Westcott Family Farm

Copyright© 2021 – Nicholas Hall

Chapter One

“Happy the man whose wish and care,
a few paternal acres bound,
control to breathe his native
air in his own ground.”
(Alexander Pope)

I suppressed my yawn, clenching my jaw in the process and twisting my face just a bit, conscious if I didn’t, it’d trigger yawns from the other five boys on the chairs to my right. As they say, one yawn sets other yawns off.  I’d listened to the music (not bad), the speeches (dry), and now, half-way through the list of graduates, anxiously awaited the announcement of the young male we were here to see receive his diploma.  Robert would be near the end of the stream of young people parading across the stage as their name was read since “Westcott” is near the end of the alphabet and god help anybody who might suggest to read the names in a different order.  The order and procedure hadn’t changed much since I’d graduated years before, waiting most impatiently then for the principal to say “Jacob Westcott,” and could see no change in the foreseeable future, relegating to our remaining troupe of boys to last in the line when they received their diploma.

Sighing, yawn suppressed, I glanced down the row of boys to my right and wished their mother could’ve been here to see her first born graduate from high school, something she hadn’t done, but it wasn’t to be!  She’d never see any of her boys graduate or grow up, be there for their first dates, first heartbreaks, or see them settled into their own lives or, if possible, see or hold her own grandchildren. Those responsibilities she’d bequeathed and so ordained, belonged to and was accepted by me and my spouse, Andy Jamison-Westcott!

As the High School principal continued reading through the names of graduates, calling each forward to receive his or her diploma, amidst the scattered cheers and applause of joyful family members and friends, I allowed my mind to wander back through time and the beginnings of the Westcott Family Farm, relayed to me by first my grandfather and later by my father before he passed away leaving the farm to me.

Westcott Family Farm was established by my Great-grandfather, Robert Westcott who, having more than a bit of the wanderlust in his spirit and soles of his feet, sold a very productive and richly fertile farm on the Southern Minnesota/Northern Iowa border and moved his family north—into the wooded, lake dotted country of Northern Minnesota.  It was a new country with Beltrami County barely incorporated some forty odd years before in 1866 and named after an “Italian Count” who, it was said, was an early explorer to the region.  Bemidji became the country seat in 1897.

Robert Westcott viewed this as a land of opportunity and good fortune for the hard worker, the enterprising individual, and entrepreneur; all of which he thought himself adept and skilled at.  Bemidji State Normal School was recently established, offering educational and employment, he hoped, opportunities for his growing family of five girls and one boy.  Although it was in the midst of logging country and replete with lakes, as well as the Mississippi River, located in close proximity to two very large Indian Reservations with large tracts of land undeveloped, left in its natural state, and in a northern clime he’d not experienced agriculture in, he was optimistic. He’d read an old newspaper article claiming a farmer in the area reporting a crop of two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes per acre and that was in land after being frozen solid for at least five months of the year. The short summers were offset by long days, increasing the growing time for crops.

He reasoned it might be too far north to grow corn or soybeans, but saw no reason why hay, oats, and certain vegetables might be grown there; certainly items such as the potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, cabbage and other cool weather crops. Since blackberries seemed to grow wild here, he reasoned other berries might grow as well. It’d take some experimentation and research, but he thought he could make a living off of this land. He’d grown tired of raising row crops, milking cows, slopping pigs, and the high temperatures of southern Minnesota and was ready for a change.

“Hell, the land is cheap enough,” he mused to himself.

   Game and fish were abundant in the nearby lakes, the river and streams, and the forests. Robert was convinced he and his family could live off of their own land, supplemented by hunting and fishing and outside employment.  He was a carpenter by trade, a farmer by present occupation, and a dreamer at heart! Like his ancestors, Robert Westcott was blessed with ambition, intelligence, good looks, vision, and an exceptionally nicely-shaped, long, fat cock which he used with regularity, precision, and great pleasure!

