Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I didn’t even know you could make mozzarella cheese at home.
Inspiration struck; I sliced some of the cheese, tomatoes, and basil, set it on a slice of bread, then drizzled it with the balsamic for a quick caprese open-faced sandwich.
Not exactly breakfast food, but so good that I had to make a second one as I got Edith’s breakfast together.
Once finished, I cleaned up, then grabbed Edith’s leash. “Want to go explore?”
After the mint lemonade, homemade bagel lunch, and hearty stew dinner, and lots of talking, it had been too late for us to go explore the homestead. But Kit and Ria had assured me that they would be around at any point during the day if I wanted to walk around.
“Oh, hello,” I said as we stepped out of our little fenced yard to find a brilliantly colored rooster with his elaborate tail feathers running our way. “I don’t know if you should be here. Shouldn’t you be taking care of your ladies?”
If there was one farm animal I did have a small bit of experience with, it was chickens. There’d been a few of them free-ranging around the trailer park when I was a kid. They’d go up under the bushes, digging and pecking around in the dirt until they made little cooing sounds when they found a bug. Until one day, they were nowhere to be found. Then my father told me that they were probably on someone’s dinner plate, and I’d cried for days.
“Oh, okay. You’re coming with us?” I asked as he followed along, looking very serious.
We passed Ria’s tidy tiny house, then followed a little path in the woods before it opened up again to a sprawling field.
It was dappled on one side with rows of perfectly placed trees. The orchard, I figured. Kit had been talking about how summer and fall would have them so flush with fruit that they had to learn to can and make jam with it.
To the back were more well-laid rows of various plants.
Where much of my breakfast had come from, I was sure.
There were other areas, too.
Large sheds with fenced-in areas attached.
In them, I spotted turkeys, ducks, and, yes, lots of chickens.
Seeing his ladies, the rooster ran off, pacing the fence, frantic to get back in.
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have to let you back in if you didn’t sneak out when I brought you breakfast, now, would I?” Kit asked, coming out in an apron full of tiny pockets that she seemed to have eggs stuffed in. As well as a basket of them hanging off her arms. “Go on then,” she said, letting the rooster back inside. “Oh, hey! Good morning.”
“Good morning. Thanks so much for the food. I made a caprese sandwich.”
“Girl, that’s one of my go-to meals on days when I’m too lazy to cook. Ariah’s mozzarella is out of this world. And I’ve literally been to every state and still think Jersey tomatoes are the best.”
“It was the best breakfast I’ve had in years. Well, second best to Nave’s pancakes.”
“Well, that’s like trying to compare apples and oranges. He and his father have always been really good cooks. So, do you want a tour?”
I spent the next hour or so going in and out of coops, the barn, picking up chickens, petting mini goats and a soft-eyed cow, watching ducks splash around in their pools, feeding a friendly donkey a carrot straight from the garden, and then collecting a few more fruits and veggies to make myself a little soup later.
“Soon, we will have some grains, too,” Kit explained. “We’re growing a little bit of everything: wheat, rye, barley, oats, amaranth, and millet, mostly. Lots of wheat so we can make it into flour and, eventually, bread.”
I wouldn’t pretend to know what all that entailed, but I had a feeling it would be a lot of work.
“Is your goal to be fully self-sustaining?”
Kit gave me a wince.
“Well, if you are asking as one of our viewers, kind of.”
“If I’m asking as a friend?”
“As a friend, I really, really like coffee and chocolate.”
“I mean, they are essentials.”
“Exactly,” Kit said, reaching down to tug a bunch of lettuce out of the ground because it was ‘bolting.’ “I mean, it’s nice to know that if something ever happened and shelves went bare for a while, we would be able to feed ourselves with what we grow and store. Oh, remind me to show you the root cellar. But, yeah, I’m not trying to live completely off the land.”
“Still, this is really something you two have built yourselves here. Do you plan to stay forever?”
Kit turned in a circle, sucked in a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“What about when you settle down? Have kids?”
“Well, you can’t get much more settled than we are here,” she said, going over to the chickens, opening the door, and throwing the lettuce in. “But, I mean, yeah. This is home. We might need to add onto our houses over the years, but I don’t plan on leaving. I can’t think of a better place to raise my babies.”