“No, I’m afraid I didn’t know Lollie personally. I came here from Upstate New York not long before she moved down South. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” I paused, not sure how to ask this. “But—if you didn’t know Lollie, how do you—”
“He’s also responsible for the goats,” Noah added.
Jim gave the pavilion a rueful glance. “That operation isn’t as sophisticated as this one. Not yet. But we’re getting there.”
“Let’s get there sooner rather than later,” Noah said.
“Patience, Barden. Patience would do you good.” To me, Jim asked, “Miss Gennie brought you along to meet the girls?”
“She was very enthusiastic. I couldn’t miss it.” I smiled, adding, “Your cows are lovely.”
“They’re the best of the best. We take very good care of them.” He nodded at Noah. “Just how the boss likes it. He’s very particular but I bet you know that.”
“Shouldn’t you be leaving?” Noah asked. “You’ve been here since first thing this morning. Go home.”
Ignoring Noah entirely, Jim turned to me, asking, “Would you like a tour?”
“She doesn’t want a tour,” Noah replied, bringing his hand to the back of his neck.
“I’d love one,” I said.
“I knew you would,” Jim said. “We’ll start in the bottling facility and work backward. Personally, I prefer walking through the process in reverse. Start with the package, end with the pasture. But we could also do the opposite. Just as fun.”
“You’re the expert,” I said.
“Wheatie,” Noah warned.
“Quick tour,” he replied. “You stay right here but don’t harass my staff unless you want them putting you to work—and they’re under strict orders to do exactly that. They’ll happily send you to the manure shed.”
Noah glared at the other man. “Make it fast.”
As we crossed the pavement toward another building, Jim pointed out overhead pipes and explained how they moved milk directly from the pumping area to a separation tank, and they avoided using trucks at this stage because the movement caused too much oxidation. He went into detail about homogenization and then pasteurization as we moved through those areas, watching from the large windows in the hall rather than going into those spaces. He led me into the bottling facility, a separate building on the compound, where I pointed to a series of windows with the manufacturer’s stickers still in place.
“This looks new,” I said. “Was it recently updated?”
Jim stopped at the door to the primary storage cooler. “Noah didn’t tell you?” When I shook my head, he continued. “He overhauled this whole place. Energy efficiency, resource conservation, organic certification. He’s been hustling this project for years.”
“And it was recently completed?”
Jim gave a slow nod. “He’s uncommonly good at paperwork. It frees up my time, you see. I don’t have to mess with any of those details. The business is his sweet spot. He can find loopholes in the dark and has never met a grant or tax credit program he doesn’t like.”
“I had no idea.”
Another nod. “Not much of a talker, is he?”
Go ahead and steal the thoughts out of my mind, Jim.
We were walking back to the milking parlor while Jim described his favorite sections of the one-hundred-acre property. The west pasture was especially nice come autumn.
Noah stood at the garage doors, arms crossed over his chest like always as he swung a gaze between me and Jim, and inside the parlor. He made a show of looking at his watch.
“Thank you for the tour,” I said to Jim.
“The pleasure was entirely mine.”
“This would make for a really fun field trip,” I said. “I’m not sure where the second grade usually goes for field trips. I’ll have to ask the other teachers at the grade level when they’re back on campus but I’m sure they’d love everything about this.”
