As far as we can tell, Devitt’s Nursery and Supply in New Windsor is the only place on Earth where you can visit an enchanted Christmas wonderland ruled by an oversized talking egg.
Eggbert, the resident royal at Devitt’s Christmas on the Farm, made his debut in the community in 1971, when founder Jack Devitt purchased and customized a 30-inch plexiglass ovoid that Cornell University had used as part of a promotional campaign for New York State eggs, gave him a name, and installed him on a wooden throne. His claim to that throne is legitimate, having been crowned by then-Governor Thomas Dewey at the 1953 New York State Fair, but it took Jack Devitt’s vision to secure him a proper realm.
Local families fell immediately in love with the quirky Saint Nick alternative. Eggbert’s eyes and lips move, and he’s voiced by an employee watching from behind a one-way mirror, reading visitors’ name tags and greeting each one with warm, comical Christmas banter. The effect is both bizarre and charming, and parents, kids, and holiday merrymakers of all sorts soon considered an Eggbert pilgrimage an essential part of their festivities.
Co-owner Joe Gizzarelli, one of the team of three who took over the business after Jack Devitt passed away, isn’t certain of the reasoning behind an outsized egg as a Christmas icon. “I just know that Jack was fond of saying that everyone else had a Santa, but we’d have an egg,” he says.
Eggbert went into exile for about a decade, when part of the property was sold; the Newburgh area community mourned his absence, and rumors ran rampant that he might have been destroyed. But in 2011, he resumed his rightful throne by the new ownership team and now greets more visitors than ever. “That first year we brought him back, we weren’t sure anybody would even show up,” says Gizzarelli. “And little kids didn’t quite know what to make of him. But the parents were excited to introduce them to Eggbert at last. People had thought he was gone forever, but Eggbert wasn’t done. He’s not like his cousin Humpty; he doesn’t crack up over-easily.”
The New York Times featured his reemergence, and he’s been egceeding egspectations ever since. (Gizzarelli’s egg puns, polished over 38 years, are curiously contagious.) And Christmas on the Farm has grown to include face painting, a holiday train ride, an arcade, and free cotton candy, along with a newborn litter of piglets and assorted other livestock. “You can easily spend a couple of hours here,” says Gizzarelli “It’s a happy place.”
Eggbert will be holding court this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and next, and for the following three days leading up to Christmas. Tickets are $20, and kids three and under are free. For more information, visit Devitt’s Nursery and Supply online or call 845-561-1968.
