SIX
ERIC LOOKED OUT OVER THE rows of hoop houses, amazed by what Meredith Farms was able to produce in the cold late winter. The greens they’d delivered to Comme Ci the previous week were as good or better than anything he could usually get during the regular growing season.
Marcus was set on using them, and Eric could certainly understand why but he’d wanted to see the farm for himself. He loved visiting suppliers. It was part of the business he’d always enjoyed, and he wanted Julie to start picturing how the aquaculture could work. He thought if she met some of the farmers who supplied local restaurants, including Comme Ci, it might be easier for her to see herself in that role.
He held the door to the first house open and hurried through after Julie, closing it against the cold January air.
“Hi, Chef Auxtres. I’m Gabe Meredith. Welcome to Meredith Farms.”
“Call me Eric, please,” he said, taking the man’s offered hand. “This is Julie Blake.”
Julie shook Gabe’s hand and smiled. She was just being friendly, but he was a man. He saw the interest flare in the farmer’s eyes. He let his hand rest possessively on the small of Julie’s back and drew himself up to his full height.
“Let me…I’ll show you around,” said Gabe, and Eric smiled to himself at the other man’s slight stumble. People were intimidated by his celebrity. No reason not to use it when it worked to his advantage.
“That would be great,” said Julie, shooting Eric a look.
She’d been jealous of him when they were in the city. When another man looked at her like she was dessert, he was allowed to be a possessive asshole, but he probably ought to tone it down. It wouldn’t help him get closer to what he wanted if he pissed Julie off so much that she lost track of why they were there.
“This is amazing,” he said, motioning to the wide beds filed with different varieties of greens at different stages of growth. He could see where the farm workers had cut the tender shoots with scissors, harvesting the mesculin while giving it a chance to come back and produce another crop. Two young women were bent over a row of kale, fleece sweatshirts tied around their waists while they pinched off the bigger leaves and dropped them into a rectangular tote filed with water.
“We use cut and come again harvesting and keep the greens in water to keep them fresh until packing. Then we spin them and bag them. Your greens are picked the morning they’re delivered. Jennifer, Sarah, this is Chef Auxtres and Julie.” The young women wiped their hands on their jeans but didn’t stand.
“Eric,” he said, offering them his hand and smiling at their wide-eyed expressions.
“Jennifer and Sarah are two of over a dozen interns who work at the farm. Most of our interns study horticulture, animal science, or agriculture but we also have some English majors and one finance econ major,” said Gabe.
“What are your majors?” Julie asked the young women who turned gratefully away from Eric and toward her friendly less intimidating face.
“I’m dairy science with a minor in horticulture,” said the young woman he thought was Jennifer.
“I’m poultry science,” said the other young woman.
“Do you raise animals here?” Eric asked Gabe.
“Not for slaughter,” he said. “We have a few dozen chickens for our own eggs and to help us get rid of the scrap plant material. I’ll show you the compost bins when we go back outside. That’s where most of our compostable materials go but the chickens do a fantastic job turning leaf matter into eggs for us.”
Julie dropped to her knees beside the young women and peered closer at the beds. “Do you direct seed into your beds?” she asked, shocking the hell out of him.
Although there was no reason for him to be surprised. She’d grown up on a farm, one more conventional than Meredith’s but she’d planted more than her fair share of seeds and tended acres of crops.
“For most things,” said Jennifer. “For crops that are intended to make heads, we either direct seed and thin or plant seedlings.”
The young women smiled at her obviously realizing they’d found a kindred spirit. Gabe crouched down next to her and started to point to some of the other beds where the plants were farther apart.
“The dinosaur kale over there started as seedlings but the Ruby Sails we thinned, leaving behind the plants we thought would made good heads. The thinned plants went into the mesculin blend. Do you garden?” he asked, giving her an appraising look that had Eric taking a step closer.
“Julie grew up on a farm,” he said, injecting himself into a conversation that seemed to have gotten away from him. “It’s where we met. I took a summer job helping pick tomatoes on her family’s farm.”
“Excellent,” said Gabe, smiling. “Then you understand already how most of this works. I didn’t mean to talk down to you.”
“You didn’t,” said Julie. “My daddy’s farm wasn’t anything like this.”
It didn’t escape Eric’s notice that she called the farm her father’s and not her family’s. He’d always found the older Mr. Blake aloof and a little cold, but he’d been so wrapped up in Julie that summer so long ago. He hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on outside the bubble of their love. He imagined it must have been hard for Julie’s father to lose her mother, but given how Caleb turned out and the way he’d sold the farm out from under her, he wondered if there was more to Julie’s relationship with her father than he knew about.
“I’ve been reading about aquaponics and the plugs they imbed in the Styrofoam floaters to hold the plants.”
“I’ve seen pictures of that,” said Sarah. “It’s brilliant. The plants clean the water for the fish and the fish feed the plants. Beautiful symbiotic arrangement, but I imagine it’s tricky to get the balance right. You have to keep the roots from rotting and make sure not to choke off the oxygen to the surface of the water with the floaters.”
