Westcott Family Farm
by Nicholas Hall
Chapter 3
"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 and 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!"
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