Clueless Cowboy by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

“No.” Jake laid the soggy towel over his heart. “I promise I’ll help. And how about if I help with your chores. . .at 5:00 a.m.? Then you won’t be doing that much extra.”

Emily’s snort made him want to sink under the water.

Instead he sat up straighter and wrung out the entire towel over his head. As soon as the water stopped flowing and his annoyance faded, he got back to the subject at hand. “What exactly am I supposed to do that’s so much work? Explain it.”

Emily sighed deeply. “Well, you need to grow your own vegetables and meat. You need a milk cow. You’ll need chickens for meat and eggs. It’s too late to plant most of the quick-growing garden food. Peas and onions and potatoes go in early. We’re already eating those at our place.”

“Yeah, I know. They’re delicious.”

“We’ll keep sharing our spring garden with you and let you plant pumpkins and tomatoes and sweet corn over here for us.”

“Chickens and a cow? Where do I get those? I don’t want anyone to know—”

“Yeah, yeah, no one can know you’re here. Big deal.” Emily waved her hand at him. “I had a cow that lost her calf this spring. You could have milked her by hand.”

“What?” Jake sat up a little straighter in the tub, forgetting his weakness and pain in this new horror.

“I’ll show you, although I’m not too good at it myself. I could wean one of my calves early and bottle-feed it. The cows don’t have enough milk for both.” She considered it for a moment, then shook her head emphatically. “No, that won’t work. My cows are just too wild.”

“I’ve seen your cows come crowding into the yard at feeding time. They don’t seem wild to me.”

“Well, you haven’t tried to grab one by the—”

“I’m not much of a milk drinker really,” Jake interjected.

“You’ve got to have a cow to live off the land. It’s a renewable source of food that stays fresh as long—” Emily snickered. “As long as it stays inside the cow.”

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m imagining you milking a cow, that’s all. It’s not funny because I’ll probably get my head kicked off trying to train the cow to put up with it. Then you’ll get to drink all the milk.”

“They kick?”

Emily groaned and let her forehead drop onto her knees. She rested for a minute, then seemed to rally.

Jake silently scolded himself for asking so many questions. And determined that from this moment on he’d just say things like, “Yes, Emily,” and, “Whatever you say, Emily.”

“You’ll need chickens, and for them you just have to have electricity.”

“No, absolutely not. Out of the question. I’m not going to get electricity hooked up, I told you—”

“Okay, okay, let me think.” She looked up at him fiercely.

He remembered his vow of obedience. Okay, starting now.

“I know Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pa didn’t have electricity. Let me think.” She glared at him. “I don’t know how to live off the land myself, you know. The natural way would be to have a mother hen hatch some chicks, and you can do that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.