“Same every year,” DeDe laughed.
Willo’s eyes scanned the kitchen, and she smiled at the band of women working happily as one.
She watched her granddaughter, and her heart swelled with love.
Will she stay? Willo wondered. Or will my independent girl blow away like this wind?
Willo stopped for a moment and pulled her arms around herself, the cold wind and the strength and camaraderie of the women transporting her.
She sidled up to Sam. “Mind if I tell you a story as we bake?”
Sam shook her head. “It’s nice to learn something new.” She smiled.
“Women saved this orchard,” Willo said. “On a cold day just like this. You need to know that.”
Nineteen
March 1967
The apple blossoms were in full bloom, and the orchard looked as if it had been dusted in pink snow. Every few seconds, a gusty, warm wind bellowed down the hillside and into the bay, a roar followed by a brief silence in which another sound would emerge: the hum of bees on the blossoms.
“Reminds me of The Wizard of Oz when the movie turned into Technicolor,” Willo said, pushing up the sleeves on her long-sleeved shirt. “Feels like May.”
Madge took off her jacket and tied it around her waist, while Wilbur and Gordon were ahead of them in the orchard, stopping, pointing, inspecting branches.
“Birdie!” Deana screeched, letting go of her mother’s and grandmother’s hands and pointing at a cardinal in the quickly greening orchard grass. She watched the bird and then looked at the trees. “Apples!”
“Let’s hope,” Madge said to herself, mussing Deana’s blond hair. They walked for another moment until Madge stopped and looked at Willo. “It’s March, and it’s almost eighty degrees. This is bad. Very bad.”
Spring had sprung in the middle of winter. Northern Michigan was experiencing record-breaking warmth at a time when heavy snow and icy cold typically blanketed the entire state.
“Pray this holds,” Madge continued. It was only then that Willo noticed that her mom’s voice was shaky. When she looked closely at her, she realized her cheeks were quivering.
“Are you OK?” Willo asked.
“No,” Madge said.
For days, the family stayed glued to the local weather forecast. They visited other orchards, talked to other farmers. They got on their knees before bed and prayed for a miracle, that Michigan weather would not return to normal.
But the temperatures, like their spirits, quickly began to drop, from the seventies to the forties. And then they heard the local meteorologist say that a Canadian cold front—the coldest of the winter, one of the coldest in decades—would be sweeping into Michigan, bringing below-freezing temperatures and snow.
“Will it really be that bad?” asked Willo, who was feeding Deana. “Don’t we have insurance to cover everything?”
Madge smiled at her child’s unwavering innocence and optimism.
I used to be like that, she thought, but the pressures of the orchard have muted those traits.
Although Willo had grown up on the orchard, being a kid had meant she only had cursory experience with the real work of the orchard. Then she had gone to college, met and married Gordon, and then her new marriage, pregnancy, and nearly two-year-old daughter kept her preoccupied. Gordon, Wilbur, and Madge carried the load.
“Crop insurance will only recover a little of our losses if it’s bad,” Madge said. “It’s very expensive, Willo. We couldn’t even afford to cover the new trees we put in over the last few years.”
“What’s that mean?” Willo asked, cocking her head.
Madge looked at Willo and then Deana, and her heart broke. Their faces were so young, so hopeful, so innocent.
“I don’t know,” Madge lied.
The next morning, the skies turned gray, storm clouds rolled in like angry tumbleweeds, and the north wind began to blow so hard the pine trees bent, shuddered, and creaked. Snow blew sideways, flakes no bigger than a speck, but slowly they grew thicker, wetter, denser. Madge held her mug of coffee close to her face and stared out the kitchen window; snow began to cover the snowdrops and daffodils that had bloomed too early, and she could actually see them droop in the cold.
“No,” she said, her breath leaving a sad O on the window. “Noooo.”
The snow was melting on the road and the grass, but when Madge squinted, it looked as if the sky was snowing pink flakes.
The apple blossoms are freezing and blowing away, she thought.
Two figures moved like ghosts in the snow. Madge squinted again, and she could see her husband and son-in-law jogging toward the house, zipping up coats, yelling to one another, their faces red. They rushed into the house, the cold wind following.
