A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [75]
“First of all, it’s going to take more than one teenage boy to get all this stuff down the ladder. In fact, I’m not even sure how they got it up here.”
“This is a big project,” agreed Lindsay reluctantly.
“But we could furnish the whole house out of this loft!” Bridget insisted.
“Some of it’s in pretty bad shape,” Cici pointed out. “It’s going to take some elbow grease before you bring it into the house.”
“Well,” Bridget admitted, deflated. “You’re right about that.”
“And do we really want to start bringing heavy furniture in before we finish the floors?”
The three women looked at each other in the reflected light of their combined flashlights, and their expressions were glum.
“I hate the thought of tackling those floors.”
“It wouldn’t take long if we could just get to it.”
“We got distracted by vegetables,” admitted Bridget.
“But,” said Lindsay, brightening, “that doesn’t mean we can’t at least explore what’s here. Who knows, maybe there’s a lost Rembrandt or something!”
But they hadn’t pulled back more than two or three more sheets before Noah called from below, “Hey! You about finished up there?”
Lindsay went to the trapdoor and called down, “Not quite. Why?”
“Just thought you’d want to know,” he answered, “that whatever you’re cooking is on fire.”
“I would rather spend three days cutting miter joints,” Cici said, stifling a groan as she sank into her front porch rocker, “than three hours in the kitchen putting up stew. And you know how I hate cutting miter joints.” She leaned back heavily in the rocking chair and wine splashed over the rim of her glass onto the back of her hand. Unself-consciously, she licked it off.
“But you have to admit,” Bridget said, her smile a little lopsided with fatigue, “the stew was incredible.”
“The best I’ve ever tasted.”
“It was the charred meat,” agreed Lindsay, closing the front door behind her as she joined them on the porch.
“Well, Noah did tell us hickory wood spits.”
“Who knew what that meant?”
“Combined with the fat from the pork—”
“And the fact that you had to turn the heat up for the peppers—”
“A few flames were inevitable.”
“But no harm done.”
“And I still think the hickory chips were a good idea. The smokey taste is what made the stew so good.”
The flames that shot from the back of the grill had been quickly extinguished with a garden hose, and the peppers were charred to perfection. Unfortunately, to their initial dismay, so was the meat. However, a closer examination revealed that only the outer crusts of the roasts and the skin of the chicken had been blackened, and most of the meat could be saved. Three hours of simmering in the stewpot with the vegetables had turned the charcoal lumps into a tender, savory mixture of perfectly seasoned stew that they could probably never replicate.
“I think,” mused Bridget, “that’s what the cookbook probably meant by roasting over an open flame. It’s the burned parts that give the stew its flavor.”
“Maybe,” Cici said. “But I’m never doing that again. We could have blown up the house.”
“Not the whole house,” Bridget said defensively.
“Just the back patio,” Lindsay grinned.
Bridget sighed and closed her eyes wearily. “Well, at least it’s done. Every last vegetable has been peeled, cooked, and preserved, and we have enough food put away to outlast the Apocalypse.”
“We still have the persimmons,” Cici reminded her.
Bridget groaned out loud.
“What is it with us, anyway?” Lindsay said. “Why can’t we let anything go to waste? It’s not like we’re in danger of starving or anything. Why can’t we just keep the tomatoes we can eat and toss the rest away? Why can’t we leave the apples for the squirrels and the cherries for the birds? We were never like this back in the suburbs.”
“True enough,” agreed Cici, although a little reluctantly. “I didn’t have a bit of trouble tossing out lettuce that started to wilt or carrots when they went soft. And I paid for those.”
“It’s definitely different when it comes from the supermarket,” Bridget said. “There’s something about seeing the produce come straight from the ground