GATHERING EGGS
Putting eggs in the basket.
For dinner tonight, we had the best eggs-they were fresh from a friend's farm. When eggs come straight from the hen, they have a taste that only nature can provide. Having grown up on a farm, I miss the taste of "fresh from the source" foods. Raising chickens, pigs, and beef cattle along with our milk cow meant we did not have to run to the corner store for a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk. A good bit of the everyday food on our table came from the animals we raised. We gathered our eggs, milked our cow, and made bread and butter fresh in the mornings.
We had about ten hens and one feisty rooster. And when you add a large, black-as-coal chicken snake to the mix, there's bound to be a great story ahead!
One of our chores-gathering eggs-gave a whole new meaning to the term "egg hunt." My youngest niece loved to help gather the eggs. She found it fun to slip the eggs out from the hens and collect them in our little wicker basket.
During one of our egg-gathering expeditions, my niece went to the first egg box and found the hen gone, but two eggs awaited our arrival. This was easy work! In the next box, we coaxed the hen off her nest so we could find the eggs. We had to be gentle, and we couldn't fuss at the hens or MeMaw would tan us for sure. Maybe this wasn't such easy work after all. A sweet red hen covered the next nest, and she let my niece slip her little hand under her without protest.
At that point, we had just a few more nests to find before we would have enough eggs for breakfast. As I watched my niece peep into the next box, I froze. Her tiny hand rested on a rather large chicken snake. The snake was not a stranger; I knew him well, as he often ate the rats out of the feed bins. Like us, he was simply looking for a meal himself-I think he tired of rats and mice. My niece did not realize he was there until she felt him move under her hand.
I sheepishly asked if she really wanted to put her hand in the box with the snake. As she looked around to see what I was talking about, the snake moved. She screamed, but amazingly she didn't drop the basket or break any eggs.
She still laughs about our adventure and now teaches her granddaughters to love snakes and other things that crawl. They all play a role in keeping a farm running smoothly, after all.
Wouldn't you like to own a farm or a ranch? Just give me a call, and soon you'll be gathering your own vegetables or raising your own livestock.
Happy Trails,
Trew Wood
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