12 day old chicks, one four year old boy, five months of care and attention = the golden egg.  In the capitalist view of life, this egg (were it not followed by a multitude of others) cost several hundred dollars. I admit, this did give me pause, the bottom line dollar amount associated with this first egg from our first flock here at The Apple House -- but then I watched my four year old son pick it up as though it were the most precious and delicate thing to ever grace our lives.  There is no monetary value that could ever be applied to that moment, the awakening of that sense of wonder and connection.
  

 

I was pleasantly surprised, as I started to mark off the garden beds in the newly fenced meadow, to have Lorenzo aban follow me around asking about what I was doing and why.   When I got the wheelbarrow, his interest increased, and when I began to plunge the shovel into the soil, he immediately asked for his shovel.  Side by side in the beds, acting as backhoes, we dug out the first trench and dumped the soil into "the dump truck."  Then we were drilling rigs, fracturing the soil at the bottom of the trench, followed by bulldozers, pushing the next section of soil into the trench.  When we finished the last bed, Lorenzo exclaimed, "That was fun, can we do some more?"