Chapter 7: Settling in With Two Women

It was four weeks later now. I’m sure Garnet is pregnant because she shows signs of morning sickness already.

We were in the middle of the Red Fist harvest. Red Fist fruit is a favorite of giants. Garnet had brought the seeds with her. I had not had Red Fist since I got here. My elderly relative did not have them, and no one in the village had heard of Red Fist.

Red Fists grow on a waist-high bush. It’s an annual plant that shoots up quickly and produces multiple fist-shaped fruits. The fruits can be any color, like yellow, green, blue, orange, or red, which is the favorite variety. They come in small ones and ones so big they can burst open if left too long on the bush.

The fruit is almost round with a row of four knobs on the bottom. It resembles a fist if you don’t count the number of bumps, because there is no thumb bump. The fruit can also have stripes or spots.

I had grown up with Red Fist, but it takes a few women to harvest it. I could pick it, but did not have the patience to do the fiddly things necessary to process it.

Red Fist may be a fruit, but it tastes like a vegetable with a tang. You use it to make two versions, either pieces or pulp. When dealing with pieces, it’s used to add another vegetable flavor to the soup or stew pot. It adds bulk.

The pulp version is a little more acidic. A small amount of vinegar is added, and it is boiled until mushy. It is useful with any tough meat; the acid tenderizes the meat as it cooks. It can thicken a stew or soup and adds a nice flavor if you add a touch of honey. It is a fruit that is not sweet.

The big thing is, it can be heated, so it can be put up in crocks for storage. It will last throughout winter and spring if sealed. Red Fist pieces are often placed in crocks filled with boiling water. You can also cook green beans, peas, and other firm vegetables.

I am not wanted or needed in the house for crocking those either. My hands are too big and clumsy.

The red variety of the fruit is the most popular, and many say it is the best-tasting. I pick several baskets of red fists each morning and bring them in for them. Then I go about my other duties like cutting wood, hunting, or patrolling. They go about putting them up for storage.

Lately, I’ve been using a hand sickle to whop off seedlings near the ground. This is a job I usually do in the fall when it’s cooler. The seedlings go into a wheelbarrow.

Lately, I have been feeding the seedlings to the two goats we now have. I used to store them for burning later. The goats are another of Garnet’s ideas.

The goats give milk, butter, and cream for our own use. Goats give milk for about six months. You need two goats, one to milk and the other to be pregnant. This way, the second goat can rotate in for the next six months’ worth of milk.

We don’t have a Billy Goat, so we bring the females to town to breed them.

A new household item we recently bought includes a cooler. This thing is a large clay casting with a door on the main compartment. It has two shelves. There is a water tank on top.

Putting water in the top section creates coolness inside the main compartment. It stays cool as long as you add water daily and keep the door closed. Damn thing costs seven and a half silvers. More than an entire year’s tax payment.

The cooler is a pink clay color, unlike the two stoves. The stoves are also made of clay, but have darkened over the years because of all the cooking and heating. Clay stoves are what most people use. Stoves are imported from Macilan, the Baron’s town, which is several days’ walk away.

We are also raising squabblers. A squabbler is a short, wild bird. It has brown and tan camouflage feathers. They give eggs most of the year. The eggs are only the length of a digit, so it takes a lot of birds if you want eggs. Males and females are easy to sex by their feather patterns.

A broody squabbler hen can hatch a dozen eggs in sixteen days. They multiply like wildfire because they can reach adulthood in only two months. More females beget more eggs. It takes two or three squabblers to make a nice evening meal, usually baked or in a stew or soup.

A broody hen needs her own cage, or with one or two other brood hens. The males are too rambunctious for the hens to sit on the eggs properly. The males need to be sequestered.

I had to build a shed and several cages for the squabblers. The cages are made of two-digit and three-digit square stock for the frame. Thin slats are added all around to contain the birds.

Garnet taught Siggy how to handle the birds. I buy grain for them. They make a lot of noise, well, the males do. We eat mostly the males. We keep two males for each cage of eight females. Too many males in a cage and there’s fighting, not enough males and you get infertile eggs.