Robert made several trips to the area searching for a piece of property which would suit the needs of his family for the present, and the future, and the life style he preferred. The property would have to be suited for subsistence farming providing for his family, the opportunity for growth in the future, and bring modest cash income to his larder, but only if the price was right!

He finally decided a tract of land of two hundred forty acres located along the shores of Big Sand Lake east of Bemidji, was appropriate and would suit his purposes.  Granted, part of it was logged, but there were still nice stands of mixed hardwoods and poplar, interspersed with groves of pine trees, and spotted with several small ponds and peat beds.  Only sixty acres or so was cleared sufficiently for agriculture, but the stumps could be removed, in the future, from the logged areas.  The old house on the abandoned homestead needed a great deal of work, but was habitable, sort of, but they’d live in it until the renovation was complete anyway. There was a decent barn, a good well and windmill, and, most importantly, the price was right! So right, in fact, after the sale of his other farm, there was cash left over. Robert not only was adept and talented at depositing his personal fluid offering into willing orifices, but extremely talented in investing and growing his cash assets and non-cash assets.

The soil was mixed sand and gravel with marginally decent topsoil, but basically northern Podzolic soil, which, if fertilized properly and humus increased through the use of peat, manure, and composted materials, would produce a variety of crops, if watered properly during dry seasons.  Although irrigation wasn’t common, Robert knew enough about the importance of water, which would be abundant from the lake, the small ponds, and the water table existing some twenty or less feet down, to bring his ideas and crops to a fruition.  The only real obstacle, he felt, was the climate; it’d dictate what crops he could plant and expect a reliable harvest.

When he stood back and looked at his possible purchase, he knew he’d be the only person interested.  After all, who in their right mind would want scrub, poor land located along a lake?  Robert Westcott did, shot in a bid lower than the asking price, and by the gods, owned it! The Westcott Family moved in April, loading all of their household goods and furniture, livestock, farm equipment, along with themselves, on a train and after arriving near Bemidji at a small railroad siding and depot, unloaded and moved their possession by wagon, with livestock afoot (except for the chickens and pigs) to their new home on Big Sand Lake.

Miriam and his girls set about getting the house in order while he and his son, Edward, repaired the fences, cleaned and repaired the barn, chicken coop, and hog house, plowed a large garden, and sixty acres of cleared and stumped ground.  While Miriam and the girls planted the garden, settled the hens in the newly renovated coop, milked the two cows, and other household chores, Robert and Edward planted corn, oats, and potatoes. Robert figured, in addition to the sixty acres planted, there was an additional twenty acres of hay ground that could be harvested as well.  He’d need that hay either stacked or in the mow of the barn come winter to feed not only the milk cows but any steers he had in pasture as well.

He’d decided a few beef cattle and three or four sows, heavy with young, and several sheep, along with his draft and riding horses, would take care of the farm’s livestock. The horses would provide the power for field work and transportation, the milk cows for milk, cheese, and butter, the hogs for meat in the form of ham, bacon, sausage, lard, and canned meat, and the sheep for sale.  He soon changed his mind on sheep when bears, wolves, and coyotes decided they enjoyed the taste as well. 

After his sheep started disappearing, he began confining the hogs in the hog house at night, securing them tightly from predators.  Chickens were also more tightly watched and secured when fox, weasels, and skunks attempted to raid the flock.

Robert’s family changed as the girls reached marriageable age, found husbands, and moved on. The farm began changing as well since, when the opportunity for him to purchase adjacent land became available, he did so, until he eventually owned twelve forties or four hundred and eighty acres.

Edward enjoyed farming, like his father did, and the use of one of his most reliable tools, often sinking it deep, plowing a furrow wider and deeper than most seed planting instruments other young men had hanging between their legs!  His adeptness and shouts of joy and ecstasy by those he worked his magic on failed to produce a crop until he reached the ripe old age of nineteen when the seed took root and he soon became a married man.

