Project Mulberry (11 page)

The Tuesday after our worms hatched was another Wiggle meeting. This one was a field trip. It was also our day to get more leaves from Mr. Dixon. I made sure to tell my mom that I wouldn't be home until suppertime, that after the field trip we'd be stopping by Mr. Dixon's place. She didn't say anything—just gave me a look.

"I'll come straight home," I said. "We won't stay, okay?"

I'd been trying to think of a way to make her change her mind—to get her to say it was all right for us to visit with Mr. Dixon sometimes. But I hadn't come up with a strategy yet. Until then, I planned to be very angelic about the whole thing and not get her mad all over again. That way maybe she'd be easier to convince later.

She nodded. "Have a good time on the field trip," she said.

We were going to visit Mr. Maxwell's farm. We rode in a mini-school bus, about twenty Wiggle members altogether. When we got to the farm, Mr. Maxwell had us gather around him in front of the barn.

"Most of you have been here before," he said, "so you don't have to take the grand tour again if you don't want to. This is Tom." He raised his hand toward a man who had come out of the barn and was standing nearby. "Tom will take anyone who doesn't want to go on the tour down to the second pasture, and you can help him round up the cows."

There were only five of us who had never been to the farm before; the rest had been Wiggle members for a long time, and Mr. Maxwell did the farm field trip every year. So it was just me and Patrick and three other kids who followed Mr. Maxwell to the field he called the first pasture—the one closest to the barn.

Mr. Maxwell led us to the barbed-wire fence that enclosed the field. Inside the fence there was a flock of sheep. Some of them were eating, and others were lying down. I counted six lambs. They were adorable, little and white and fluffy.

The bigger sheep were not nearly as pretty. Their butts were really nasty-looking.

"The first thing you should know about this place is that it's what's called a 'sustainable' farm," Mr. Maxwell said. "That means we try to farm here in a way that's good for both the environment and the animals."

He gestured at the field. "I had thirty head of cattle in here until two days ago. The cows eat, right? And what happens when an organism eats?"

"It grows?" Patrick guessed. He must have been thinking about our worms.

"Yes, but what else? Something more directly connected to eating. It eats, and then—" He stopped and waited for us to answer.

"It poops?" That was a boy named Sam.

Everyone giggled. Mr. Maxwell grinned and said, "That's right, Sam—it poops! So there are the cows, pooping all over the field"—we laughed—"and all that manure is fertilizing the field."

He took a breath and went on. "Now, we can't leave the cows in there for too long—they'd eat up all the grass and erode the soil. We have to move them out. On other farms the field would just sit there, empty, while the farmer waited for it to recover, for the grass to grow thick again. But on a sustainable farm, you don't have to waste time waiting."

Mr. Maxwell made a movement with one hand,
like he was pushing something away from him. "Cows out—" he said, then made a pulling motion with his other hand "—chickens in. We'll take a look at the chicken coop later. It's on wheels. Chickens like shelter; they don't like to be out in the open all the time. With the coop here, the chickens can go in and out all day long, and we can move it around to cover the whole field."

"A mobile home for chickens," Patrick said.

"That's right," Mr. Maxwell said. "Okay, remember—I've got a field full of cow poop, right? And what happens when you have a lot of poop in one place?"

"It stinks." That was Sam again. More laughter.

"Yeah, okay. But you also get a lot of bugs. Flies, especially, right? They lay their eggs in the poop and you get lots of nice healthy maggots."

"
Eww.
" We said that all together, and Patrick added, "Yuck," and made a face as well.

"Well, wouldn't you know it—chickens
love
maggots!" Mr. Maxwell said. "So the chickens eat up the maggots, and they also scratch—they scratch at the cowpats and spread them around, and they scratch at the soil, which keeps it nice and loose and aerates it. There they are, tilling the soil and spreading the fertilizer and keeping down the pest population and saving me money on chicken feed!"

"Cool," Patrick said. I thought so, too.

"Then we move the chicken coop to another field and let the sheep in here—that's the stage we're at right now." Mr. Maxwell waved his arm at the sheep. "Now, because of all that cow manure, there are
lots
of weeds in the field. Cows won't eat weeds, but sheep will, so I don't have to use chemicals to keep the weeds down. Better for the soil, and better for the animals, too."

