Nuts

“You guys make cheese here too?” I asked, surprised at the scope of the operation.

“We don’t, but we work with other farms in the area to make sure the shares are really well rounded. We partner with Oscar Mendoza, the guy who runs the creamery the next farm over, to bring cheese, milk, butter, and all that for our customers.”

As I looked around, I noticed several baskets with big glass bottles of milk, smaller bottles of thick, heavy cream, and paper-wrapped butter, all stamped Bailey Falls Creamery.

“It seems like you don’t even have to go to the grocery store if you’re a member,” I said. This was how shopping used to be, back in the day.

“That’s what we hope. For the most part, you can feed your family entirely from locally sourced, clean-eating food,” he said, his voice full of pride. “Supermarkets have their place; that’s never going to change. But we like to think this can be just as convenient, and over time, it costs less than conventional stores.”

“And you know the guy who’s growing your food,” I said, warming to the idea that I would be preparing food that Leo’s hands pulled from the earth. Granted, I seemed to have special access to his hands this summer, but I was still tickled by the general idea. Also, his mouth. I’d like to be tickled by that mouth. Dammit, where was that romaine leaf? I needed fanning.

And speaking of his mouth, his was now turned up in a mischievous way. “What are you thinking about right now?” he asked.

“Honestly? Food.”

“Just food?”

“And your mouth,” I admitted.

His eyes widened, then narrowed. “C’mere.” He dragged me and his basket behind the barn, into a tiny cleft of the rock wall. And then his mouth pressed into mine in a flurry of licks and nibbles, and soft little moans and sighs.

“If I said I was thinking about more than your mouth, what would that get me?” I panted between fiery kisses.

“Trouble,” he replied, looking to his left and seeing a few people wandering close to where we were. “Come on, let’s go fill your basket.”

“I feel like that might be farm code for something way more fun than picking vegetables, but I’ll indulge you.” I laughed, straightening my dress, making it look like I hadn’t just been pressed between a rock and a hard farmer. “This would be the time to tell you I want the full share.”

“You got it.” He winked and, grabbing my basket, led me out into the fields.

We wandered up and down the rows of the vegetable patch, and I marveled at everything that was just coming up. I tasted lemony sorrel and snappy fennel, and picked handfuls of tiny baby eggplant, a Japanese variety striped purple and white. In this week’s share everyone was getting new lettuce, more of those brown sugar strawberries, some rhubarb, and, new this week, the first blackberries. I was mentally testing recipes, deciding what else I’d need to spice up my home dinners, and what else I could use at the diner.

And as we walked, Leo pointed out various landmarks. Where they’d tilled an unused field and discovered a hundred-year-old coffee can filled with old pennies. Where an original well was still hidden by rotting wood planks, but was now safely fenced off. The well was repurposed and used now for irrigation in the herb garden. He’d laid raised beds in the same pattern originally planted, using an old landscape blueprint he’d found in the attic of the big house, when gardens were plotted to exacting standards.

“Back then, marigold would have been planted all the way around. It’s a great insect repellent,” he explained as we made our way through the herbs. “You needed dill, right?”

“Yeah, I’m turning some of those little cukes and green tomatoes we picked into zombie pickles,” I said.

“Should I know what that means?” he asked, kneeling down and picking a handful of dill.

“I’d hope not. Chad asked me to teach him how to make pickles. So he and Logan are coming by the diner after we close this weekend, and I’m going to show them how. The zombie part is harder to explain.”

“They want to learn how to pickle?” he asked, incredulous. He bundled the dill together, wrapping the ends with a bit of kitchen twine. “Is this enough?”

“Perfect,” I said as he offered it to me like a bouquet. And like a bouquet, I sniffed it. Mmm. Nothing smelled like warm, fresh herbs. “And you’d be surprised how many people want to know that stuff. The most popular class at the Learning Annex at UCLA is canning and pickling. A bunch of my clients used to take classes there. All these gorgeous plastic women with more money than they know what to do with, and they’re learning how to make fifty-cent fridge pickles.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yeah. Your slow foods movement here is all about getting back to the land and local and sustainable, but it’s also a rampant food trend. And nobody knows trendy like LA wives. It makes sense, though. No one in our generation knows how to do much of that stuff.”

“Stuff like . . . ?”

“Pickling. Canning. Putting up preserves. Also sewing. If I lose a button on anything, I’m screwed. My mom knows how to sew, but I never bothered to learn. And she’s in the minority—most women these days are at least two generations away from those skills. Does your mom know how to sew?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re adorable.”

“Exactly. But I bet her mom did—money had nothing to do with it. People used to know how to do these things, and now they don’t.”