Content to settle his new bride in the same house as his parents, Edward and his wife soon produced three girls and one boy, David, my grandfather. Edward, able fucker that he was, also had a great deal of vision beyond the length of his long, fat cock and saw opportunity to expand the crops the farm produced. During the later years, while his parents were still alive, he began planting vegetables for sale to markets and roadside stands in and near Bemidji. The sale of those products grew in popularity so he planted a small field of strawberries, utilizing a “pick your own” marketing technique as well as selling wholesale to stores in the city. He also built a small stand near the road for sale of his garden products as well.  Edward did not discontinue his beef cattle, hog, oats, hay, and, when short season corn seed became available, corn production; however, using those crops to maintain a comfortable base to his income level.

 Edward believed in diversification, not only in his farming operations but in his sex life as well.  He was found dead, pants down around his ankles, cock-snot still dripping from his pecker, after trying to butt-fuck four young college boys in rapid succession who worked in the fields for him. I often wondered, looking in the mirror at my own hefty maleness hanging between my legs, if my grandfather would’ve died with a hard-on how the undertaker would’ve closed the coffin lid!

The sheriff and the coroner, when investigating the death, declared it “death by natural causes” attributing the expiration of Edward to a heart attack.

When interviewing the four young men whose asses Edward had been pummeling just prior to his death, the sheriff discovered Edward generally paid a nice bonus to each young man in the weekly pay envelope for a “job well done.”

“Honestly,” the last young man to have Edward’s big cock up his ass, “I thought, when he sort of rested on my back, he was just catching his breath, but when his cock started to shrivel inside me and then popped out, I figured something else was wrong. I sort of shifted my ass to ask him if there was a problem, and ‘plunk’ he dropped off onto the ground, stone dead.”

The sheriff just shook his head in wonder. He really swallowed hard, tamping down a loud laugh, when one of the lads asked, “Does this mean we won’t get our bonus this week?”

David, my father, Grandpa Edward’s son, seemed rather nonplused by the episode, vowed to care for his mother, and expanded farm production by increasing the strawberry fields, added sweet corn, asparagus, and other vegetable crops including cauliflower, summer and winter squash, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, and a few root crops such as turnips and rutabagas as part of the expanding truck garden farm he was developing. In order to produce some of these, he added a heated greenhouse to nurture the seedlings and give them a good start before planting those frost sensitive plants in the outside gardens. Dad had a large walk-in cooler installed in one of the equipment buildings to keep harvested produce until he could get them to market.  At the same time, he didn’t diminish his production of hay, oats, field corn, hogs, or beef cattle. Like his father, he too believed in diversification!

Mom encouraged him to remodel the old house, so he added a wing to each side; one wing housing a new kitchen and dining room; the other  wing a large living room, an office, a full bathroom, and a bedroom (for his mother’s use). The four bedrooms upstairs were remodeled as well, becoming a larger master bedroom with a large full bathroom, more closet space, two other bedrooms, and a smaller, but complete bathroom for use by those occupying the spare bedrooms.

Dad also expanded the irrigation system, adding wells, two pivot irrigation systems for the sweet corn, and more “traveler” gun systems for the strawberries and vegetables. The shallow water table, the small ponds, and the lake made water available and helped him produce nice crops.  His summer help in the strawberries, sweet corn, other vegetables was recruited from the colleges and high schools in the area.  He built a small changing house, boat and swimming dock, and cleared a beach for his help to use after they were done work for the day, if they so desired.  He often joined them for a dip or two, depending on who was willing and if the changing house was empty. His dipping was reserved to the lake alone, unlike most of his predecessors.

He married late in life and Julia, his wife and my mother, tried diligently and often to have a family and finally had a set of twins; me and my younger sister, Janet, born some four minutes after me.  I finished high school and went to Bemidji State majoring in Biological Science/Horticulture while Janet quit early in the twelfth grade of high school and left home.

