Second Time Sweeter

by Ros Baxter

  ‘Yep.’ Gen set her jaw. ‘It all rides on that. The certifiers are nervous, all this GM stuff that’s been in the press. They got a new policy now for new certifications. Either the whole valley gets it, or no one does. One stray piece of GM feed can screw a whole community’s chances.’ She tried hard not to let the depth of her concern show on her face. She knew how much KD worried for her. She had to hope things would be okay. Sweet Pocket had been working on going organic for five years.

  ‘Right,’ KD said, as if it was going to be a piece of cake. ‘So Bro Bro’s working his contacts around to try to get certified in time for the fair, yeah?’

  Gen nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘What we need to work on, then, is making sure that the farms understand what else they need to do. Once the certification is in place, they need to be poised to produce—so guys like Sunshine Wholefoods, and others, can get on board if they want to.’ KD spread her hands. ‘Easy.’

  ‘Is it?’ Gen implored KD with her eyes.

  ‘Not really. The hardware isn’t the hard bit. The hard bit is getting the town to agree to set up local, develop a cooperative.’ KD shook her head. ‘I’m a bit worried it’s going to sound like hippy shit to them. This ain’t Bryon Bay, Gen.’

  Gen closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d laid on a beach in a bikini. Maybe sometime before her second child? The daydream was alluring, pulling her sleep-starved brain towards it.

  ‘Wake up, Gen,’ KD barked. ‘You need to get to bed. You look wrecked.’

  ‘Check,’ Gen agreed, dragging herself up out of the couch. ‘But tomorrow we talk about how we do this.’

  ‘Yep,’ KD agreed, getting up and picking up the glasses to take them through to the kitchen. ‘And we talk about Bro Bro.’

  ‘Yay,’ Gen cheered sarcastically, waving her hands in a little imaginary pom-pom dance. ‘Can’t wait. Such fun. All I need is Barry Townsend and it’ll be a regular party.’

  KD laughed and shoved Gen towards her bedroom. ‘Go sleep, you. Everything will seem better in the morning.’

  ***

  It didn’t.

  Will was the first to wake, and the sun was barely up. He prised one of Gen’s heavy lids from its happy resting place and stared upside-down at her. ‘Mummy? You ’wake?’

  Gen made a noise that was trying to sound like ‘kind of’, but came off more like ‘ketchup’.

  ‘’’Cause I gotta tell you something.’

  Oh dear. That tone. Anxious, a little wobbly. Gen was awake in one second flat, sitting up, hurting from lack of sleep and too many fitful dreams. But awake. She wriggled herself up onto the pillow and eyeballed her small man, shooting him a sleepy everything’s cool grin. Like she didn’t worry about him a single smidgeon. ‘Wassup, Will-I-Am?’

  ‘Worried.’ The little frown that had become a permanent fixture lately seemed deeper and more grown-up than the last time she had seen him.

  ‘What is it?’ She took his hands and pulled him against her chest, snuggling him the way she had when he’d been a baby—her first—and she had clung to him, awestruck by the deadweight of maternal love that had crashed in on her, and terrified by the realisation of just how permanent this thing she had done really was. Her fate was bound up with Mac’s now. Forever. Or so she’d thought at the time.

  ‘Is Daddy coming this weekend?’

  She tried to count the days in an exhausted fog; what the hell day was it? Okay, Tuesday, yep, definitely Tuesday. And Mac was taking the kids Friday night. Which was just as well because she had a shedload of stuff to get accomplished before the fair, let alone farm stuff, and now how-the-hell-to-make-a-co-op-happen stuff. So she needed him to take the kids this weekend.

  She nodded, but carefully. ‘Well, baby cakes, he definitely said he was. But you know we also talked about how sometimes stuff comes up for grown-ups that they don’t expect, and that they didn’t know was going to happen, and then the best they can do is the best they can do.’ She hugged his little body tightly—he was getting bigger, but still small enough to wrap in her arms. She felt the disappointment in the stiffness of his limbs. And she couldn’t resist trying to make it better. ‘We’ll see, honey. But I have a good feeling about this weekend. You know how much he misses you guys.’ She tried to resist crossing her fingers as she said the words.

  Will pulled away, his small, pointy face dubious.

  How could someone so dear look so much like Mac?

