At the bottom of Terror Mountain, we got on our bikes and pedaled off. The road was much flatter going away from town, and there were fewer patches of woods and more fields on either side.
“What do they grow here?” I asked as we passed a brown field covered in stubby stalks.
“Corn. It’s gone by the end of October, but in August, there’s a stand out here where you can buy it just picked.”
My mouth watered. Corn on the cob. Corn pudding. Corn muffins with whole kernels baked into them. Maybe even corn ice cream. I had to remember to tell Mom about the stand.
“Someone stands out here selling corn all day?” I asked.
“It’s an honor stand.”
“What’s that?”
“You know, you’re on your honor to pay. There’s a sign with the price and a pile of corn and a box for the money, and you just put your money in the box and take what you pay for.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’ve never heard of an honor stand?”
“Uh, no. Because that’s crazy. Is there like a security camera or something?”
Josh laughed.
“And nobody steals the corn or the money or both?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, they’d stop doing it if that happened.”
“I bet if you did that in New York City, you know, put out a table on the sidewalk with a sign and a pile of corn and a money box, people would think it was some kind of trick. Like the corn was poisoned or something. Nobody would believe it was for real.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want Josh thinking living in the city was sad, even just “kind of sad.” “Well, there was this flower shop on our block, and whenever Zoe passed by, the lady gave her some flowers for free.”
“I think Winnie would run through town naked before she’d give anything away for free,” Josh said.
I laughed. “Oh, and one time, this guy found my mom’s wallet on the subway, and he tracked her down by calling the number on her bank card. So, I mean, it’s not like nobody in the city has honor, you just don’t expect them to, you know?” I pointed to a tangle of wood boards in a field on the right. “That must be it.” Mom had told us that the road we needed to take was just past a collapsed barn.
“And there’s the road,” Josh said, pointing to a sign marking a dirt road.
“Hey, what do you know about this guy anyway?” I asked as we followed Valley View Road into a creepy forest of trees with white bark.
“Riley? Not much. My grandparents are good friends with his parents. They’re not here anymore though. They moved to Florida when Riley took over. My grandfather says this place has been a dairy farm for, like, four generations. But it was always just milk till Riley took over.”
We stopped when we saw the sign for the farm. STINKY CHEESE FARM dribbled down it in red letters, and next to the words was painted a triangular block with lines all around it like Zoe puts around her suns.
“Is that supposed to be stink?” I said.
“Coming off the cheese? I think so.”
I peered down Stinky Cheese Farm Road. A short ways ahead, the forest ended and fields began. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
On the other side of the woods, the land was open and flat all the way to the mountains. Fences lined both sides of the road, and behind them were white cows with black splotches and wiggling ears. There were big ones and little ones, and the big ones had bulging pink balloons that hung down between their back legs.
Up ahead, the road circled around the field on the right to a barn and a small house. Both were gray, but they must have been white at some point because there were places where bits of paint still clung on. Everything—fences, house, and barn—drooped as if too worn out to stand up straight.
The road here was rocky, and weeds had completely taken over in places, so we got off our bikes and walked them.
“Something stinks, but not like cheese,” I said.
“I bet it’s worse in summer.”
“So what we’re smelling is…”
“Cow poop.”
“Great,” I said and tried to breathe only through my mouth.
On the other side of the fence, a calf with black patches around each eye bounced through the grass next to me. “The baby ones are kinda cute.”
Josh stopped. “Hey—is that him?”
Across the field, just in front of the barn, a guy in a black baseball cap was waving.
“Probably.” I waved back.
The guy put his hands up, palms out like he wanted us to stop, so we did.
“You think we’re going the wrong way?” I asked.
We watched as the guy then jogged over to a mud-splattered truck and got in.
“I guess he’s coming to get us,” Josh said.
“Makes sense. We are the customers.”
“He looks pretty young to be running the whole place, huh?” Josh said.
“Yeah, in my head, farmers are old, but I think that’s just because of the song.”
“The song?”
“You know, ‘Old MacDonald.’ Zoe used to make my mom sing it over and over.”
Josh and I watched the truck make its way toward us. I guess because the road was barely still road, he had to drive really slowly.
Finally, the truck pulled to a stop beside us. “Tris? Josh?” the driver said through the open window.
We both nodded.
“Cool. I’m Riley.” He grinned and tipped his baseball cap. The stinky cheese symbol from the sign was printed on it in neon yellow. Up close, Riley looked even less like Old MacDonald. What he looked like was the guy who taught me keyboards at Ricky’s School of Rock, right down to his thick black glasses, hoodie, and ponytail.
“I set up this whole tasting for you guys at the house. Jump in. We can throw those bikes in back,” he said. Then he got out and helped us load the bikes.
Since the truck had just one row of seats, we both sat up front right next to Riley.
“So you guys are into doughnuts, huh? I think that’s what that lady said.”
“You mean my mom?” I said.
“With the little girl.”
“My sister.”
“She was way into the cows, which was cool, but you can’t ride them,” Riley said, all serious like we might actually not already know this.
“She tried to ride them?” Josh asked, trying not to laugh.
