Page 4 of Butter You Up
Kit follows me, calling over his shoulder, “I look forward to breakfast, Anna!”
I roll my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time this morning, and the sun isn’t even up. But good news for me, bad news for Kit; it’s time for him to shovel shit.
Fifteen minutes later, Jesús and Perry have moved the cows out of their stalls and into the robot barn for their milking, and Kit and I are shoveling the dirty bedding out.Trixie will spend all day running around as a self-appointed working dog; she doesn’t have any official training, but she bounces back and forth from the herd, to the farm hands, to me. If something’s going on in the farm, she likes to have her nose in it.
Since the temperature’s nice and we’re working hard, the barn doors and curtains are open, letting in a breeze. We’re still in spring, but soon, as it warms up, this job will be a hot one. Everything gets busier in the summer. We have to keep the girls comfortable, so fans run inside the barn, and we switch out the water more regularly. Milking takes longer because they are producing more of it.
Right now, we only have to clean stalls twice, since they’ll spend most of the day outdoors in the pasture.
I didn’t give Kit much of a tour, but he’s already marveling over what he can see. “A conveyor for shit,” he’d said earlier in awe. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Now, though, he’s shifted the topic on to something he finds much more interesting: my family.
“I can’t believe Ethan’s growing strawberries,” he says. Ethan, my older brother, runs Bedd Fellows Farm, the legacy my grandad left him.
“I know. Grandad must be rolling in his grave.” Well, Grandad left us with nearly a million dollars of debt on the family farm when he passed unexpectedly, so I don’t feel too bad about that.
But there is a twinge in my heart whenever I think about him. We didn’t get along too well, and it’d been a while since I’d last seen him, even though our farms were just a few miles away. And now he’s gone, so the reconciliation I’d always secretly hoped for would never happen.
“How do you feel about it?”
I shrug, but Kit doesn’t let me get away with it. He scoops a big patty onto the belt and then stops, leaning against his shovel.
“I know you don’t like to talk about feelings, but that’s gotta hurt. You and Samuel always told him to diversify and now, all of a sudden, Ethan’s on board?”
Samuel, my brother who’s two years younger than me and the twin to Colleen, always pushed Grandad’s buttons alongside me, but the difference was that Samuel was smart. He was always meant to get out of Fork Lick and do great things. He went to Cornell, for Christ’s sake.
I, on the other hand, only ever wanted to be a farmer. Specifically, a farmer at Bedd Fellows Farm, but that clearly didn’t work out since I’m here shoveling shit.
Guilt floods me with that thought, too. Sure, shoveling shit isn’t glamorous, but I do love my job. As a teenager, I started working here at Udderly Creamy for the Schumans. They’re the owners of this dairy farm, but they’re retired and live in Florida. Between starting work at sixteen and now, at the age of thirty, the Schumans taught me everything I know about raising animals, put me through SUNY Morrisville, and slowly handed the reins over to me.
Kit’s used to my silence, so he picks the shovel up and does what he does best: talking. “Well, I’m excited for the strawberries this weekend. Bedd Fellows strawberries. I bet they’ll be tasty as hell. I wonder how long we can eat strawberries just plain until we get sick of them. Then we’ll have to make strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream…ooh, can we make it with Udderly Creamy milk?”
And that’s how my morning goes. I listen to Kit babble about strawberries (and then how ice cream is made, the soul-sucking office job he just quit, and his sister’s new boyfriend) until it’s time for breakfast.
I check my phone as I toe off my boots and step back into the house. Anna’s made migas, one of my favorite dishes, and the smell of scrambled eggs and corn tortillas wafts over me. My stomach growls, but I’m distracted by a message from my brother.
Ethan
Hey, you’re going to come by this weekend for the grand opening, right?
Texts from my brother are rare, and not just because we don’t talk much. He’s terrible at technology, and even I, just a year younger than him, cringe when I watch him chicken-peck out a text.
This weekend marks the grand opening of strawberry picking season at Bedd Fellows. I’ve been spending more time at the farm than I have since I went to college, but it’s out of necessity. When they need help, it’s usually Colleen or Gran who asks me to come out. A few months ago, I went out to help plant the strawberry seedlings.
Even though I helped plant them myself, it’s still unbelievable to me that Ethan turned part of the farm from soy to strawberries. I guess that’s what happens when you get desperate.
As much as I don’t enjoy spending time at the family farm, I don’t want Gran and Ethan to lose it, either. While all five of us Bedd kids grew up on the farm, this has always been Gran’s home and it’s all Ethan’s ever done. So, I better show up.
Sure,I text back, and put my phone away. At least I’ll have Kit with me to act as a buffer.
CHAPTER3
MOLLY
This morning,I’m excited to get a better look around the farm in the daylight. I walk out to the bathroom in the pole barn. Once inside, I peel off my eczema gloves, wash off the residue on my hands from the medication using the special hand soap I brought, use the toilet, and wash my hands again. The bathroom is small and probably from the 90s: there’s a solid wall blocking off the shower, which is the kind with a sliding glass door rimmed with faux-gold plating; the lighting fixture above the mirror has those huge frosted globe-style bulbs; and the white tile of the floor has seen better days.
But it’s clean and sure as hell beats using the composting toilet in Vaniel.
