Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [141]
Lily was beside herself, dancing around the kitchen with her first dollars. Seeing my young entrepreneur realize her dream made me feel proud too, and also mystified, in the way of all parents who watch their kids acquire skills beyond our ken. When I was that age, the prospect of selling even a Girl Scout cookie mortified me to tears. Now I watched my nine-year-old stand a couple of inches taller each time she picked up the phone to arrange an egg pickup, always remembering first to ask, “How are you today, and how’s your family?” In the evenings she sat down at the kitchen table with the account book I’d helped her set up to keep track of customer information, inventory, and expenses. Finally she was entering numbers in the “Income” column.
I soon wondered if I’d have to walk down the driveway and get in line myself. I reminded Lily that our family still needed eggs too. We’d stayed well supplied for the past year from her three old pet hens, which I had presumed were not going to go on payroll. But now their eggs went straight into the Lovely Layer cartons with all the rest. They could be mine, I learned, for $2.50 a dozen. Taking into account the cost of feed, this price gave Lily a small profit margin and still pleased her customers.
I, however, balked at it. Of course I didn’t mind rewarding my hardworking daughter, that wasn’t the problem. She had been diligent about caring for her hens, closing them safely into their coop every night, even cracking ice off their water bowl on cold mornings. She kept her ears permanently tuned to the chicken voices outside, so knew immediately when a coyote had crept into the yard, and barreled screaming for the front door before the rest of us had a clue. (I don’t know about the coyote, but I nearly needed CPR.) These hens owed their lives and eggs to Lily, there was no question.
But since she was taking her business so seriously, I wanted her to understand it genuinely. Businesses have start-up costs. I reminded her that I’d paid for the chicks, and also the feed they’d eaten for six months before they started laying—grazing hens still need supplementary protein, calcium, and other nutrients. I explained to Lily about capitalization, credit, and investors. She listened with interest. “I’ll pay you back,” she said immediately. “I want the business to be really mine, not just some little kid thing.”
She sat down with her ledger to figure the size of the zero-interest loan I’d fronted in venture capital. We had the receipts. We have to buy organic feed in bulk, so we’d already purchased all she’d need until next spring. What she had to calculate was the cost of thirty-two mail-order chicks and the edible wages required to keep the layers producing one full year. (Roosters had been dispatched.) I wondered myself what the figure would be. She bent over her ledger for a long time, pigtail ends brushing the table as her pencil scratched, erased, and scratched some more. Finally she spoke: “Two hundred and eighty-five dollars!”
She rolled out of her chair, flopping dramatically onto the floor, eyes squeezed shut and tongue thrust out to convey either despair or grave fiscal alarm. As I said, a CEO wears many hats.
“Don’t panic,” I said, sitting down beside her on the floor. “Let’s talk about this.”
She opened one eye. “Mom, I won’t make that much till I’m fifty or something.”
“Trust me, you will. It’s not as much as it sounds. Plus, if we’re keeping track of everything, I owe you for the roosters we ate and all the eggs we’ve used since April. I forgot about that. Add those up and we’ll see where we are.”
Where we were, at the beginning of November, was just under $155 in debt. Lily and I made a deal. She would give me all the eggs I wanted, subtracting