“We haven’t been able to find any buds that haven’t been frozen,” Wilbur said, taking off his gloves and blowing on his hands.
“Have you checked them all?” Madge asked.
“There’s millions of buds. You can’t check them all,” Wilbur said. “The ones we checked…” He stopped and looked at Gordon.
“We haven’t found any that weren’t damaged,” Gordon finished, his eyes down.
Madge didn’t know what to say or do. She turned, pulled two mugs from the cupboard, filled them with coffee, and handed them to her son-in-law and husband. Deana toddled into the room, followed by Willo, and Madge suddenly burst into tears.
“Oh, honey,” Wilbur said. He set his coffee down and pulled his wife close. She cried into his shoulder.
“What about heaters?” she finally asked, a hopeful tone in her voice.
“No money for heaters,” he said. “We’re not like the big guys who can rent heaters, or helicopters, or wind machines to stave off the frost.”
Madge watched Willo pull Deana into her arms, and she felt as if their futures were freezing in front of her, blowing away in the cruel winter wind.
“So…?” she asked her husband, her voice trembling. “Some of the apples? Galas? Granny Smiths? Red Delicious? What about the peaches? Anything?”
“Honey,” Wilbur said softly. “We didn’t find any buds that weren’t frozen. This will be the first year in our history that the entire crop will be killed off.”
Madge’s sobs echoed throughout the house.
Deana began to cry, too, and Willo could see the impact of this on families everywhere, from orchard owners to the summer workers who tended, picked, and packaged the fruit.
“Will we…?” Madge started, unable to finish the sentence with “survive.”
“I don’t know,” Wilbur whispered in a husky voice. “Gordon and I are meeting some farmers at the feed store to talk about what’s next. We’ll be back soon.” He kissed his wife on the cheek. “We won’t give up, you hear me? We survived more than a cold snap before.”
Madge didn’t say anything. Gordon gave her shoulders a gentle shake. “Right?”
“Right,” she said in an unconvincing whisper.
The two departed, Gordon giving his wife and daughter a kiss as he left, forcing a smile at Madge. As Deana’s cries subsided, the wind howled outside and buffeted the house.
“What can I do for you, Mom?” Willo asked.
Madge turned and watched Wilbur’s truck pull out of the driveway. The lights shone brightly into the house and then dimmed. The orchard looked even bleaker, the pinks and greens fading, like a beautiful new watercolor on an easel that had been left in the rain.
“I don’t know,” Madge said. “I don’t know. I feel so lost and useless. Decades of work gone in the blink of an eye.”
“Dad said we’ve almost lost the orchard before,” Willo said. “That there were times when we didn’t know if we’d make it through the winter, or if we could compete with other orchards, or if anyone would buy our fruit. How did we do it then?”
“I don’t know,” Madge said. “We were younger. Stupid optimism, I guess.”
She wanted to take the words back as soon as she’d said them. The la
st thing she wanted to do was dent Willo’s constantly sunny demeanor.
“Let’s say a prayer then,” Willo said. She put Deana on the floor, grabbed her and her mother’s hands and bowed her head. “God, please help us in our time of need. I know we too often pray when we need something, and I’m sorry about that, but we truly need a miracle. We need a sign, an idea, a little bit of hope for this orchard. We’ll do all the heavy lifting, just, please, give us a sign. In God’s name we pray. Amen.”
“All gone,” Deana said happily, using two of the few words she’d recently learned and loved to repeat, especially at mealtime.
Madge finally smiled. “Close, baby girl,” she said, her face breaking into a smile. “But it’s amen. Can you say amen?”
“All gone,” Deana said again.
Madge smiled and looked out the window, the orchard in the near distance, and suddenly her granddaughter’s words rang even truer.
All gone, she thought. You’re right, little one.
“I’m going to make some more coffee, just to get our juices flowing a little better,” Willo said, rubbing her mom’s shoulder.
Willo walked into the kitchen, grabbed the pot, and rinsed it out. She dumped the coffee grounds in the trash, found a coffee filter, and headed toward the pantry to grab the coffee. As she did, Willo bumped into the large cabinet that had sat in the kitchen for as long as she could remember.
“Ouch,” she said to herself, her shoulder already throbbing, a framed photo falling over with a loud thud. “Clumsy.”