I watched the sheep nearest to us. Sure enough, one of them was working on a patch of what looked like thistles—purple flowers with prickly leaves. The sheep didn't seem to be bothered by the prickles.

"Then we move the cows back in here, and the whole thing starts over again. The field's been occupied the whole time, but it's not worn out and used up—it's ready for the next round."

He squatted down by the fence. "Get down low, everyone," he said. "Have a look at the grass." He reached between the fence rails and raked through the grass with his fingers.

We all got down on our knees and looked closely at the grass.

It was green. It had blades. There were patches of clover.

In other words, it was just grass.

Mr. Maxwell was watching us. He grinned when he saw our faces. "Just grass, right?" he said.

"Okay," Patrick said, "so what's so special about it?"

"It's
healthy!
" Mr. Maxwell boomed out. "It's green and thick and growing like mad, and the soil underneath is full of nitrates and other good stuff. If you were a cow, that grass would look like an ice-cream sundae!"

All of a sudden I felt like I was seeing the grass the way a cow would. It really did look quite delicious—deep and rich and juicy green, full of sweet-smelling clover.

"When you come right down to it, I'm a grass farmer," Mr. Maxwell said. "A grass and soil farmer. That's my main job—making sure the soil stays fertile so the grass grows well. The animals do everything else, and if we all do our jobs, the system sustains itself—it keeps going and going."

"What other kind of farming is there?" Patrick asked. "Is there such a thing as non-sustainable farming?"

"Well, they don't call it that, of course," Mr. Maxwell answered. "They call it 'commercial' farming. Ever been to a chicken farm?"

We all shook our heads.

"But you've heard of battery chickens, haven't you?"

"I have," said Hannah, one of the girls in the group. "I saw a program on TV once. There were, like, hundreds of chickens in one building, and they never got to go anywhere, and they had to just sit there crowded into these little boxes and lay eggs all day long."

"That's right," Mr. Maxwell said. "And because the chickens are so crowded together, they start to fight. To keep them from hurting each other, the farmer has to snip off the ends of their beaks and the tips of their claws. Battery chickens are also more prone to disease, so the farmer has to put a lot of drugs in their feed to keep them healthy—chemicals that end up in their eggs."

Yuck. I liked eggs. I'd never thought about what went into them before.

"Chickens raised on battery farms are miserable creatures, in my opinion," Mr. Maxwell said. "Not like my chickens. My chickens get to run around and eat grass and worms and go into their coop whenever they feel like it. I like having happy chickens."

I'd never heard Mr. Maxwell talk this much before. I could tell he was really into this farming stuff.

On the way back to the barn, Patrick walked next to Mr. Maxwell and asked a bunch of questions. I didn't follow everything they said, but I did learn that commercial farming was cheaper—that it cost a lot more for Mr. Maxwell to run his farm than it did for commercial farmers to run theirs. Which meant that happy-chicken eggs were more expensive in the grocery store, which was why most people kept buying battery eggs.

That made things trickier than I'd thought. At first I'd wondered why everyone didn't farm the way Mr.
Maxwell did—it seemed so sensible. But it turned out that underneath all those cool small details, there was a bigger picture that was a lot more complicated.

During the rest of the field trip, Mr. Maxwell showed us the barn and the sheepcote, where the animals stayed in the winter. We got to climb into the barn's loft and jump down onto a big pile of hay—that was a blast. We rode on a tractor. And everybody got to take a turn going into the chicken coop and finding an egg.

We got to keep the eggs, too. Mr. Maxwell gave us all cartons to put them in. I couldn't wait to eat mine—I wondered if it would taste different from a battery egg.

On the bus ride home, and then as we walked to Mr. Dixon's house, I kept thinking about that first pasture. I liked the idea of the cycle—the cows, then the chickens, then the sheep, and starting all over again. For some reason it made me think of our worms. Egg, then worm, then cocoon, then moth, and back to egg again.

 

Mr. Dixon was sitting outside when we got to his house.

"We can't stay long today," Patrick said. I'd told him about getting in trouble with my mom. "We have to be home in time for dinner."