  Gen mentally slapped the ungenerous thought away, and reminded herself that Mac’s face had once been very dear to her. He had been a friend, an admirer, and then, eventually, her husband and the father of her children.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, his big brown eyes filled with uncertainty.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, crossing her heart and imagining all the things she would say and do to Mac if he failed to show yet again. It had been a tough year for Will; he badly needed his father to come through.

  ‘Me three,’ he replied, repeating the gesture.

  ‘Come on,’ Gen said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. ‘Let’s go hunt and gather some brekky.’

  ***

  Brodie slammed the last fencepost into the ground, the hammer ripping at the gym-ruined laziness of his muscles. He had been up for two hours, and the sun was only now starting to crank up like it was properly daylight. That hour of the morning Nelly called dawn had seemed pretty night-time-ish to him.

  As if she had some kind of mental telepathy, Nelly came moseying down the hill from the homestead, a big thermos in her hand. She was outlined in gold from the early-morning sun, and if Brodie hadn’t known she was the devil, he might have thought her an apparition sent from the angels. ‘Coffee?’ she rasped at him.

  ‘Please God,’ he croaked, his brain buzzing and stinging after too little sleep and too much whiskey.

  Nelly handed him the thermos and he drained half of it gratefully.

  ‘Little early-morning exercise feels great, doesn’t it?’ Nelly opened, spreading her hands to indicate the valley that lay green and peaceful before them. ‘Especially when it’s useful exercise, to a purpose.’

  Brodie threw the sledgehammer on the ground in a fit of irritation. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘It feels like shit. What would have felt great would have been a couple of hours more sleep, and some of your homemade brekky.’ He sniffed the air, hoping he wasn’t imagining the smells of bacon and sausage that came drifting down the slope at him.

  ‘It’s waiting for you.’ She smiled as if he wasn’t behaving like the stroppy teenager she first took on fifteen years earlier. She slipped an arm around his waist and nestled into his side like a little bird.

  He really liked the feeling, and it calmed his rattled nerves. As they walked up the slope, he smelled eucalypt and stockfeed, and felt that precious early-morning crispness to the air that you never quite seemed to get anywhere else. ‘I guess there are some nice things about this time o’ day,’ he admitted begrudgingly. ‘Although I don’t know why you’re on this labouring kick. Weren’t you the one who told me to get out and make my fortune, not be subject to the whims of the place? Not ruin my body on labour?’

  ‘Just ’cause I didn’t want it to own you, doesn’t mean I didn’t want you to own it. One day,’ she added hastily. She squeezed him around the waist. ‘Everyone has to belong somewhere.’

  ‘My penthouse in Woolloomooloo feels pretty much like home.’ Brodie sighed, thinking about the maid service and how easy it was to wander downstairs to the upscale wharf precinct for meals and coffee.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Nelly barked. ‘You don’t fool me with that crap, Brodie Brown. You’re not some goddamn advertising executive. You’re a farmer. You made your fortune out of farming, even it wasn’t on the business end of a tractor. I don’t buy this whole I-hate-dirt crap.’

  They hit the veranda and Nelly pointed to the washroom. ‘Hands first,’ she said.

  When he made it to the kitchen, she had laid out a huge plate of
bacon, eggs, sausage and pancakes, with an enormous white linen napkin beside it. Beside the hot plate was a bowl of yoghurt and berries.

  He pointed to the yoghurt as he sat down and his salivary glands kicked into overdrive. ‘That yours?’ Nelly liked to make her own.

  ‘The yoghurt?’ Nelly raised an innocent eyebrow at him.

  ‘Yes, the yoghurt.’ He rolled his eyes, wondering why she was being deliberately obtuse.

  ‘Nah,’ she said quickly, turning back to make more coffee. ‘Greenacres.’

  Brodie swallowed hard, conscious he needed to make his voice sound normal. ‘Gen Jen? I thought you’d rather die of starvation than buy anything she produced?’

  ‘Wait ’til you taste it,’ Nelly threw over her shoulder, busy frothing milk. ‘It’s the jewel in the crown; you need to know about it if you’re gonna understand exactly what’s been going on here while you’ve been away.’

  Brodie looked at the steaming bacon and then again at the little bowl of yoghurt and berries. The latter looked like some kind of siren, sent to tempt him and steal his soul, just like that damn girl had all those years ago.

