Chapter 143~

“I don’t know what to do!  I can’t keep up with processing and picking and-“ Willow’s wail cut off her words.

Jill wandered the huge garden plot, the greenhouse and checked the trees in the orchard.  “Do you have all the food your family needs?”

“All the produce, but-“

“Well then you have two options.  The first is that you could just hire a bunch of teenagers to pick the fruit and you could bring it to the store.”  She glanced around the farmhouse, observed the tidy yards and huge flowerbeds, and watched the sheep grazing.  “But, if I was you, I’d have a ‘Self-Serve’ Sunday.  Open your farm up to visitors from one p.m. to seven p.m.  Allow them to pick all the produce they want and charge by the pound.  That way, you’d only have to hire one or two teens to man scales and cash box.”

“I like it.  As fast as things are getting mature, I think I’ll do a Wednesday and Sunday one.  Once a week will have too much waste.”

“How about the  pumpkin patch.  How is it doing?  I haven’t been out there in a while but it looks good from the road.”

Excitedly, Willow made Jill promise to look as she left.  “The first pumpkins will be ready around mid-September I think.  I’m so excited about it.  When he showed me those city patches I just cringed for those kids.  He wants to do a corn maze next time, but I don’t think we have the time for it.”

“Well, get some scales, some more buckets, and paint a sign.”

A wail from upstairs sent Jill home and Willow upstairs to rescue her ‘starving’ sons from apparent imminent demise.  Chad found her on the swing, Lucas rolling around trying his best to fall off while Liam nursed.  “Well, this is a sight for weary eyes.”

“Rough day?”

“No—good day, actually.  Just long when you’d rather be home.”

“Good day?  How?”  Willow sat Liam up and rubbed his back firmly until he managed to burp up the air he’d swallowed.

“That’s m’boy.”  Chad winked at her.  “Aiden Cox.”

“What about him?”

“He came zipping down the street, on his scooter, wearing his helmet, elbow and knee pads.  He even jumped off the sidewalk when he saw Alexa Hartfield walking toward him.”

“Will wonders never cease?”

“I just wish he didn’t have to learn the hard way like that.”

“The hard way?”  Willow passed Liam to her husband and grabbed her basket.  It was past egg gathering time.

Chad scooped Lucas up in his other arm and carried them around the house talking to Willow as he went.  “He was there the day of the accident.  He saw me working on the baby.  I didn’t have time to stop and make him go away.”

“Oh Chad!  How horrible!”

“I think the reaction of the sitter made the biggest impact on him.”  It was as though Chad couldn’t stop talking about it.  All through the egg gathering, he told about calling Mrs. Cox and suggesting she come and get her son, how he’d blocked Aiden’s view of the child, and tried to comfort the sitter before her hysterics drove Aiden into the street just to get away from it all.

Abruptly, he changed the subject.  “So what did you do today?”

“I know how we’re going to save the produce.”

“Really?”

Willow outlined the plan for the produce stand and by the time they went to bed that night, an extra large sign was ready to attach to the fence out by the gate.  Excited at the idea, Chad was certain it’d ensure success for the pumpkin patch as well.  More than everything else, both of them were happy that all of Willow’s hard work wouldn’t be wasted.  If she had to choose farm work or time with her sons, her sons would win diapers and little hands down, but she preferred not to see the rot and waste that would come from her inability to finish her projects.

***

The success of ‘Walden Farms’ produce was phenomenal.  Instead of doing all the work, she simply walked through the gardens, pointing at the ripe and mature foods and shaking her head when someone started to pick something not quite ready.  Thanks to her diligence, the crops were picked at their peak, but not stripped clean too early.

Everyone loved the boys, and the sling Willow fashioned out of athletic jersey kept her and the boys as cool as possible with them strapped to each hip.  Marianne showed up on opening day and spent ten minutes on the back step clutching her stomach and howling with mirth at the sight of Willow’s ‘humongous hips’.  However, it was an effective way to keep abreast of what was happening with her garden and keep the boys occupied with something other than wrestling in the playpen.

With less to do in processing the extra food, Willow found time to butcher her meat chickens on schedule and kept her egg layers happy with their new extra large run.  She and Chad still ate the laying hens as new layers came up in the ranks, but she used meat chickens to serve her customers looking for free ranging and hormone free chickens.  For some inexplicable reason, the boys would sit for hours in a playpen in the new barn and watch their mother pluck, skin, and wrap chickens.  They rattled their toys, took an occasional wrestling tumble, but then seconds later, were back watching each fascinating movement.  Chad was disgusted.