"Best event of the day," Mr. Dixon said. "Wouldn't want you to miss that."

We picked twice as many leaves this time, thirty altogether. Patrick and I had talked it over, and judging by the holes in the leaves, we had guessed the worms were going to need at least five at a time starting in another day or two.

Boy, were we ever wrong. In the next two days the worms ate twenty-two leaves! They had turned into eating machines. The incredible thing was, we could actually
hear
them eating. I never would have thought that worms made noise. But ours did—
crunch crunch, munch, nibble nibble, crunch.
Even Kenny quieted down and stood still to listen.

We had to go back to Mr. Dixon's just three days later. I was half afraid to tell my mom that, and she put on her perfect face when she said it was okay for us to go, but she didn't seem to be really mad anymore. Maybe it helped that she'd raised silkworms before and knew how much they could eat.

"Back so soon?" Mr. Dixon called when he saw us. He had a pair of garden shears in his hand and was cutting some really pretty flowers that grew against the fence. Pink and purple ones.

"Those are really nice, Mr. Dixon," I said. "What kind are they?"

"Sweet pea," he answered. He skipped the
t
again,
so it came out like "swee-pee."

"Now, do you two have time for a little visit, or do you need to be running along?"

I looked down at the ground and was trying to think of what to say when Patrick answered for me.

"We can't stay, Mr. Dixon. Julia's mom made us promise not to take too much of your time, so we're supposed to just get the leaves and go home right away. She—she likes to be sure where we are all the time."

Mr. Dixon nodded. Then he said, "Sounds to me like she's being a good momma. Too many kids running wild these days, and their mommas got no idea what they're up to."

Maybe that was it. Maybe my mom was just being a good mom....

"But I'd like her to know that I surely do enjoy a visit from young people every now and again," he went on. "Tell you what. I got some homegrown peppers in my freezer. From last year's crop—it's still too early for anything this year, of course. I'd like to send a few of them home with you. And you tell her from me that I'd be pleased to have you stay and chat sometimes."

I looked up and smiled. "Thanks, Mr. Dixon. I'll give her the message."

Mr. Dixon put down his shears and went into the house with the flowers. Patrick and I got busy picking leaves; we'd brought a plastic bag with us because we were going to pick a lot this time. We counted fifty leaves, and Patrick picked a few more just in case.

We finished just as Mr. Dixon came out again. He had a bag with red peppers in it, and some sweet peas with their stems wrapped in a damp paper towel.

My mom loved flowers. I felt hopeful—surely once she got the flowers and the peppers, she'd know that Mr. Dixon was a nice guy, and let us stay sometimes.

Mr. Dixon handed me the bag and the flowers. "I hope she likes those peppers," he said. "They're not bell peppers—they're a different kind. A little spicy. Used to grow them when I lived down south, but they do fine up here, too, just come ripe a little later. I use them in my jambalaya. You like jambalaya?"

"I love jambalaya!" I said. My mom made it sometimes, and I'd liked it ever since I was little. Rice and seafood and chicken and sausage all jumbled up together.
Yum!
I also liked the word
jambalaya;
it was fun to say.

"Well, I reckon your momma will be able to get some good use out of them," he said. "Don't Chinese people use a lot of peppers in cooking?"

For a second I couldn't say anything. I felt my face getting hot. And then Patrick rescued me again. "Julia's not Chinese, Mr. Dixon. Her family is Korean."
He started talking faster. "And her mom does cook spicy stuff, and her family eats spicy food all the time, so I'm sure she'll like the peppers a lot."

"Well, that's fine," Mr. Dixon said. "I'll see you two later then. Mind you go right on home now."

"We will," Patrick said.

We left and walked a little way. Then Patrick turned to me. "Jules," he said in a low voice, "he didn't mean anything. He said 'Chinese,' but he meant, you know, Asian. Any kind of Asian."

I nodded. "I know, Patrick. It's okay."

But it wasn't.

 

Once in a while somebody thinks I'm Japanese. But that's it—either Chinese or Japanese. It seems like those are the only kinds of Asians anyone has ever heard of. I didn't know exactly why it bugged me. Maybe because it made me feel like being Korean was so nothing—so not important that no one ever thought of it.