“It’s like a warm cloud on a sunny day,” Clara enthused.
Flo smiled “What a nice way of putting it. The problem is it takes a lot of rabbits. Feeding them and housing them; the bucks have to be kept in separate cages or they fight. We don’t have enough room.” She turned the blender on, and waited for the margaritas. While they were blending, she salted the rims of three glasses. After pouring the frozen concoction into the glasses she set one each in front of Mary Lee and Clara, then slumped into a chair. “We have angora rabbits and can make angora yarn but not enough.” Flo sighed “They’re rabbits. They breed like rabbits but keeping them cared for is labor intensive and we don’t have the labor. Keeping the colors separated is going to get kind of dicey too.”
Clara looked up from stroking the scarf. “Flo,” she said, a bit dreamily, then took a drink from her glass. “My son Egidius, just yesterday, was telling me about a marvelous invention. A franchise, he called it. I understand your keeping this to yourself. It is very valuable but there are poor women in all our villages. They need work. Can’t something be worked out?”
“Huh.” Flo was confused. “I’m not keeping it to myself. At least I didn’t mean to. I’m not real sure what a franchise is. Not in detail.” She shrugged. “And I don’t really want to know, to tell the truth. If it’s like the franchises up-time, well, anybody who owned one got inspected and had people coming around making sure they were doing what they were supposed to. I don’t have the time, or the inclination.” She stared into her glass. “Mostly, I bought the rabbits and sheep to try and coax Jen to come live in Grantville when she graduated. Probably silly of me, but I’m a mom, you know. Now . . .” Flo drained her glass. “Now I’ll never see her again. Every time I see one of her friends, like Noelle, I choke up. Yeah, the rabbits are probably going to be a moneymaker, but that wasn’t what I had in mind.” She stood and gathered the ingredients for another batch of margaritas.
Clara was staring at Flo in surprise. “Then you would not object to selling the rabbits?”
“No.” Flo shook her head. She didn’t seem to notice Clara’s sudden intensity but Mary Lee did.
“Not all of the village women would be able to pay in advance,” Mary Lee said.
“We can work something out,” Flo assured her. The sound of the blender stopped conversation for a minute or so. “I’m not trying to keep the damn things secret,” Flo said. “I could sell them on spec.” At Clara’s look, she explained. “Sell them to people who would take care of them, then pay me what they owed later. Jeez, Clara. The sheep are enough to keep me busy. The rabbits-well, they’re rabbits. I’ve already got too many.” Flo prepared another set of glasses and served the drinks.
“Mary Lee, did your church do the Heifer Project? You know, where you donate animals?”
“I’ve heard about it,” Mary Lee said, after she’d licked a bit of salt from the rim of her glass. “I always thought it was a good idea.”
Flo reached for a pad of paper and made a note. “I don’t think anyone has started one here. I’ll get in touch with Mary Ellen at my church.” She pointed at Mary Lee. “You get in touch with your pastor, too. And Clara can get in touch with people she knows.”
“Heifer project?” Clara was clearly wondering what they were talking about.
“It was a program we had back up-time,” Mary Lee explained. “Someone would donate a female animal to a family in need of food. In return, that family agreed to donate female offspring to another family, and then that family would do the same. Of course, it’ll be a bit different with the rabbits.”
“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Flo said. “Sell what we can . . . say twenty dollars for a breeding pair. Give people a break. If they can’t pay right away, we’ll go for some interest, but not much. Donate the critters, if we have to. Johan will just have to suck it up.”
Clara grinned at her. “Your husband?”
“Nah,” Flo said. “My partner, I guess. He deals with the farm and the animals. And I think he’s gotten a little too fond of the idea of getting rich off all this wool.” She frowned. “There’s no way we can keep up with as many animals as he wants us to. But the angora hair is pretty valuable, so we’ll just do what you said. Sell them cheap, donate others. That way the hair gets harvested, the spinners make some money and we all have nice, soft clothes.”
“Hear, hear,” Mary Lee said, raising her glass.
Flo and Clara grinned. “Here, here,” they echoed, touching their glasses to hers.
“It’s going to take a while, I imagine, before it really gets going, Flo,” Mary Lee warned. “Months, I bet.
