Chapter 30
Scarlett
“I’m telling you, she never walks into the snow without a ton of treats and persuasion,” Jake says.
“I don’t believe him Henrietta, I really don’t.
I think that you are a strong and independent woman who is more than capable of walking right over to that stanchion and being milked.
You know it will be more uncomfortable not to,” I coo to the goat.
I scratch right underneath her chin where she seems to like it best and I ever so slightly walk in front of her.
She follows where the scratches lead and before too long she’s trampling through the snow she hates and on to the stanchion.
“What the fuck?” Jake asks, a look of pure disbelief on his face.
“What?” I shrug as I hang the bucket of feed in front of Henrietta’s face and look at Jake.
I have no doubt that the look on my face is smug.
“That didn’t seem so hard,” I say. And then I sit down on the stool and milk Henrietta in the same fashion that Jake showed me yesterday.
Having goats has been a dream of mine for years.
I’ve always thought they were adorable and they prove very handy on a homestead.
For one, they’re great at eating weeds in a field, just don’t let them near any flower beds.
And for two, you can make a ton of things from their milk.
Which Jake has already told me he does for the farmer’s market.
Having access to Henrietta these past few days has only gone to solidify how much I want a goat for myself.
“Okay, that’s it. She’s just conspiring against me,” Jake huffs.
“Or maybe, if you were just calm and not so demanding with her, she’d do what you asked a little easier.” He stands straighter, as if I’ve struck a nerve and then mumbles something about giving the chickens scratch grains and walks away.
I smile to myself as I listen to the calming rhythm of the milk hitting the side of the steel bucket.
It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it yesterday but Jake seemed impressed with how quickly I took to it, so I’m taking that as a compliment.
The sun shines down on me and I can’t help but feel the weight of how my life has changed.
Or maybe I’m feeling the lack of weight from my old life.
It’s March and I’ve been in the new house for around two months now and I can’t explain how much more I feel like I can breathe.
It took the first month for me to release the idea of a dooming deadline.
Hell, sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night panicking that I had forgotten something major for work.
But moments like this, slow, intentional moments where I’m doing a chore, or sipping some wine and having a conversation, I try to take them in.
Really let them sink into my bones. I am determined to heal this overworked part of my soul. One little moment at a time.
I’ve been documenting that part of this journey too.
When I moved I figured I would step up my game on social media for a few reasons.
In case I lost a decent following because some people weren’t interested in this new homestead content, and also for those who are looking to heal this part of themselves too.
Our new modern world is too much sometimes.
I know the term rat race has been around since the thirties but I can’t help but think it’s even worse now than it was then.
We’re all frazzled, overworked, overstimulated, and stretched too thin.
I told Kenzie before I left that I felt pretty confident that if I didn’t do this now, I would eventually die of a heart attack at a young age.
The girls don’t know that I’ve had heart palpitations for years. I’ve been on a steady dose of Lorazepam for almost eight years now but it’s been almost two weeks since my last palpitation. Guess the doctor who told me it was likely anxiety had been right.
Comments on my socials have varied from things like God, I wish I could do this to I’m so proud of you and I don’t even know you.
Of course I still get a few negative comments here and there from people who think I’ve sold out and quit my job to rely on “being an influencer” but I’ve had to make my peace with the fact that people can think what they want, if my body and soul are happier here, that’s all that matters.
When I’m done milking Henrietta I give her a smooch on the nose and then take a selfie with her to post for later.
“Ok, chickens are taken care of,” Jake says when he turns the corner coming from the coop.
“So is this princess,” I say as I unlock her from the stanchion and lead her back to the pen.
“Wow, morning chores go a lot faster when there’s two people.” A voice says from the back porch.
“Yeah,” Jake jokes, “when one of them isn’t you.” He sticks his tongue out at her like he’s ten and she sticks her right back out.
I smack him on the shoulder and reprimand, “that wasn’t a nice thing to say to your niece.”
“No, he’s right. I really don’t help that much. I usually just get Henrietta riled up and play with her instead of helping get her to the stanchion. And a lot of times I accidentally let the chickens out of their run when I feed them.” She shrugs her shoulders.
