Chapter 16
While Hannah gives the Scandi Trio a walking tour of the farmhouse grounds, including the pond, and Brady enjoys a quiet moment on the porch swing, I share my idea with Alice. It doesn’t take much prodding. She adores Brady, and agrees that the commercial kitchen is the perfect venue for his camp.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she says.
It does take some phone calls and schedule shuffling.
But once Alice tells her vendors about the fire and Brady’s predicament, they’re eager to help.
They’re all big fans of Brady and support the work he does.
Many of them even provide ingredients for his camp, so it’s beneficial for them as well.
Some of her vendors are ahead in production and willing to hold off for a few weeks; others agree to reduce their production times by an hour.
A few are willing to switch their scheduled day or time slot.
In the end, Alice reworks the schedule so Brady’s camp can use the kitchen for four hours Monday through Friday for the next four weeks.
I marvel at how quickly she made the impossible possible.
We soon head to the porch to give Brady the news.
“What are you two smiling about?” he says as we approach.
Alice gives me the go-ahead with a nod.
“We have a solution to your problem,” I announce. “You can hold the camp in Alice’s barn.”
“Your commercial kitchen?” His eyes dart to Alice. “But you’re fully booked.”
“She was,” I say. “But Alice worked her magic, shuffled a few things around.” I sit beside Brady on the swing, awaiting his response. “So? What do you think?”
“It’s an amazing facility,” he starts. “Better than the one that burned down. I just don’t know . . . How will my students get here each day? Most of them don’t have cars.”
“Oh, I talked to Gerry,” I explain. “He has a shuttle bus for special events. One of his staff members will drive your students out here and take them back each day. He said it’s the least he can do to make up for Allen’s mess.”
“He also said your cabins are uninhabitable,” Alice adds. “So he’s going to pay me the cost of housing you and the girls for the next four weeks as well. That makes it easier for you. You’ll have close access to the kitchen for prep, et cetera.”
“We figured you can use the next couple of days to get organized,” I go on. “Maybe have your students come out this Friday for a test run, and then start classes again come Monday.”
Brady looks at Alice and then back to me several times. “You two are quite the team,” he says. “You figured all this out while I was sitting out here feeling sorry for myself?”
Alice and I shrug. It felt natural to us.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing.” Alice lifts a finger into the air. “By the end of the day, we’ll have wireless internet.”
My jaw drops open. “Wait. You’re getting internet?” This is news to me.
“I change when I need to,” she explains. “It was time to move into the twenty-first century. And it’s a good thing. Now that we’ll have these youngsters staying here.”
“I don’t know what to say except ‘thank you,’” Brady says.
He stands and hugs Alice first, before turning to me. I’m careful not to bump his bandage, but let him fully wrap his arms around my back. I feel safe, and I can’t resist taking a full breath to pull in the smell of soap on his neck.
“I’ll go tell the girls,” Alice announces, clearly finding an excuse to leave us alone.
Brady and I linger in our embrace.
“Okay. Wow,” he says, still trying to process this turn of events.
“Well, if we’re doing this, I’ve got to restock everything,” he starts.
“We didn’t just lose the kitchen facilities.
We lost everything in the pantry and refrigerator.
So if we want to get this class up and running again quickly, I’m going to have to go out and source all of it. Eggs, milk, butter.”
Hearing Brady’s shopping list triggers me to run through my own.
Alice and I now have a growing list of things to buy too, now that we’ll have another four mouths to feed.
The thought of gathering supplies for our ad hoc B & B literally makes me giddy.
While Alice boasts an early crop of garden greens and vegetables, dozens of fresh eggs, and a well-stocked pantry—many items she canned herself—some products, like meat and cheese, we will need to buy.
“We’ll go together,” I offer.
Brady holds my gaze and smiles. “Together is good.”
My morning with Brady proves to be an agricultural tour of the county.
While Alice offered to source the pasture-raised eggs for his camp, he still needs locally produced milk, butter, flour, honey, and maple syrup, and so we set out to acquire everything, toting a large cooler to store the perishables.
Our first stop is the dairy farm, where I meet Tom O’Brien, a fourth-generation dairy farmer who raises Guernsey cows.
