Four turkeys, with their ugly red wattles like neck scarves, swaggered about in a group and glared at us from beady eyes. Did they know Christmas was coming soon?
“Do the turkeys have names?” I asked, feeling guilty that the thought of a crispy brown turkey right out of the oven made my mouth water.
Josephine gave a covert shake of her head, clearly not wanting to bring up a sore subject in front of Cymbeline.
Cymbeline pulled me over to the water trough. Two white ducks lifted their heads. At the sight of Cymbeline, they let out a friendly, somewhat foolish quack from their orange bills.
“This is Gin and Tonic,” Josephine said. “Papa named them. They aren’t the cleverest animals. But they’re funny.”
“What’s their purpose?” Given their names, I knew they would not be for dinner. Thank goodness. They were too cute to be eaten.
“Sometimes they make fat eggs,” Cymbeline said. “Lizzie uses them for omelets.”
The twins called us over to look at the pigs. Josephine led me by the hand, and the boys parted to give me prime viewing. A long, plump pig lay on her side as eight piglets suckled. Mama didn’t raise her bristled pink head to greet me as the ducks had. I didn’t take offense. She was probably tired.
“Her name’s Sweetpea.” Theo had climbed up to sit on the four-foot wall that enclosed the stall. “She’s very smart. Pigs are intelligent animals. Did you know that, Miss Quinn?”
I smiled over at him, charmed by the earnest expression on his freckled face. “I’ve read about it in books, but having never met a live pig, I couldn’t say for certain.”
“Spend any time with a pig and you’d know,” Flynn said.
“Do you see their tails?” Cymbeline asked. “Aren’t they too perfect?”
“Perfect indeed.” The pink darlings with their swirled tails and pink tummies were much too adorable to think of them as bacon. I understood Cymbeline’s dilemma. I wondered how the sow had become pregnant, as I saw no other pig. I decided to keep that question to myself.
“Did you see our rooster?” Flynn asked, pointing to the red rooster. “We call him King.” The way he strutted about the barn as if he were in charge had certainly earned him his name.
“He crows very loud,” Fiona said.
“King’s rather obnoxious,” Josephine said. “But with
out him, we wouldn’t have fertilized eggs.”
Cymbeline’s eyes flashed with annoyance in the way my sister’s did when I told her something she already knew.
“Miss Quinn, come with me.” Cymbeline dragged me over to the stall where a fawn-colored cow with large brown eyes chewed her cud. “This is Buttercream.” Buttercream looked unbothered by my presence, busy as she was with the cud.
“She’s a Jersey,” Flynn said as he sidled up next to me and petted Buttercream’s head. “This old girl makes the best cream.” He rubbed his stomach. “Lizzie churns it into butter.”
“We have cream with the wild berries in the summer,” Josephine said from behind me.
“Harley grows raspberries.” I turned to see that Poppy had joined us. She wore a pair of overalls made of denim and a knit cap over her two braids. How freeing it must be to wear any form of trousers. I wished the other girls could dress the same, while tramping around in the barn anyway. As for me, I would have been delighted to be out of a corset and a dress.
I walked over to the stalls where Lord Barnes shoveled horse dung. I’d thought Lord Barnes would look out of place with a shovel in his hand, given his pedigree and that crisp British accent. Wearing long rubber boots over his wool trousers, and an old tweed coat, he looked as if he belonged here. If anything, he looked even better out here than inside, which I hadn’t anticipated possible. Perhaps feeling my gaze, he looked up from his work. “Hello there. What do you think about our little farm?”
“I like it quite well.”
“We don’t bother with beef,” Lord Barnes said. “We buy our meat from the Cassidy farm.”
“What about the pigs? Do we eat them?” I asked.
“We slaughter a few for us and sell the others to the Higgins boys,” he said.
Why? I wondered. Didn’t Lord Barnes have enough money without raising pigs?
“I wanted the children to have some experience with real work,” Lord Barnes said, as if I’d asked my question out loud. He leaned against his shovel. “The pigs are their responsibility. They raise and sell them for profit, which then goes into funds for their future. The rest of the farm is for our consumption.”
“The lessons they learn from their enterprise will be invaluable to them,” I said.