“I kept telling her: no riding the cows. But she wouldn’t listen. I gave her some grain, you know. I said, ‘Here look, you can feed ’em, and they eat right out of your hand.’ But every time I turned around, she was trying to climb on.”
Now I knew what Mom had meant about the cows needing a Zoe break.
Just then, we hit a bump, and Josh went flying into Riley. “Sorry,” he said. Even with Riley driving super slowly, we were getting tossed all over the place. At least I could hold on to the door, but Josh was stuck in the middle with nothing to grab onto.
“No worries,” Riley said. “So, tell me about these doughnuts.”
“Well, we haven’t actually made any yet. It’s a long story,” I said. Riley didn’t need to know that this whole doughnut business had started with Mom and Dad making me do a project. That was just unprofessional. We were customers, and we were there to sample his products, and hopefully, make a deal. That was the only story Riley needed to know.
“You don’t have to explain it to me, man. I get it. It’s the dream, right? You just got to go for it. It can take a while to get there though, so don’t lose hope. You just keep at it.”
“Thanks. But I meant—”
“Like with me, all my life, my pops was like, this farm is going to be yours someday. And I was all like, ‘No. Thank. You.’ Getting up early is not for me. See, I was har
d into the electronic music scene. I’d saved up and bought all my own gear. I had this sweet synthesizer. But all that equipment is super expensive. You need a computer and…”
What kind of business was Riley running? We didn’t need to hear his whole story any more than he needed to hear ours. Why wasn’t he talking about his products? Didn’t he know the ABCs of selling? Always be closing the deal. That’s the very first Selling Tip in Starting Your Own Business for Dummies.
“So I needed cash, and that’s how I ended up working at this fancy French restaurant in Boston. And they had a cheese guy. One guy, his whole job was just cheese. He’d buy all these cheeses, put them out on this cart, and when people finished their meal, he’d like wheel it out so they could pick their cheeses. And I was like, ‘Whaaaat?’ because all I knew was cheddar and swiss and American. Maybe I’d had some provolone. But that was it. You know there’s thousands of different cheeses?”
Here was my chance to focus Riley. “Actually—”
“Crazy, right? And each cheese has like its own story, where it’s from, how it’s made. Anyway, this guy—his name was actually Guy. Funny, right? But they don’t say Guy. They say Geeeeey. It’s French, whatever, anyway. So one day, Guy gave me this crazy, super melty, super stinky cheese, and it was like magic. I mean, one bite and I was hooked. I couldn’t believe a food tasted like that. It was so different and so awesome. After that, Guy started teaching me all about cheese…”
Riley pulled up in front of the house but didn’t stop talking. As we climbed out of the truck, Josh whispered, “It must be really hard to live out here all alone with nobody to talk to.”
Something about Riley made me think he’d be like this even if he didn’t spend all his time alone.
“So one time, Guy takes me with him to this farm in Vermont to a cheese tasting, and I was like this is it. This is what I’m gonna do! Like for life. I’m going to make cheese on my family’s farm. And I told my dad, and he was so psyched that I wanted to come back and like do my thing here. He’d had it with those big dairy folks anyway, so he was like Riley, you do it your way. Your mom and I are hitting the beach. So I went back to school, changed my major from electronic music to agriculture, and now I’m here, living the dream. My girlfriend graduates in June, then she’s moving up here. Maybe some friends too. It’s a crazy lot of work.”
We’d followed Riley onto the porch of the little house, and he pushed open the front door. “Hey, boys!” he called into a small room lined with shelves and hooks.
The second we stepped inside, two huge gray blurs—the “boys” I guessed—were coming at us. Before I knew it, one of them had me pinned against the wall, his paws on my shoulders.
“Meet Ziggy,” said Riley. “This one’s Gonzo,” he said of the other dog whose paws were on his own shoulders. Riley seemed to think this was a fine way to say hello. This was so not professional. I didn’t need Starting Your Own Business for Dummies to know that.
“Hello, Ziggy,” I said, looking up. Stretched out like that, Ziggy was taller than I was. Drool yo-yoed down at me from both sides of Ziggy’s furry chin. I tried to turn my head to the wall to get out of range of the drool, but Ziggy dipped and blocked, and then all I could see was tongue.
“Uch!” I gagged.
Ziggy had licked my face so hard, he’d gotten saliva up my nose—his saliva. It hurt and it stunk. Ziggy’s breath was toxic, and now it was inside my nose so I couldn’t even get away from it.
“Wow! He really likes you,” Riley said.
Gonzo dropped off Riley and mashed his head into Josh’s side.
“Hey, Gonzo.” Josh scratched the dog’s back.
“Ziggy’s kinda heavy.” On top of the smell, I felt like my shoulders were about to separate from the rest of my body.
“Yup. Two hundred pounds of love, isn’t that right, Ziggy?” Riley stroked Ziggy’s head, and finally, Ziggy jumped down.
As Josh pet Gonzo, the dog flopped over, knocking Josh backward, and he had to grab onto a hanging raincoat to keep from falling.