“Piffle,” Flo said, waving her fingers. “It will get done, sooner or later. Just a matter of getting organized, just like always. We can do it. Now . . .” Flo sighed. “If we could just get some coffee imported before I have to hurt someone.”
Mary Lee just about snorted the margarita up her nose.
* * *
“J.D. if you make one more smart-ass remark, I’m going to throw this damn soup stuff at you.”
J.D. looked at Flo, seeming a bit startled. Flo rarely cursed.
“I know I’m going to run out. I know everyone is. I don’t need you to remind me of that every stinking morning of the world. If you say ‘you’re going to have to give it up sooner or later’ one more time, you will regret it.” Flo had a headache. “Just shut up, will you?”
J.D. apparently decided that discretion really was the better part of valor and murmured, “Yes, dear.” As he rose from the table, Flo could see him hiding a smirk.
Jerk, she thought. Mr. I-can-take-it-or-leave-it jerk.
After J.D. had driven away, Flo headed outside. “Anna, I’m going for a walk. I need to get out for a while.”
“Ja, Flo. We take care of things.” Even Anna had started walking on eggshells around Flo these days.
Flo stepped out into the warm morning and headed down the drive. It was the non-coffee days that were making life difficult. Her coffee stash had been devastated by the purchase of sheep. Only a couple of teenagers had been willing to take money for their sheep. The others had held out for coffee. Now, Flo was trying to ration herself. It wasn’t easy.
“Damn sheep. Damn wethers. Damn rotten, bargaining brats. Damn it all, I have got to get hold of my temper.”
Flo had gotten used to soup nearly every day. She could live with the inconvenience of not having a car. There wasn’t even a decent sale to get to anyway. She’d even stopped listening for the phone on Sunday evenings, when Jen used to call.
Coffee was her only real vice. And Flo really, really missed coffee.
“Be honest, at least with yourself, Flo,” she chastised herself. “Two or three pots of coffee a day, honestly. A coffeeholic, that’s what you are. Don’t you feel silly? Don’t you hate being controlled by a craving?”
The headache was subsiding to a dull throb. Flo walked around a curve, and came to a sudden halt. Damn it, he’s loose again!
“You have to be the single most stubborn, stupid creature on the face of the planet, you know,” she said in the sweetest tone she could manage. Brillo had gotten loose so many times that they’d had to put a collar on him, so they’d have something to grab. “You’re going to be hit by a truck, you know. And then we’re going to turn your pathetic fleece into a rug, just so I can walk on it every day.”
Flo had her suspicions about Brillo. Breeding season was nearer every day. Brillo seemed determined to participate.
“Not going to happen, you scraggly so-and-so. Not going to happen.” Flo reached for the collar, and the infuriating creature moved away. Twice more, she nearly had him.
Finally giving up, Flo turned to go back and get help. As she walked, she continued to mutter. “Don’t know why he just won’t stay put. Has to get out, has to cause trouble. Can’t just stay in the pasture, has to get in the garden. Clover isn’t good enough. Has to have weeds. Weeds. Chicory weed. Chicory!”
Breaking into a run, Flo started shouting as she reached the barn. “Johan, Johan . . . that damn Brillo is loose again! And we need a couple of shovels!”
* * *
“Roasted and ground, my rear end.” Flo was getting irritated. She’d been experimenting for two days. Cleaning the roots and putting them in the oven didn’t work. The roots wouldn’t dry. Now she was chopping the chicory roots as finely as she could.
“If they did it in the civil war, I can do it now, Ilsa. I’m going to keep trying. It won’t be coffee, but I can mix it with what’s left. It will stretch the supply. I might make it through the winter without hitting a certain smart aleck, if I can figure this out.”
* * *
It took a week of experiments, but Flo finally discovered that if she dried the roots thoroughly she could grind them. Then she could roast the ground roots. Now it was time to try a pot of chicory coffee.
“Let’s try it with one scoop of coffee and one scoop of chicory, Anna. Then we’ll see what happens.” Flo was jittering with excitement.
The smell of coffee drifted around the kitchen. It was a different scent than usual, richer somehow. Flo took a cup from the cupboard and stood near the coffeemaker, enjoying the aroma.
When the coffeemaker beeped, she poured a cup full and sat at the table. She sniffed. “Unusual, but good.”
Taking a sip, she stopped to savor the taste. “Not quite the same.”