farm twenty minutes from San José matters more here than the same farm would anywhere else.

Orchard is the short version of a supply chain: eggs collected in the morning, poultry raised on feed milled on site, compost that goes back into the ground it came from. For a restaurant or a villa chef, that is a delivery you can plan a menu around. For a family, it is the rarest thing in a resort town — somewhere a child can see where an egg actually comes from.

Open a tray and you can see the farm in it. The shells run pale blue and green through chocolate brown to cream, which is what a mixed flock looks like — several breeds laying side by side, not one commodity hybrid bred for uniform output. Supermarket cartons are uniform because the hens are. These are not, and the yolks show it.

It is not only eggs. Birds are sold whole or broken down to order — leg and thigh, wings, flattened breast (pechuga aplanada) — and there is caldo de pollo for when you want the work already done.

Worth knowing: bring your own container and it works out cheaper. Make an appointment, go early before the heat, and bring something rigid: a cooler, or a box of your own.

Take the small ones with you if you have them. There is somewhere for children to play while you fill your container, which makes the trip the outing rather than the errand.

If you would rather it came to you, Tuesday is the delivery run across Los Cabos. Either way, ask what came in that morning — the answer changes with the season, which is the whole point of buying from a farm instead of a shelf.