 

 

Chapter Two

“What hath night to do with sleeping?”

(John Milton)

I was brought back to the present from my reminiscing by the persistent jabbing of Mattie’s finger in my side as he reached around Eddie and Jamie, hearing him whisper excitedly, “B-b-better get ready, Robbie’s n-n-next!”

 

Andy and I hosted Robbie’s graduation party at the farm the weekend after graduation. The three of us decided it’d be better to have it then rather than on the weekend of graduation since so many others had parties then.  Robbie was a popular lad, with many friends, and Andy I were also well known and liked in the area.  There were many friends and loyal customers to the Farm we wished to invite, but wanted to make the day centered on Robbie.

It was a great party, professionally catered by a friend of ours; the food was fantastic, the fellowship beyond description, and Robbie’s joy unequaled.  The caterer cleaned up late that evening and everything seemed to return to normal by the time Andy and I decided to turn in and go to bed.  The boys, along with Robbie’s steady boyfriend of four years, Paul Boyer, a lithe, well-proportioned but slim, extremely attractive young man, were still in the family room visiting when Andy and I told them goodnight and retired to our own bedroom and the huge, king sized bed we loved so well. Andy would often say, “the bed was big enough, Jacob could root me clear to the core on a trip from Bemidji to the Twin Cities and never travel the same territory twice.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true; probably as far south as Mora and maybe a little farther.

We stripped naked, crawled into bed, and I, pulling Andy closer to him, so my stiffening cock made contact with Andy’s butt crack, asked softly, “Did you ever think, years ago, we’d have a house full of boys, one graduating from high school and attending college in the fall, and still be so damned happy and in love with each other?”

“No,” answered Andy softly as he reached around and began fondling my stiff cock.

  “Man, you Westcott’s have huge cocks and big balls. The boys are no different as they mature, just as fat and long and horny besides! I often wonder if all you guys think about is fucking some other guy up the ass?”

“Wrong!” I whispered seductively.

“What then?”

“We all like to suck cock as well,” I answered with satisfaction. “You love it and you know you do,” I giggled and began seeking entrance to one of my favorite places to exercise and rest for the night or day or lunchtime, anytime actually.

The bedroom door opened slowly and a head poked in, then another, and finally five naked boys scampered into the bedroom and began burrowing into bed with Andy and me.  I quickly removed my cock from Andy’s butthole and muttered, “Some things never change!”

“We couldn’t sleep!” said Davey, now sixteen years old, well hung, and leading the expedition.

“God,” exclaimed an exasperated Andy as Davey slithered up next to him and then stretched his naked body on top of Andy’s, “you’re right, Jacob, some things never change!”

“Tell me why you couldn’t sleep?” I asked in frustration, my romantic interlude with my very willing and sexy spouse interrupted by our adopted sons.

Mattie, now thirteen and hung like the proverbial horse, easily more than any of his older siblings and me as well, and not yet having reached his final length and girth, wedged his smooth, naked torso in between my legs, resting his body in such a way that my now erect penis rested against Mattie’s own developing, sparsely thatched pubes, and said, “You’re h-h-hard, Uncle J-J-J-Jake,” before answering with very definitively and expressively, “Robbie’s got that b-b-big, fat c-c-c-cock of his b-b-buried balls deep in Paul’s ass m-m-making him m-m-m-moan and groan.  Every time Robbie f-f-f-fucks it into him they b-b-both squeal and whimper some m-m-more. We c-c-c-can hear them even in our room.”

I wrapped his arms around Mattie, pulled him closer, ran my hands softly, gently over Mattie’s smooth, soft warm butt cheeks, up his back, down again, repeating the motions, giving him the feelings of security and love Mattie relished, felt him wiggle and squirm with delight, and kissed him. Mattie purred with pleasure, softly humming a score of music he was currently practicing on the piano, memorizing it, and correcting mentally any mistakes he made in practice.