  ‘Go on,’ Nelly prompted ‘It won’t make you pregnant.’

  Brodie smiled at Nelly’s coarseness and dipped an old-fashioned pewter spoon into the creamy berry concoction. He brought it to his mouth, licking the edge experimentally. ‘Holy shit.’

  Nelly finally turned back, carrying two steaming mugs of cappuccino over to the table. ‘I know, right?’

  Brodie dived in with the spoon again, licking it clean after the next swallow. ‘It’s so …’

  ‘Creamy? Intense? Pure?’ Nelly eyes twinkled at him.

  ‘Yeah.’ He stared down at the bowl, the bacon and eggs forgotten. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it.’ Then his business brain kicked in. ‘But … how? Where’s she making it?’

  Nelly clucked her tongue. ‘Just at a home dairy right now. A lot of the farmers are doing that, since the Big Cow cut them off. Bastards are trying to smoke us out, make us lower their margins even more than we already have. People have had enough; that’s why they said no more; that’s why they’re startin’ their own shows. They’re all still hopeful of a new deal with Devondish, a better offer. But organic certification is the thing that would really up the value of our stuff.’ She nodded at the bowl of yoghurt. ‘Gen’s using the Greenacres milk, mixing it up a bit.’ She scowled a little. ‘She’s clever, that one. And creative.’

  Dear God, didn’t Brodie know it. He knew exactly how clever and creative she was, especially when it came to ways to addle a man’s senses and break his heart. He had thought about this a lot since he had left town ten years ago, and he’d decided that Genevieve Jenkins had bewitched him on the first day of grade one, and he’d never stood a chance from that day onward.

  Brodie licked the spoon again, thinking, thinking. ‘What’s everyone else doing? Is it just yoghurt?’

  ‘Yoghurt, cheese, cream, milk of course, and every combination in between,’ Nelly confirmed.

  ‘And all in their own little outfits?’

  Nelly nodded.

  ‘Fucking crazy,’ Brodie murmured, thinking of the possibilities of a product this good and a story this authentic.

  ‘Don’t you profane at my table,’ Nelly scolded, but she was smiling like the hypocrite she knew she was. ‘Some people like to run their own show.’ She gestured at his hot meal. ‘Eat up. I’m glad you get how good it is. You need to help these folks, Bro, and I know you can.’

  ‘By getting the certification?’ Brodie thought through what his aunt had asked him to do when she’d called him.

  ‘Yep.’ For the first time, Nelly looked uncertain. ‘If Sweet Pocket gets it, we can sell to the big organic producers. We can free ourselves from the Big Cow. We can unhook ourselves from the bloody bank.’

  ‘Now who’s profaning?’ Brodie grinned at her. He loved seeing his aunt like this; she was such a fireball. He shovelled a chunk of bacon, egg and toast into his mouth; he always needed food to think properly. ‘Thing is,’ he mused aloud, risking Nelly’s wrath at talking with his mouth full, ‘they’re gonna need more than just certification. Who’s gonna handle production?’

  Nelly waved a hand impatiently. ‘Those hippies love the whole small business thing.’

  ‘They do,’ Brodie agreed, nodding slowly. ‘But you’ve still got to be able to meet demand.’ Something else occurred to him. ‘And what about you?’

  He gestured out the door of the kitchen, through which they could see the green fields unfolding in front of them. ‘You’ve been making your own yoghurt since forever. And Shady Acres used to win most of the milk comps in the region. Why aren’t you hooking into this idea?’ He picked up the yoghurt spoon again and scraped some leftover creaminess from the side. ‘Where’s your yoghurt? I reckon you could do as well as this.’ He felt his competitive reflex kick in, the surge of adrenaline that was linked to a hot new idea.

  Nelly smiled like a Cheshire cat. ‘I haven’t had the right help,’ she said, pushing out her chair and heading for the sink. ‘’Til now,’ she threw at him over her shoulder.

  ***

  Gen made her way down to the milking shed, breathing in the sweet scent of pasture as she did. A long line of cows ambled up to the shed. The automatic gates helped to prevent rushing and pushing, but they’d cost a bomb a few years back.