In a vintage overnight case that Marianne found in an antique store, Willow stored the cut out clothes she planned to sew for the ever-growing boys.  It sat beneath the coffee table looking very much like it belonged there.  Willow had great plans to cover it with fabric or paint it to match the room, but for now it was just a plain brown case looking like it was put there as part of the décor.  Inside flannel lined overalls, Jon-Jons, rompers, and of course, more rompers.  She knitted ‘longies’ out of the white wool that Chad still hated, and no evening went by that Chad didn’t find a new pile of something or another on the coffee table when he got home from work waiting for her to put away the next day.

One evening late in September, he arrived home at two in the morning to find her journal laying on the coffee table next to three piles of new diapers, longies,  and to his amusement, hand knitted and sewn footed pajamas.  She’d just spent twice the cost or more making something that could be purchased at Wal-Mart for five dollars each.  Even as he thought it, her words from those early days came back to him, “I can’t afford to buy cheap things.  I need to invest in quality so that I don’t have to replace them as often.”  She’d assume that cheap equaled inferior.

He picked up one of the sleepers and felt the softness of the fabric, the carefully knitted wool feet and attached hoods.  “She’s right,” he murmured to himself.  This will last through another ten children and look almost as good then as they do now.”  Something Dr. Kline had mentioned caused him to add even more softly, “Even if they aren’t our children.”

In the kitchen, on the back of the woodstove, he found a bowl of stew on the still-hot stovetop.  Using pot holders, he sat it on a plate, grabbed a spoon, some cornbread, and a glass of milk, and went back to the living room.  As he ate, he read the latest entry into Willow’s journal.

September-

The strain on our friendship seems all but gone now.  Chad seems to have taken his father’s words to heart and when things get stressful, he simply talks about it—even when he doesn’t want to.  I think he’s amazingly brave.  It’s hard enough stopping drunks, breaking up fights between families, or dealing with an accident.  It’s even harder to come home and have to make yourself vulnerable to the very people you want to shield from those things.

The little chaps are growing and growing!  Mother marked my growth inside the door of my closet so I’ve been using each side of their closet for their growth.  It’s easier to mark them now than at first.  I used to have to lay them down and use my measuring tape and transfer, but now they’ll stand up against the door just like Mother used to do.

Liam is crawling.  He can’t seem to go forward, however.  He sees something across the room, gets up on all fours, crawls with all his might, and ends up farther away from it than ever.  It is hysterical watching him and the look of utter confusion on his face.  One of these days he’ll put his knee forward instead of backward to go and actually get there.

Lucas, on the other hand, gets to anywhere he wants to go by crawling on his forearms and elbows.  Chad calls it the ‘army crawl’.  It is slow, and it looks horribly uncomfortable, but he can get anywhere he wants to go much to Liam’s consternation.  He also has all four front teeth whereas Liam only has three.

Mom says that the boys are growing amazingly fast.  The clothing she buys them are all designed for children of twelve months instead of six so in her opinion, that means they’re exceptionally healthy.  However, Dr. Wesley concurs (although for more medically substantiated reasons) so I guess that’s good.

Lucas knows Chad’s voice and has a very keen sense of hearing.  If Chad even says a word to me when he gets home, Lucas hears it and will wake up unless he’s in a very deep sleep.  If he’s playing on the floor, he’ll start crawling and has even climbed up on Chad’s leg to get closer.  Liam is definitely attached to Chad, but it’s not the same as watching Lucas.  I don’t know if it is a personality difference or if maybe he’s a little less advanced… I just don’t know, but I think it’s interesting.

We’re going to have a lot of trouble keeping the boys from the stoves this winter.  They’re too little to really understand and too old to leave them alone.  Chad has been building ‘fences’ to go around them, but I’ve finally asked for a fence to keep them out of the kitchen all together.  We can’t put the fence around the kitchen stove and me be able to get into it for baking and things.  However, I do have the little play yard I can put in the middle of the kitchen for them.

The garden is under control again.  Most of the produce is either ready for me to process, all picked, or just growing in the greenhouse.  We started new tomatoes outside just to try it.  We have the water walls all around them and will see how they work.  We always used to start them that way when it was getting warmer but not when it was getting colder.  I don’t think it’ll work, but we can’t know unless we try.