“Paul should be happy it’s not you fucking his ass; he’d be howling in pain and not pleasure,” I declared with a chuckle.

If I was currently into young boys, which I’m not, having preferred older males around college age or older before marrying, Mattie would be the most desirable. As Mattie continued to grow and develop, it’d be up to Andy and me to help him make choices which would do him no harm, yet allow him to live life with whom he chose, as best as possible. Mattie was gay, almost from day one.  He’d started spurting his boy-juice about six months earlier, the quantity and quality growing abundantly since.

With giggles and laughs, the five boys settled down, relaxed, in their favored positions, and fell asleep.

“Perhaps another time,” I whispered to Andy, clearly disappointed.

“Don’t count on it,” Andy whispered back not wanting to wake the boys. “From the first day they arrived, they’ve been part and parcel of every aspect of our life and I don’t think it’ll change soon.”

“Yeah, but we love it and them don’t we?”

“Yep, and I wouldn’t change it for the world!”

 

 

Chapter Three

“It is only the dead who do not return”

(Bertrand Balere de Vieuzac)

 

Time certainly sped by in a little over four years.  The day which changed, four years ago, our lives was a long, hot, but profitable and productive day.  The strawberry picking season was about half done and the day’s revenue from the “pick-your-own” crowd was more than substantial; additionally I received payment, via mail, for the sale of the last cutting of asparagus for the season we’d sold to a large supermarket firm with several branches in the north; and taken an order for four hundred quarts of strawberries to be picked and delivered over the next three days.  The asparagus plants would now be allowed to grow and develop their roots and plant system for next year.

After Dad passed away, I added two refrigerated Class C trucks to our inventory of equipment in order to take advantage of my latest venture. I’d made contact with a wholesaler several years before, while attending a meeting of fruit and vegetable growers who dealt in bulk purchases of fruits and vegetables. I saw this as an opportunity to expand our sales base by trucking in peaches, pears, apples, melons, tomatoes, cherries, and blueberries along with any other fruits in season. I wasn’t averse to including others, including vegetables, as the opportunity arose. Our own vegetables were later than those we could purchase and would be clearly marked. Customers were fine with it. I priced things right so they’d sell and still make a profit, and our business grew. I generally figured a profit margin of from twenty-five percent to thirty percent on those trucked in.

Before I could do much more, such as taking a shower and collapsing for the day, I still had the work schedule to prepare for the next day for the crew of young college and high school boys I hired each summer harvest season and confer with my bookkeeper on the day’s receipts and bills she’d paid.

I became the sole owner of Westcott Family Farm after the death of my parents; five hundred sixty acres of northern Minnesota land after the purchases Dad made before he died.  Initially, when Dad was alive, we harvested crops from eighty acres of hay ground, eighty acres of field corn, sixty acres of sweet corn, ten acres of asparagus, forty acres of strawberries, eighty acres of potatoes, and thirty acres of assorted vegetables.  With the changes in price structures in the past few years, I restructured our production and operation.

Our main revenue stream from farm produce was from the sale of strawberries, both custom picked and “pick-your-own” by people who came to the farm for the “outdoor experience” and asparagus, potatoes, pumpkins, and from the sweet corn crop.  The sweet corn was picked by my summer help and sold in the various farmers markets in the area, from our own roadside stand at the entrance to the lane leading to the farm, and our permanent market (during season) in Bemidji. The sale of vegetables and fruit at the roadside stand and farm markets we sent people to provide a nice addition to our income as well. At those markets, we sold produce trucked in, in the main, from suppliers I’d made contact with over the years. All of this reduced my labor costs, except for certain seasons, since planting and harvesting vegetable crops in our type of operation was very labor intensive.

 Twenty acres of the property contained the farm house, small office building, greenhouses, out buildings, including storage sheds and grain bins, small barn, livestock, hog pens, and a chicken house and pen in need of repair.  The rest of the property was mixed timber, pasture, or small ponds, and peat bogs (mostly dry).

