Page 47 of Love You Too

“Several.” I rub circles on her knee.

I signal and take a left at a fork in the highway, following a skinny gravel road to where it dead ends at a white farmhouse with green trim. The sign in front leaves no mystery as to where we are—Carraway Farm.

“Wait, are you serious?” She swivels in her seat to face me, eyes sparkling with childlike glee. “We’re going to the farm. Like,thefarm?”

After Trix told me about her obsession with the Carraway Farm she’d been following on social media for the past year, I did a little digging. Turns out the place is not just social media catnip. They walk the talk, raising animals and growing all the ingredients to make the desserts they feature in their videos. The only thing more surprising than learning Carraway Farm hosts visitors was that Trix didn’t figure it out first.

“Yup.”

“Are we allowed to just show up?” She slumps down in the seat a few inches as though she needs to hide. As though she’s capable of keeping a low profile with her enthusiasm.

“We’re allowed. I called ahead and made an appointment. Come on.”

I exit the car and go around to her side, opening the door before she can do it herself. I extend a hand to help her out of the car. Before we reach the front of the farmhouse, the door swings open to reveal a woman our age in a blue overall dress and a straw hat. Long blond braids hang over her shoulders as she waves at us with both hands. “Welcome, you two!”

She comes down the front stairs to greet us. But there’s no need. Trix hustles a little faster to shake her hand. “Oh my gosh, it’s so nice to meet you. I had no idea we were coming here, and I can barely handle it. I’ve seen every one of your videos, and I follow your socials religiously.”

It’s a different side of Trix than I’ve ever seen. Normally so pulled together, she’s fangirling hard, and it charms the fuck out of me.

The woman turns and shakes my hand, introducing herself. “I’m Radish.”

I can barely stifle my laugh.Radish? That has to be made up…right?I school my expression as Radish envelops Trix in a bear hug. They smile at each other like reunited sisters. I’m almost jealous. That is, until Trix leans over and kisses me hard on the mouth and rings her arms around my shoulders. “Thank you,”she whispers in my ear. “If you feel like getting down with a pregnant lady later, I know one who is very fond of you right now.”

“You two are cute,” Radish says, surveying us like a chef trying to decide how to slice and dice a chicken. For a moment, I worry that I haven’t done nearly enough research about this place. If she’s as zany as her name suggests, I might need to keep my guard up. But she just smiles at us. “Butcutedoesn’t pull carrots out of the ground. I’m putting you both to work.”

She signals for us to follow her into the farmhouse, pushing open the heavy front door to reveal a great room with high ceilings and rough-hewn beams. The walls are painted white, and the roof has large rectangular skylights, letting in so much sun there’s no need to turn on any lights. The walls are covered in framed photographs of the farm animals Trix was gushing about. Tiny lambs. Flocks of chicks following a chicken in the grass. Brown rabbits, white rabbits.

Radish points to a group of small easels in a corner, each with a hanging sheet of paper covered in a finger-painted mess of color. “We host a preschool here three days a week for some of the local kids. We call them seedlings.” She leads us past wooden bird feeders decorated in feathers, sequins, and paint.

Trix inhales a sharp breath, and her eyes shoot to mine. I know what she’s thinking, and I nod in agreement—our little one needs to come to school here with Radish and all the other little seedlings. I feel myself drinking the Kool-Aid I didn’t even know Radish was serving.

We stop in front of a door with a hanging plaque that readsThe Chick Inn. Radish waits for us to smile at the pun. Trix squeezes my arm. I just gape at the total transformation of a tightly-wound woman into her own brand of seedling—wide-eyed and excited by the natural world. All thoughts of deadlines, renovations, menus, and agendas seem to have faded into a pleasant blur of animal photos and paint.

“I was just about to feed the chicks, but there are a lot of them, so it’ll go faster if we divide and conquer.” Radish opens the door to The Chick Inn, which is a chicken coop worthy of the Queen Mother Hen.

Looking down at her long, flowy skirt, Trix hesitates. “Am I dressed okay?”

I look down and notice the floor of the coop covered in sawdust and what is probably chicken shit. I should have thought of that earlier and told Trix to wear some old sweats. “I have some practice gear in the trunk. I can run back and get you something to change into,” I offer.

“No need. You’re perfect. As long as you don’t mind brushing off some wood shavings when we’re done,” Radish says.

“I don’t mind at all.”

Radish leads us into the coop, which is tall enough for us to enter without bending down. Once inside, I take in the size of the place—easily as big as my spare bedroom with shelves along one wall and a window that leads to the next room. It’s all made of raw wood with its own skylight in the roof.

“Aw!” Trix gasps. I look down and see a swarm of yellow chicks surrounding her ankles. They’re bigger than newborn chicks, about twice that size, but they still fit in the palm of my hand when Radish bends down and hands one to me.

Trix plops herself down in the sawdust and gathers four baby chickens into her lap. She hugs them close and pets their tiny heads. I’ve never seen anything more adorable in my life. And I’ve never seen her look happier.

“Oh my God, Ren. This is my happy place.”

“Yeah? Even more fun than checking shit off your to-do list?” The joy in her laugh answers my question.

Radish crouches down with a pail and hands us each a little pile of dried worms. They stink. But the chicks love them, so I play along, sitting next to Trix and hand-feeding a worm to each chick in the place. Soon, they’ve all figured out that we arethe keepers of the worms, so we’re swarmed with squawking chicks.

“How many can they have? I don’t want to overfeed them,” Trix says.

“A couple more each, and then we have to get them into the other room so they can roost.”

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