Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [3]
“Yeah,” she said, and smiled just a little. “It was.”
To Love and to Cherish
2
What a Difference a Year Makes
Three weeks Previously
Excerpt from Virginians at Home magazine
Cecile Burke, Bridget Tyndale, and Lindsay Weight are like the Three Musketeers—if the Three Musketeers wielded hammers and saws instead of swords, if they fought dry rot instead of highwaymen, and if they were ... well, girls.
The “girls” in question, just enough past middle age to consider it a compliment, each gave a considering tilt of her head, purse of her lips, or waggle of her eyebrows.
They were gathered around the oiled hickory table in the kitchen, a vase of fresh-picked daffodils between them. The raised fireplace at their backs smelled of last night’s fire, and the breeze that came through the open back door tasted of snow not long melted, clean and clear, with the cool base notes of the winter that had barely passed. The ancient bricks that paved the floor beneath their feet and the walls around them gleamed in the sun that flooded through the freshly washed windows. The last of the asparagus and spring onions were on the cutting board, a chicken, aromatic with sage, rosemary and garlic, was roasting in the oven, and a package of last year’s peaches was thawing in the sink, waiting to be made into a pie. A ladybug landed on the magazine page, and Cici absently flicked it off as she read aloud.
The three ladies are part of a growing trend of young retirees who, having completed successful careers, seek a different kind of a success in the second half of their lives. Burke, an attractive blonde ...
Cici lifted an eyebrow. “Attractive,” she repeated, preening a little.
The other two ladies gave her an impatient wave. “Go on.”
She started the sentence over.
Burke, an attractive blonde who knows her way around a power saw, owned her own real estate company in Baltimore. Tyndale spent most of her life as a homemaker and Wright is a retired school teacher. They were best friends and neighbors in the same suburban cul-de-sac for over twenty years.
When the three of them came across an abandoned old mansion during a vacation trip through the Shenandoah Valley, it was love at first sight. Within the year, they sold their Maryland homes, combined their resources, and took on the challenge of their lives.
“Our dreams were a lot bigger than our abilities,” confesses Burke, who likes to be called “Cici” by her friends. “We knew that none of us could have taken on a project this big alone. But together, we can do anything.”
Bridget said, “Well, just about anything, anyway. I guess you didn’t mention the chicken coop.”
“What about it?” Cici challenged.
“It was a disaster!”
“We got it built, didn’t we?”
“Will you go on?” Lindsay said. “Read.”
Cici returned her attention to the magazine.
Blackwell Farms Estate—now called Ladybug Farm—was rich in history and even richer in challenges. The sprawling, hundred-year-old mansion came complete with an orchard, vineyard, barns, and livestock. Ida Mae Simpson, who has been keeping house at Blackwell Farms since the 1950s, recalls the heyday of the Blackwell Farms winery, and tells stories of the famous Blackwell Farms cheeses having been aged in the same caves that the Confederate army used to store munitions during the Civil War.
Cici smiled. “That was nice of them to mention Ida Mae. She’ll get a kick out of it.”
“If she doesn’t sue the magazine for misquoting her,” Bridget said.
“She has been crankier than usual lately...”
“Read?” prompted Lindsay.
But when the ladies took possession of the estate two years ago, the roofs were collapsing, the vineyard was so overgrown as to be practically unrecognizable, and the house was completely overrun by ladybugs—thus the name.
“The first few months were a little daunting,” admits Bridget. “Well, okay, the whole first year. I don’t think any of us really knew what we were getting ourselves into.”
With determination and elbow grease, the ladies restored the beauty of the heart pine floors,