I was in the process of studying the possibility of extending my enterprise into maple syrup production, on a limited scale, to take up some of the slack in winter income.  There were plenty of maple trees in the forested portions of our land and with little investment, I thought I could get started in the enterprise, given the right circumstances ad opportunity. Additionally, we maintained a roadside stand near the Farm and one more permanent one in town, along with three farmer’s markets stands during the summer in nearby cities.

The strawberries were both custom picked and “pick-your-own” by people who came to the farm for the “outdoor experience” and asparagus, potatoes, and from the sweet corn crop.  The sweet corn was picked by my summer help and sold in the various farmers markets in the area, from our own roadside stand at the entrance to the lane leading to the farm, and our permanent market (during season) in Bemidji.

The price of corn was so low, I made no attempt to sell it and fed it, along with the oats we raised, and some of the baled hay to our livestock. We generally fed out about a dozen plus, feeder pigs each year and sold all but one we kept for own own use.  Twenty head of mixed Angus-cross steers and usually four to five Holstein steers were sold, as direct sales, each year as well. The Holstein meat was purchased by individuals who wanted bigger steaks, more hamburger, and larger roasts since the breed was much larger than what might be considered “beef” stock.

The Westcott Family Farm home was rebuilt and remodeled several times over the years, the last remodel four years previously when I fell in love and married two years later to my now husband, Andy Jamison-Westcott.  We replaced the propane forced-air heat in the house, the greenhouses, the office building, and warehouse/processing building with hot water heat with the heat being supplied by a large outdoor wood boiler. The furnace only needed to be stoked twice a day, wood was locally and readily available, and heating costs were reduced by fifty percent. Always the pragmatist, I kept propane as a backup since I just couldn’t risk the loss of plants due to boiler failure or in case we were absent from the farm and couldn’t stoke the boiler. As a result, our bottom line increased, I expanded our production of vegetables by extending the season through more use of our greenhouses, large and small “hoop houses” or cloches as known in the gardening sector, added more routes to farmer’s markets in the summer, and increased the size of our on-premises roadside retail stand.

As our business increased, I also added more seasonal help by hiring young college men seeking summer work and local high school boys.  I preferred hiring young men and boys because, even though married, Andy and I enjoyed looking at them and being near them. When we married, we agreed to give up our promiscuous life styles and be monogamous to each other.

  Andy, two years younger than me, is an extremely intelligent and highly skilled physician’s assistant who works at the Regional Medical Center Emergency Department.  He was everything I dreamed of or wanted in a mate; an extremely handsome, almost petite man, giving a false impression of fragility, approximately five foot four inches tall, weighing a buck ten on a good day, black hair, black eyes, slim waist, nice smooth, rounded butt I loved to sink my stiff shaft into, and a very suckable small to average cock, standing about five and a half inches straight up when erect which I loved with my mouth and tongue every chance I got.

I, on the other hand, am only about four or five inches taller, twenty to thirty pounds heavier, slight frame, but trim and well-fit, and could be considered in great shape for the size of me. I am blessed with a natural tan, due to some Italian heritage Dad always said, blue sparkling eyes, dark hair, and most importantly as far as Andy and I were concerned, the family genes which determined the size of my penis; uncut, above average in girth, and extending to about seven inches when erect (actually it stuck straight out in front of me rather than “erect” pointing up like Andy’s did). I loved to fuck and suck and Andy loved to be sucked and fucked.  We were made for each other.

Andy and I met shortly after Mom succumbed to cancer. I, working in the barn on cold winter’s day, stepped on a rusty nail and went to the Emergency Room for treatment. Andy was the treating medical professional and within one month of our meeting, Andy moved out to Westcott Family Farm. We were married one year later.