All the fruit is picked and the alfalfa is in the barn.  There were so many acres of alfalfa this time that Chad rented a baler to put up the hay in the barn.  We’ve got enough to keep the animals fed for most of winter without calling the feed store.  I’m excited about that.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to remove very many trees to plant those crops either.  The property we bought from Adric was old cropland that just needed a good tilling and a couple of young trees removed.  Those trees are now in our front pasture for shade for the sheep.

Ryder has revamped the greenhouse to be twice as productive.  He’s built “loft beds” for shallow growing vegetables and herbs.  He almost doubled our produce with that one move.  Alexa Hartfield found out I could grow corn year round and has offered me obscene prices to keep her supplied.  How could I say no?  We’ll get some too so it’ll be good for all of us.   Meanwhile, the work Ryder does in the greenhouse has given him lots of material for his first term paper.  I don’t understand it all or why they even have to do it, but Chad says it’s normal.

I met Ryder’s girlfriend the other day.  She seems like a lovely young woman, and showed an intelligent interest in what he’s doing here.  She took a tour of the house and asked questions about why we do much of what we do.  I guess a cell phone next to an oil lamp is a bit of an odd sight.  Chelsea, his girlfriend, is a senior in high school and plans to attend Rockland University next fall.  She seems to be interested in nursing.  Ryder seems very taken with her.  I hope he’s not too young.  I’d hate to see him or her hurt.

Granddad comes once a week, without fail, on Thursday afternoons.  He sits with a boy on his lap, talks to them about Mother, tells him about Uncle Kyle and about my cousins, and plays with him.  Then he passes the little lad to me and picks up the next.  Those boys adore their G-G-Dad.  I had no idea that children so young could be so attached to someone other than possibly their mother, but they are.  When Grandmom comes, they both fall asleep to her lullabies and curl up with her as though she’s the greatest thing in their little worlds.  I love it.

We see Mom and Dad Tesdall around every ten days or so.  It’s never quite two weeks, but usually more than one.  Why that matters, I don’t know, but there you have it.  We take turns making dinner for each other, and when they come, they insist that Chad and I go into town for ice cream or a movie.  At first, I was annoyed by the idea that we needed to get away from the children, but now I understand that it’s not about getting us away from the babies and all about giving us time alone together.  It’s about giving us something rather than getting us away from something.  Fine nuance, but a big one.  I can see that it means a lot to Chad, and the more we go, the more I look forward to those couple of free hours to focus on him alone.

I’ve been invited to speak at a Christian Women’s Retreat in New Cheltenham next spring.  Chad recommended that I accept, but I still haven’t decided.  They are asking for women around the greater Rockland area in hopes that people will make friends of both the attendees and the speakers.  I’m requested to speak on beauty in life and journaling.  How did they find out that I journal?  Chad wants me to try to get mother’s journals ‘edited’ so that I can offer them for sale at the retreat.  He thinks they’d be a huge encouragement to other women, but I’m not sure.  I don’t know if I have time for that project.  Chad, the lads, and the farm must come first.

Chad found the change in pen color and the fine differences in writing or penmanship style between paragraphs amusing.  She’d taken to starting one journal entry for each month and just adding to it as she had a moment.  A paragraph or two at a time, the information that meant most to her ended up on paper.  Sometimes she wrote about what was on her heart, the wrestling she had to overcome her own sins and weaknesses, and other times specific details about how to do something with the children or the work to make it smoother or more efficient.

He hadn’t realized how pressured he’d made her feel to do things he thought were important.  Reading about the retreat and Kari’s journals through her eyes, he could see the pressure she felt, and if he was honest with himself, the pain it would cause her to do something so intense with her mother’s journals.  He’d have to tell her not to worry about it.

He crawled upstairs ready to climb in bed only to find it empty.  With a sigh that only Willow understood how to translate, he made an about face and went back downstairs, onto the front porch, and found her curled up on the porch swing with several blankets.  A closer look showed tearstains on her cheeks.

Were they evidence of more grief at the loss of her mother?  A result of the pressure she was under?  Were they something between her and the Lord?  Why the tears?  Could they have been prevented?   And finally, why did he always feel so helpless when he saw evidence of tears, but a little irritated when he actually saw her crying?