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January 31, 2023 at 4:37 p.m.
Donation duo
Donation duo
Hellickson siblings excited to contribute eggs, desserts to SJ’s-SA’s Feb. 4 auction
Ethan and Morgan Hellickson are the donation duo.Ethan, 12, loves raising chickens and eating the by-products – eggs – especially on an English muffin for breakfast and in Grandma Sandy’s potato salad. Morgan, 10, has a passion for baking, and she loves eating refrigerated cookie dough – if her three brothers, Ethan, Aaron and Ryan, don’t beat her to it.
The two siblings and children of Steve and Katie (Lieser) Hellickson of rural Padua are excited to share their eggs and desserts with winning bidders from the St. John’s-St. Andrew’s Catholic School-Greenwald online auction Saturday, Feb. 4, at the Greenwald Pub in Greenwald. Also on the online and live auction are many other homemade and donated items, including class projects and a $10,000 voucher for drainage tile installation from an area business.
Ethan, a SJ’s-SA’s sixth grader, is donating two dozen farm fresh eggs once a month for one year, and Morgan, a fourth grader, is offering a once a month dessert for one year. The winning bidders will be able to take home the eggs and dessert – valentine cookies and caramel bars – the night of the auction.
“Sometimes we have extra eggs, and I wanted to help out the school,” said Ethan, when asked why he chose to donate to the auction. “I’ve helped make school projects for the auction and last year helped my mom set up the auction after school. This is his first year donating something to the auction by myself.”
He is in his first year raising chickens.
This is also Morgan’s first year donating her own homemade item. Sitting around an auction-donated child’s picnic table at the school Jan. 26, with a box of her homemade, decorated heart-shaped sugar cookies in front of her, Morgan said her mom encouraged her to do so. Morgan was wearing an apron and chef’s hat, one of two sets gifted to her on her birthday by Grandma Sandy Hellickson, who farms in rural Padua with husband David, a dairy farmer, with a sweet tooth. Their other grandparents are Don and Irene Lieser of rural Meire Grove.
Morgan’s baking mentor is Grandma Sandy.
“My grandma is a really good cook,” Morgan said. “I started helping my grandma make stuff at her house two years ago, and now I’m doing it myself.”
Morgan loves baking cakes, brownies and cookies, and more recently she helped her grandma make donuts. She uses recipes from her two recipe books and from her grandma.
‘I just like the end results and getting to have those sweets around the house,” she said.
Sugar and chocolate chip cookies are her favorite to eat, especially the dough.
At age 10, Morgan has an inkling of what she wants to be when she grows up – a baker.
She is anxious to see who she will be baking for, as her winning bidder. She will question their likes and dislikes because she wants to please the people who are recipients of her baking products. Morgan already knows if Grandpa Don is the winner, she won’t be baking anything with coconut in it.
Ethan is also excited to see who his little ladies will lay their colorful eggs for.
He started raising eggs last year because his mom’s friend had extra chicks.
“I just really enjoyed taking care of the chickens, and they became mine,” he said.
Currently, he has 10 chickens – ISA Brown, Black Copper Maran, Welsummer and Rhode Island Red.
His chickens are so special that the majority of his Christmas gifts were chicken related, so he is all set to start hatching chicks.
“I would like to double my flock this summer,” he said.
He names his favorite chickens.
“They are my favorites because I can tell them apart by color, size and their ‘chickenalities’ (personalities),” Ethan said. “My favorite hens are Jon, Road Runner, Nugget and Drumstick, who likes to sit on my lap.”
He even brought Jon to the St. Francis feast day animal blessing at the school in November.
He has one rooster, named Diez.
“I’ll tell Diez’s story to whoever buys the eggs,” he jokingly said.
He cares for his chickens, cleaning out the coop and providing them with food, water and plenty of attention.
“The chickens eat hen layer feed mixed with ground-up corn in the winter, but in the spring, summer, and fall they eat a lot of what they can find – bugs, grass, garden scraps, frogs and plants,” Ethan said.
They heat the chicken coop in the winter.
“We keep a lamp on which helps the hens to keep laying eggs,” he said.
Ethan loves sharing his eggs with his grandparents, a neighbor and other family, but “best of all is eating them,” he said.
“Yum, yum, yum, they are so tasty,” he said.
This year he decided to donate eggs to the auction, “to help out the school,” citing examples set by his parents. His mother is an alumnus of the school.
“I’ve helped make school projects for the auction, and last year my mom set up the auction after school,” he said.
Chances are, it will be a “good egg” who purchases Ethan’s eggs, and Morgan’s valentine cookies will be sprinkled with love.
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