Stealing Lumby by Gail Fraser

Author:Gail Fraser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Fences

For the next hour Katie and Adam stacked hay in total silence until Adam’s muscles began to scream.

Pausing for a moment to give himself a break, he asked with a smirk, “The interview is going quite well, don’t you think?”

“Just as I had hoped.” Katie smiled.

After the hay was brought in. Katie led Adam to an adjacent barn. Unlike the first, which was fairly small and mostly filled with feed, the goat barn was large and, as Adam immediately noted, very loud and very aromatic.

“My God, look at them all,” Adam said with his mouth agape, staring at the goats who were all staring back at him from the side enclosures.

Surprised by Adam’s reaction Katie asked, “Have you never seen a goat?”

Still transfixed Adam answered, “Of course I have.”

“At the petting zoo?”

“Perhaps,” he answered indignantly, though he wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen one even there.

The barn was almost as tall as it was long, with a roof that extended far above the structural crossbeams. Adam guessed the center aisle, which was neatly swept, was eight feet wide and a hundred feet long. It was bordered on both sides by wooden plank fencing that came up to his chest. Behind the fencing were more goats than he could count, standing or lying in the stall that ran the length of the barn. Behind them, large sliding doors opened to the outside.

Unlike the right side, which was one large pen, the left side was divided into two fairly equal sections. One held a dozen young goats, or “kids,” as Katie called them, all testing their legs and beginning to socialize; the other pen had one large male and several females, all sleeping. Through an opening on that side of the barn Adam saw more goats outside.

As Katie and Adam walked farther along the center aisle, the hens, which had been quietly roosting on the beams overhead, stirred and did what they do best—loudly cackled at the disturbance.

Adam didn’t know whether to cover his ears or his head. “Do they always make such a racket?” he asked, wincing.

“When guinea hens are disturbed, yes. They’re my farmyard watchdogs. They also control ticks and elder bugs.”

“And flies?” Adam asked, becoming curious. “I noticed there are no flies.”

“No. The parasitic wasps take care of that.”

“Excuse me?”

“The wasps lay their eggs inside the fly larvae, which the wasp larvae use for food. Thus no flies. Expensive little things, but they certainly pay their way.”

“You actually buy wasps?”

“And that’s stranger than someone paying six dollars for one cup of coffee?”

“Fair enough,” Adam conceded.

“Adam, this is an organic sustainable farm. Instead of turning to chemicals, we look for natural solutions and try to support the ecosystem instead of destroying it.”

She was so impressive. The longer he was with her the more he was won over.

As they continued past the goats, which were doing their best to reach over the fence and receive a rub on the head from Katie, she asked, “So you really know nothing about goats?”

He snapped his fingers.

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.