The stops that were made along the way were half the fun when heading out to gather eggs on Uncle Jim’s farm
I needed at least three baskets to gather eggs with Uncle Jim. It wasn’t that he kept such a large flock. Two dozen hens couldn’t possibly lay that many eggs, even if they were as pampered as Uncle Jim’s. And besides, hens lay only once a day. Whenever I paid a week’s visit to the farm, Uncle Jim and I gathered eggs at least three times daily, sometimes four.
“I think it’s about time to gather eggs again, don’t you?” Oddly enough, Uncle Jim’s invitation to go exploring about the barnyard always coincided with a sudden wave of homesickness that threatened to engulf me.
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Gathering up our baskets, we started off in the direction of the barn. In the bottom of one basket were carrots for the small Angora rabbit named Snowflake. She was so white and soft, I was sure she would melt the minute I touched her.
Angus, by contrast, was a big black Aberdeen bull, as solid and shiny as a chunk of onyx. When he looked in my direction I never could summon enough courage to feed him the goodies from my basket. Uncle Jim chuckled as he forked some hay into the manger.
“What’s the matter? Angus rolling his eyes at you again?”
I was only too happy to move on with my basket and dole out its treasures to the cows, Millie, Mollie, Flossie and Pet. Watching them slowly chew their cuds always made me hungry for a big wad of strawberry bubble gum, and my jaws ached just thinking about it.
I knew for a fact the cows appreciated my handouts. Didn’t they always reward me with foaming pails of milk? Every day at sunrise, the sleepy whine of the cream separator gently broke the morning silence, and lulled me off to sleep again at sunset.
Uncle Jim and I moved on toward the pigpen. Now here was real appreciation. Granted, their manners were sadly lacking, but their appetites were good. The dust from the chopped grain adhered to their eyelashes like white mascara, and I pictured how they would look wearing poke bonnets.
The next stop was the chicken house, where I emptied the basket of potato peelings. Sometimes a tardy hen left an unexpected egg in one of the far nests. If it still felt warm to the touch, I cupped it in my hand, reluctant to expose this miracle of nature to the cold hard ribbing of my wicker basket. But on this particular day, I did not need to worry. The nests were all empty.
We took the long way back to the house, sauntering along the orchard path, picking a golden apple here and there, and checking to see if the plums were ripe. We paused at the “turkey tree.” Uncle Jim claimed it grew turkeys every evening because at dusk their black shapes clung to the limbs of the gnarled elm like giant blights.
As we strolled along the edge of the garden, Uncle Jim picked a few choice tomatoes and some lettuce, while I fished under the leaves of the cucumber patch for the big ones.
By the time we reached the porch, our baskets contained an assortment of fruits and vegetables.
Aunt Emma chided us gently. “I thought you two went to gather eggs.”
“We did.” Uncle Jim’s brown eyes twinkled as he reached into his sweater pocket and produced a porcelain nest egg.
“Well, it might encourage some old hen to lay in the right place, but that’s one egg you don’t want to scramble,” Aunt Emma said as she tucked it into a wire basket for safekeeping along with several others.
“Oh shucks,” chuckled Uncle Jim. “And here I thought maybe we could convince her that the hens were laying hard-boiled eggs.”
Grinning at his little game of deception, I busied myself emptying out our baskets.
Years later, I realized that carrying those baskets on childhood excursions around Uncle Jim’s farm did much more than avert sudden onslaughts of homesickness. They taught me that life is basically made up of something to give, something to gather and something to keep. It’s a principle as old as the Good Book itself, with the promise that “blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.”