Andy loves the Farm as much as I do.  I never wanted to be anywhere else or do anything other than live and work on the farm where I was raised.  It was there I discovered my sexual identity and preferences and lost my virginity, at age eight, to a high school boy hired to work the fields. I discovered I loved it, found willing boys to mount and be mounted by, and thoroughly enjoyed the ‘fruits” of the farm. I took great delight in racing down to the shower house where the field workers cleaned up at the end of the day and “showering” with them, Soap or body lotion was sufficient lubrication to ease entrance into my willing and capable rear end. As I grew older and worked alongside the others, I found delight in “cultivating” and then “planting” my seed in their warm and receptive butt-holes while they showered.

I worked alongside Dad, and lived at home while I attended Bemidji State where I majored in Biological Sciences/Horticulture. At age twenty-four, when Dad was killed in an auto accident, I became the manager and partner in the Farm. When Mother died almost two years later, I was the sole heir and the Farm belonged to me. 

I felt bad I’d been unable to locate my twin sister after the deaths of our parents, especially when I discovered she was to inherit nothing, but was unable to, no matter how hard I tried! For some reason, the joint will my parents had drawn up shortly after Janet left home, left her only a thousand dollars and no more.  I put the money in a certificate and left it, if she should ever return home.

 

It was after four and Mrs. Jenkins, my bookkeeper and office assistant, completed the bank deposits, had me sign the slips and invoices she wished to pay the next day, and got ready to go home.

“Don’t forget to take deposits to the night depository or drive-up in the morning,” she said, reminding me, “and better have a talk with Lee and Ted about that big strawberry order they have to fill and deliver the next three days. They best put a crew on it first thing in the morning before it gets too hot. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow night so that’ll help the berries.”

“Oh,” she said as an afterthought, “make sure those four high school boys we had baling hay today punch out before they leave.”

I just smiled and nodded; Mrs. Jenkins was Dad’s bookkeeper and was as much a part of the Farm as I was.  If the truth be known, she ran the farm through the office more than I did she thought, and I let her!

She drove off and the four high school boys walked wearily up to the office and the time clock inside the front entrance. They were hot, dirty, and shirtless, their jeans sagging on their hips, leaving the tops of their boxers showing and when they turned to leave, just a hint of their ass cracks.  They’d worked hard and I made a quick note to Ted and Lee, my crew chiefs, with the suggestion they use those four boys to help with the livestock and other farm work as well.  Well, I meant for farm work, but knowing Lee and Ted, they just might “use” them for other purposes as well.  Ted and Lee were going to be seniors at Bemidji State in the coming year and were great workers and crew chiefs. I had my eye on a couple of young men who’d be great successors to Ted and Lee when they left.

I reminded the boys to sign out, talked to Ted and Lee concerning the strawberry order and what needed to be done the next day, before waving them off to home.

Hot, dirty, sweaty myself, smelling slightly of pig shit since I’d filled the self-feeders in the hog pen before coming to the office, I headed to the house for a badly needed shower and have a cocktail.  Andy was off the next three days so once the cleaning lady left, around five, we’d have the house to ourselves until early morning when I had to get back to the fields.

Andy was standing on the front porch waiting for me and when I came up the steps, Andy stepped forward, gave me a kiss, commenting, “I love you, but you stink.”

“Yeah, I know,” mused Jacob. “I need a shower; want to join me?”

Andy grinned, reached for my hand to lead me into the house, stopped, looked down the lane, and noticed a battered, older mini-van rattling up toward the house. I looked as well and muttered disgustedly, “Might have to take a rain check on that!”

The van sort of groaned to a halt in front of the house, the driver side door opened and a young boy, small in stature, black haired, tan complexion, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old climbed out. The boy stood a moment, looked at me and Andy as if sizing us up, and said something into the van. The passenger door opened and a woman slowly emerged. She was thin, sickly looking, and most definitely weary in movement and appearance.

I looked at her in disbelief. “Oh, my God, Andy, it’s my twin sister, Janet!”

To be continued:

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