  Gen leaned against a tree and watched the girls meandering along in the early light. She wondered if any creature on earth was as relaxing to watch as a cow. Something about its huge, lumbering body that moved so slowly, and its lovely long nose and brown eyes. While she might have been biased, she also thought Jerseys were particularly pretty. Most Australians farmed Holsteins, or a cross, but most of Sweet Pocket’s farmers favoured Jerseys, known for their perfect butter and, she was discovering, rich yoghurt and other products as well. She called out to a few of her favourites as they entered the parlour.

  ‘Hey Maisie. Nice work, girl, good to see you back with us.’ Poor Maisie had some trouble after her last calving, but she was a total trooper. Gen had tended her carefully with the support of Sal Cooper, the local vet. Watching her join her friends and make her way to the sheds now made Gen breathe easier as she followed them into the swingover.

  She leaned against the side of the parlour and watched KD finishing up. She was singing Ella Fitzgerald and Gen smiled as she listened.

  ‘La la la la …’ KD danced over to the next cow to attach the cups. ‘And I… something something can’t remember the rest …’

  Larry Sider, a local boy who did mornings five times a week, was working beside her as the last group came in. ‘Aargh,’ he objected, holding his hands over his ears as he inspected the teats of the girl he was working with. ‘You’re killing me, KD.’

  Larry’s family farm had folded a couple of years back, and Gen had been thrilled to get him. He was only sixteen, but he was reliable, cheerful and knew his stuff. His parents had moved into the service industry. Gen felt sad thinking how many farmers had moved out of dairy in the last few years. It had been a tough time in Sweet Pocket, but the story wasn’t peculiar to their part of the world. The dairy industry in Australia had shrunk to a third of the size it had been twenty years before. Part of that was the result of deregulation and rationalisation, and part was the logical result of people having more options open to them, and deciding they’d had enough of a lifetime of getting up for five am, and never being able to take a holiday. But it was also about the way the business had evolved. Bigger dairy product companies had demanded bigger profit margins, squeezing the farmers for every possible concession.

  Sometimes Gen wondered if it was possible for smaller producers like her to survive the changes at all. She only had 175 cows, and it was, she believed, the perfect number for what she wanted to achieve. But she was fast coming to the view that the only way to beat the big producers was to get out of bed with them completely. The thing that would trump size was exa
ctly that—going small rather than trying to be big. Trying to be special instead. Gen knew in her bones that organic, and local value-add, were the answers. Dairy was inherently about quality. People were interested in what you could offer them that was different, special and beautiful. Sure, they wanted their milk cheap, but they’d also pay through the nose for luxury butter, yoghurt and speciality cheese, if it had the right certifications and the right story to tell.

  Gen sauntered over to KD, who was cleaning teats and chatting to the cows. It reminded Gen of when they used to have sleepovers as girls. KD would help her and Mum out in the sheds, and they would jokingly pretend the cows were talking to each other, gossiping in their stalls. They would act as the ventriloquists for all that cow gossip.

  Why Martha, did you hear what Maisie did down at the back paddock today? Why if I did not see her making eyes at that old stud Ramsay I don’t know what I saw …

  Well, let me tell you, Sally, I am so not surprised. That Maisie has always had an eye for the big horns …

  KD couldn’t have been more of a pro if she’d been raised on a dairy farm herself. Gen supposed she had been, to a degree, the way Gen had been part-raised in The Dirty Dozen. They each knew so much about their families’ businesses, agricultural and mercantile variously, they joked they’d be unstoppable if they ever wanted to stage a takeover of the town.

  The parlour was clean and well-lit, just how her Jerseys liked it. As she watched, she noticed some of her favourites amble in to the herringbone swingover, and find their stall with the nutrient-rich feed that was their payoff for the twice-daily milking. Things sure had come a long way since her mother had first learned to milk, although Gen prided herself on making sure anyone who milked her girls knew how to hand-milk perfectly. You never knew when the blessed machines might go on the blink, and it paid to be prepared.

  As she watched, she pondered again the endless debate about fully automated milking systems. She’d read everything there was to read, and spoken to everyone she knew. One thing was for sure—it increased yield, and God knew it would save time and labour, and money with it, but she was starting to see mixed reports emerge. There was some concern about teat health, and overall milk quality. Gen knew how carefully she washed and checked each of her girls, and she wondered how you stayed as closely connected as you needed to be once the whole thing was done by robot.