The Amish Christmas Cowboy by Jo Ann Brown

Author:Jo Ann Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-07-04T19:40:43+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Sarah’s brothers were quiet the next evening during supper. Instead of discussing, as they usually did, their day at the sawmill and what they would do the next morning, Menno and Benjamin were as silent as the clock she’d forgotten to wind before she left for the Summerhays house. They spoke only when they asked for food to be passed. As always, the evening meal was smaller than the midday meal. She’d prepared a casserole with ham leftover from earlier in the week along with cheese and pasta. A salad with vegetables she’d picked an hour ago in the garden and the bread she’d baked yesterday shared the table with pickles and apple butter and a bowl of chowchow.

Each attempt she made at starting a conversation failed while her brothers ate. Even when she asked how much longer it would take to fill the corncrib, they shrugged at the same time. That startled her because any other night, they would have given her a lecture about how, as a woman, she didn’t need to worry about the crops and that she should focus her concerns on her garden and the house.

She tightened her grip on her fork before setting it on her plate. Miriam and the Wagler twins didn’t have to endure such reprimands. Their families treated them like vital members, not a fragile piece of china that needed to be guarded from encountering the realities of life on a farm.

When they had first moved to the hollow along Harmony Creek, she’d assumed her brothers’ reluctance to be honest with her was because of their fears they couldn’t make the farm a success. They’d set up the sawmill, tilled the fields and planted apple trees. It would take three years before the trees bore fruit, but in the meantime, Menno and Benjamin could build their other businesses.

However, her brothers were determined to farm. It’d been three generations since the Kuhns family had depended on fields for their livelihood. What once had been their farm in Indiana had been sold acre by acre until only a single one remained. The men had worked in the RV factories or in shops owned by Englischers.

Their first harvest was about to get underway, and they were concerned about the amount of corn they expected to get from the few arable fields attached to their farm. The old corncrib had been emptied and swept out. Slats to prevent animals from getting in had been replaced. She guessed the corn, when stripped from the stalks, would fill about half of it.

“More biscuits?” she asked, holding up the plate.

Benjamin took two and mumbled a “danki,” but Menno didn’t glance in her direction.

Her brothers couldn’t look less alike. Menno had hair as dark as a bear’s. In fact, his friends in Indiana had called him Big Brother Bear before he was baptized. Benjamin’s hair had red highlights but was otherwise a plain brown. Both men had work-worn hands with layers of calluses from the long hours they’d spent at the sawmill or in the fields.

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.