The breed originated from the island of Guernsey off the coast of France and was imported to the US in 1840.
Tom explains that these cows produce a golden-hued milk rich in beta carotene that contains only A2 protein, not the A1 protein found in commercial milk from Jersey cows.
Tom says the A2 milk is more easily absorbed and digested, and gentler on the immune system.
Brady and I stock up on Tom’s whole milk, as well as heavy whipping cream, butter, and aged cheddar.
Since O’Brien’s was the only local farm listed on Lenny’s printout, I ask Tom if he knows anything about the WLA workers during the war, or if there may be any historical artifacts from those days.
He draws a blank, but kindly offers to ask his father, who is more of the historian in the family, and get back to me.
At another, newer farm, Brady introduces me to Sally Halvorsen, a local beekeeper.
One taste of her Midwest honey—floral but balanced, with hints of alfalfa and sunflower—and I purchase two glass jars.
It would taste wonderful drizzled on homemade biscuits with the local butter.
Sally also grows the lavender Brady was in town buying the other day.
I pick up a jar of the dried herb to play around with in the kitchen, already dreaming of a lavender simple syrup for lemonade.
Our last stop is Molly’s Mill, a purveyor of fine stone-milled flours. Brady says he sources his all-purpose, bread, and pastry flour from Molly. She grows the wheat on her property and grinds it the old-fashioned way, between two granite discs powered by a water wheel.
We meet up with Molly in the farm store, which not only sells her various flours, but also a few other local artisan products like goat-milk soap and pottery.
“I was sorry to hear about the fire,” Molly says after Brady introduces us. “And your hand.”
Brady raises his mitten of gauze and waves, then explains how he lost the contents of the pantry in the fire too.
“I’m hoping I can grab a few sacks of flour this morning to tide us over.
And then, can you deliver next week’s shipment to Alice’s farm instead of the camp?
I’m running class out of her commercial kitchen from now on. ”
She smiles. “I know.”
Brady shoots me a glance. “Just so you know, Maggie, there is no such thing as a secret in St. John’s Ferry.”
“I’m beginning to understand that,” I say.
Molly offers us a tour, and we follow her across a quaint bridge over a small brook. I take in the mill. The lower half is limestone, and the top half is constructed of wood. The large wooden waterwheel turns rhythmically with the fall of water from the dammed brook.
“This mill dates back to 1855,” Molly says, guiding us through the space.
“Truly, not a lot has changed in production since then. We still grow the same wheat, including ancient grains like einkorn, that humans have been growing for thousands of years. We also produce emmer, amaranth, spelt, buckwheat, durum, and rye. None have been genetically modified in any way.”
“It’s amazing how the right flour can really elevate a dish, don’t you think?
” Brady says. “Like buckwheat has notes of chocolate, so it’s perfect in brownies.
Emmer has a nutty taste, so I like to use it when I make something earthy and autumnal like, say, pumpkin scones.
What did you use in those orange-rhubarb scones the other day?
” Brady turns to Molly. “Maggie is quite the baker.”
I can’t help but blush and glance away before gathering myself. “It was just good old all-purpose,” I say. “But I’d love to experiment more.”
Molly points to the mill, where I see two massive circular stones, one on top of the other, and a hopper above it.
“The benefit of the stone mill is extraction rate,” she explains.
“We can grind the grains into flour but still keep the germ, which is what has all the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Our all-purpose flour, for example, has an eighty percent extraction rate, higher than commercial flours of its kind.”
She scoops some of the flour into her hand to show us a sample.
Brady uses his index finger to rake through it. “There’s a hint of brown to it. See?”
I pinch the flour and rub it between my fingers, seeing and feeling the difference.
“You likely used this flour for those scones,” Molly tells me. “Alice is a regular customer.”
When we head back to the store, Brady and I load up on the other flours he needs for class this week, as well as some smaller bags of buckwheat, emmer, and einkorn, which I plan to use for scones, waffles, and desserts.
“That was so . . . satisfying,” I say as we drive back to the farmhouse. “I mean, I just bought flour from the woman who actually grows and mills it. And it’s the same wheat people were growing ten thousand years ago. How cool is that?” I lift my hands from the wheel for dramatic effect.
Brady laughs. “The coolest.”