“I still don’t understand how you do that everytime.” Jake says it like it’s a question. To which Cami responds with a shrug again. I don’t have a lot of experience with teenagers but so far it’s just a lot of ambivalence.
Jake turns to me and asks, “Want to see the greenhouse?”
I pause, throwing a slow smirk his way, “told you.”
“What?”
“Oh nothing, lead the way Shrek.”
“Back to that again?”
“Every time you show me your layers.” I wink at him and he rolls his eyes in return.
It’s playful though and it makes my heart skip a little beat.
Not sure whether I should count that as a palpitation or has it just been that long since I’ve flirted with someone.
Can you count it flirting if you just nicknamed them after an ogre?
We walk past the coop to the impressively large greenhouse on the other side of the house.
It’s probably forty by eighty feet, made almost entirely of glass windows.
The roof is curved, assumingly to catch the sun at all angles.
Jake opens the door and holds it for me to walk inside first. The first thing that hits me is the warmth and the humidity.
It feels tropical and I can’t believe the difference in temperature.
I shrug off my jacket and lay it on a table near the door.
Jake does the same when he walks inside.
“It’s like a sauna in here,” I exclaim.
“Yep, the plants like it hot,” he says completely straight faced. He walks over to a row of butter leaf lettuce and examines the individual leaves. After a few seconds he plucks a leaf out and tosses it into a nearby trash can.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
“The leaf was dying, the ends were browning and since it wasn’t going to get any better I plucked it.
If I had let it stay, it would have taken valuable nutrients from the rest of the plant and as a whole, it would have suffered.
Instead, I sacrificed one leaf for the greater good of the plant.
” His answer is clinical and I kind of love that about him and the way he thinks.
Sometimes I wonder if life is simpler when you look at things so matter of factly.
For me, I would agonize over how to make the plant better, sick leaf included.
But maybe it’s just his years of experience that makes his answer so easy.
“So, what made you decide to put a greenhouse in?” I walk down the center aisle and see multiple rows of raised beds on either side of me.
There’s three different types of lettuce, several different types of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and some root vegetables that I only know what they are because of the labeling on the sides of the beds.
The colors in here are brilliant, varying from greens to reds, yellows and oranges, and even some purple.
“I tried to get Dad to do it for years when I was still at home. He didn’t think I knew the farm was in trouble but I wasn’t stupid.
It was easy to see we didn’t have the extra money that other kids did in school.
I never let him know I knew but I tried to come up with ideas even then that could help him out.
He was a stubborn old mule though and even if he did try an idea I had, he’d never admit that it worked.
When I took over, building this was the first thing I did with the money I got from selling my condo.
” There’s a bit of pain in his face and I’m not sure if it’s talking about his dad or giving up his life in California.
“I knew that with the Colorado sun there was a chance we could grow our vegetables all year round and at least sell them at the market. It’s only been a few years since I landed the contract with the diner to supply their veggies all year.
” The pain in his face morphs into pride at that statement and I know that even if he does miss Cali, he enjoys his purpose here.
“Pretty wise of you,” I say.
“Yeah well, at the time it was probably selfishly motivated.”
“What motivates you now?” He looks up at the glass ceiling, the sun shining down on his face.
He contemplates for a minute and then says, “I guess it’s just routine now.”
“Do you still love it?”
“Still loving it implies I loved it in the first place,” he says with a laugh.
“Oh come on, you can’t convince me that you have never loved this. This is really hard work and it’s hard to make a living off of just farming. You took a farm that was failing and did what was necessary to seemingly make it thrive.”
“I used a degree I paid thousands for to make smart business decisions,” he says with blatant ambivalence.
“You really don’t love it?” There’s something about the words he’s saying and the look on his face when he talks about it that contradict each other. I find it so hard to believe that he doesn’t actually love this.
“I don’t know if I’d say I love it but I know that it’s got perks. And I don’t think I was made to sit behind a desk.”
“Well, I love it,” I say.
One side of his smile ticks up, creating a small dimple in his cheek. “We’ll see how you feel in ten years.”