“They love attention. Isn’t that right, Gonzo?” Riley squatted and scratched the dog’s belly. “What’s this—oh no!” Riley rubbed something greasy off Gonzo’s nose. “What did you do?” Riley suddenly sounded a whole lot like my mother. He stood up, marched down the hall, and disappeared into the room at the other end.
Gonzo popped up onto all fours.
“Gonzo! Ziggy!”
Ziggy whimpered. Then he and Gonzo slunk slowly off down the hall.
Riley appeared in the doorway. “Didn’t I leave this door closed? Didn’t I?” Now he really sounded like my mother.
The dogs stopped at the doorway and dropped to their bellies.
“Am I going to have to get a lock on the kitchen door?” Riley waited. Not surprisingly, the dogs weren’t answering.
Josh looked at me.
“We can come back,” I said.
“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what you did.”
“He’s still talking to the dogs, right?” Josh whispered.
One of the dogs, Ziggy, I think, barked.
“Yes, you do. And I’m very disappointed in you,” Riley said, shaking his head.
The other one barked.
“You just stay there and think about what you did.” Riley turned around. “Look at this mess.”
“Now he’s talking to us. C’mon,” I said.
In the kitchen, broken glass covered the floor, and two chairs, snapped in half, lay in a pool of milk. “I don’t know how that dog whisperer guy never loses his patience. I’m really sorry,” Riley said.
“Oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” Josh said because he’s Josh. I didn’t say anything.
“I had this whole tasting set up with crackers for the butter, and I made this awesome drink with the milk and some maple syrup.”
“We can come back some other time,” Josh said.
“Or maybe we could just do it at my place,” I said, giving Josh a look.
Riley snapped his fingers. “Hey, I got it. Care package. Hold on. Two secs.”
It took way more than two seconds, but eventually, Riley had put together the care package and Josh was bungee cording it to his bike rack.
“So you’ve got the butter, a pint of milk, and one of cream. And I put in some Farmers’ Wish for your mom, and also something I’m experimenting with, triple cream made of raw milk, super gooey, crazy stinky. It’s wrapped in Riverbirch bark so you just scoop it out.”
“Okay, thanks. We’ll taste everything today and get back to you,” I said.
“Yeah, stop by anytime. I’m always here.”
“We’ll email!” I called as we biked off. I didn’t plan on visiting Stinky Cheese Farm again anytime soon.
15
Mom was right. The Stinky Cheese Farm’s butter, milk, and cream were all mind-blowing, and a great deal too because Riley wasn’t going to charge for delivery since he was in Petersville anyway. His butter would be a little harder to work with because it came in different size lumps instead of sticks, but it was worth it. He weighed each so you knew how much you were paying for, but there was nothing on the package to help you measure out pieces like the lines printed on the paper around sticks of butter. I’d just have to use Mom’s cooking scale to measure out what I needed.
We still had to make deals with suppliers for the other ingredients. To do that, the book said we were supposed to call back the wholesalers with the lowest prices and play them off each other to see if we could get them to go even lower. Since Josh and I didn’t have the first clue how to do this, I decided to ask my dad for help. He’d done a lot of negotiating when he worked at the bank, so I thought he was qualified even though he was family. Besides, I had a feeling Winnie’s warning against doing business with family applied more to siblings than parents. Just to be s
afe though, I decided not to tell her.
It was the day after Josh and I had made the calls. Dad was in his office reading another book about windmills. His latest plan was to put windmills up all over our property to harness the wind that constantly whips around our house, threatening to knock it down. He was sure that with the right number, we could power our whole house. He was super excited about it. He kept talking about how we needed to go to Denmark to see their windfarms, because they get something like half their electricity from wind there. I was terrified that this was the one project he’d actually stick with. He’d shown me photos of the windmills he wanted, and they were like something out of a sci-fi nightmare. It was bad enough up there on Terror Mountain without things that looked like Transformers towering over us.
“Dad, can I ask you something?” I said from the door to the office. “It’s about the doughnut stand. It’s kind of a business question.”
He closed the book. “Sure. Fire away.”
I went inside and showed him all the information Josh and I had gotten from the suppliers.
“So now we’re supposed to negotiate for the best prices,” I explained, “but something doesn’t seem right about that. Isn’t a price a price? I mean, you have the choice whether to buy something or not, but can you actually tell the seller to lower his price? Is that even legal?”
Dad laughed. “Yes, it’s legal.”
“Even if it is. It still feels weird, like something I shouldn’t do.”
“You got to get over that. You know what you need?”
“What?”
“A pitch, what you’re going to say to convince these guys to lower their prices.”
“Oh, yeah, they talk about that in the book.”
“Yeah, a really good pitch,” he said and stood up from his desk all of a sudden like he’d just remembered he had somewhere to be but then didn’t go anywhere. “All right, take me through everything. This is going to be so great!”
I must have just been sitting there staring at him because then he clapped and said, “Come on! Get me up to speed. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
That’s when I knew Winnie’s warning about family did apply to parents, but by then it was too late.
The Doughnut Fix Series, Book 1 Page 11