Hearing Old Daddy Crow

Feathers rippling, dust scratched and tossed, red combs quivering…the busy sound of clucks and trills and every now and then the triumphant arching crow of the presiding rooster. My memories of chicken days on my parents’ Lucas Creek Road home don’t date back to childhood. They are as recent as my mother’s last days.

A little woven basket usually held a few small brown eggs on a kitchen shelf. When appetite waned, a soft fried egg with pinkish yolk with a bit of toast was sure to please at any hour of the day.

In the five years since the little flock was disbanded along with the home, I sometimes got a care package of beautiful home-raised eggs from our daughter Anje in Rockbridge or Augusta County. But for the daily dozen, it was back to the store.

But lately, and especially when my grandchildren ask for eggs cooked in the famous yellow frying pan, I have my niece Tara to thank for a new source of very special eggs.

Her TajMahal of a chicken coop and her coddled layers in York County produce the array of colors and sizes I was used to back at Mom’s, and I’ve become a loyal customer. But mere money won’t do, to buy these eggs.

Enjoying the eggs from Playtime Farms takes me back to the past in more ways than one. The ancient system of bartering is alive and well. I take home eggs. She takes home fresh-baked pilgrim bread from my oven.

Somehow the process gives us both a double measure of something you really cannot measure—along with the good food, we are nourishing our families with a connection to the earth and to our people. I can almost hear Old Daddy crow. I can almost see my mother’s slim brown fingers cradling a warm, just-laid egg.