The Egg Basket

The Egg Basket

Publication: The Lookout

Date: October 23, 2005

Column: First Look

Category: Family; Farm

There was a chicken house on the farm where I grew up. Like my older brothers, I did my daily chores every morning before breakfast: tossing corn to the hogs, feeding hay to the cows, stirring up smelly bucketsful of instant milk-replacer for the young calves to drink.

One of my jobs was to gather the eggs each evening, placing them carefully into a basket made from wire coated with yellow plastic. I made sure the chickens had water, ground corn, and crushed oyster shells to eat (which helped them produce eggshells).

Once in awhile, I discovered an egg with a partially-formed shell. In my hand these strange eggs felt soft and rubbery, like little brown balloons filled with water.

Somehow my city-slicker children managed to grow up without a chicken house nearby, but I still found chores for them to do. They washed the car, mowed the lawn, scrubbed the bathroom, and helped with the dishes. My grown-up daughter Michelle still hasn't forgiven me for coming up with the brilliant idea that one of her chores should be polishing my shoes every week—an idea that didn't last long.

My wife Candy assigned her share of household chores too, but she also created lots of fun activities for the kids. Around Valentine's Day every year, we organized a Heart Hunt and turned our house into a hiding place for candy. The kids searched for hidden treasures, following silly clues we wrote on heart-shaped construction paper, like "You'll find something sweet and light, under the place where you sleep at night."

On the Saturday before Easter we conducted our family egg-hunt in the backyard. Candy and I hid colored eggs in the grass, in the flowerpot, on the picnic table, by the garden hose, in the V where the maple tree's limbs spread upward. It only took about five minutes for the kids to fill their baskets with eggs, and then we guided them toward the hard-to-find ones by saying, "You're getting warmer."

In late summer the tree in front of our house dropped crab apples onto the grass. Barely a half-inch in diameter, these bright green fruits were hard as rocks and sour if you dared to taste one. They were unsafe, too. The lawnmower shot them out like bullets, so I paid the kids a penny for every crab apple they collected. They tried to bargain for a higher price, but a nickel apiece seemed too pricey to me.

Growing up on a farm taught me a strong work ethic, and it sharpened my appreciation for God's creative handiwork. I hope I've passed these traits along to my children. As the years go by I watch with pride as they honor God in their daily work. And while they no longer collect colored eggs and crab apples, I'm pretty impressed with the ideas they have collected.

In 1990 my parents decided to hold an auction and sell some of their household belongings and most of their farm equipment. The auctioneer set up tables around the lawn under the shade trees where I played softball and horseshoes as a boy.

On one table sat a familiar-looking metal basket covered with yellow plastic—the one I had used to gather eggs. I offered five dollars for it, but the price rose when an antique collector bid against me. I ended up paying $30 for it, and now I keep the egg basket in my garage above the workbench.

My mother told me later, "If I had known you wanted the egg basket, I would have given it to you for free." But I didn't mind. I learned far more than $30 worth of lessons growing up on the family farm.