She stopped to stand up the photo. When she turned it upright, she smiled; it was a black-and-white picture of her mom and grandma, who had started the orchard with her grandpa, proudly showing off a homemade pie, a blue ribbon sitting on top of the crust. Willo placed the photo back in the cabinet at an angle and, as she did, something else caught her eye: her mom’s recipe box.
“I should tape a BE CAREFUL sign to that cabinet,” Madge said, walking over to Willo. “Are you OK, honey?”
Sign, Willo thought, her heart racing. She remembered her prayer. It is a sign!
“More than OK,” Willo suddenly yelled, her voice high-pitched and excited. She grabbed the recipe box. “Follow me, Mom,” she continued, hurriedly tossing coats, gloves, and stocking caps on Deana and herself.
“Where are we going?” Madge asked. “What about the coffee? What are we doing?”
“We’re going to save this orchard,” Willo said with a determined nod. “C’mon. Time’s a-wastin’.”
Madge followed Willo out the door, trying to keep up with her daughter, who was moving faster than a jackrabbit all while juggling the recipe box and her granddaughter.
“Willo?” Madge called in the hissing snow. “Have you gone mad?”
Willo flew into the old barn that the family now used as a packing and storage facility for the fruit and equipment. Shelves of canned and preserved fruit lined the walls. A freezer and cold storage were enclosed and off to one side, but the rest of the old barn was wide open.
“Willo?” Madge repeated as soon as they were in the barn. “What on earth are you doing?”
Willo sat Deana down on the concrete floor and then shook the recipe box at her mom. “When we prayed, I asked for a sign,” Willo said, shaking the recipe box even harder at Madge. “This is it. This … is … it!”
Willo’s sparkly eyes were watery, and tears were running down her cheeks. At first, Madge thought her daughter’s eyes were watering from the cold, but she realized she was crying.
Willo went over to a picnic table where the workers often ate their lunches, and sat down. Madge followed, and Willo inserted the key she wore around her neck into the recipe box.
“The orchard isn’t the only legacy in this family,” Willo said.
“What do you mean?”
“This,” Willo said, running her hand over the box’s wood, “is our legacy.”
“It’s a recipe box,” Madge said gently, not following.
“No, it’s not,” Willo said. “Why do you think you gave it to me when I turned thirteen? Why did Grandma start this? It’s the legacy of the women in our family. And it’s what will save this orchard.”
She opened the recipe box and began plucking out index cards. “Look,” she said, reading the recipes aloud to her mother. “Apple pie, peach pie, cherry pie, strawberry-rhubarb pie, blueberry pie, cherry-berry pie, red raspberry pie, pumpkin pie, caramel apple pie, apple crisp, cherry crisp, apricot bars, apple-walnut cake, cherry turnovers, coffee cakes, cookies…”
“Willo,” Madge said, reaching out to stop her daughter’s hand, which was tossing index cards left and right as if she were dealing a deck of cards. “What are you doing? I still don’t understand.”
“Grandma’s recipes are a tribute to this orchard and a gift to this family,” Willo said. She stood like a bolt, still holding a few cards in her hand, and began to pace in front of Madge, gesturing wildly every few seconds. “What if you and I began to bake pies and sell them? Look at all the canned and frozen fruit we have from last season. We can make pies, sell some to local restaurants, but freeze most of them and sell them this summer. People already love our pies. We win every contest we enter at church and the county fairs. People ask for these recipes. They beg for our pies.” She stopped to catch her breath. “What do you think?”
“That’s not possible,” Madge said, shaking her head. “We don’t have the right equipment. We’d probably need approval from the county. You’re busy with a toddler. We’ll have to work all summer to get the orchard in shape for next season. We’ll need to invest in equipment so we don’t go through this again. We…”
Willo walked over to her mother and stood in front of her. “We can do this,” she said, her voice firm. She looked into her mother’s eyes and repeated, “We. Can. Do. This. Mom.”
Willo took her mom’s hand and led her over to the canned fruit. “Look at this bounty,” she said, pulling mason jars off the shelves. “And look at this bounty,” she repeated, shaking the cards still in her hand. “Grandma left these for us—for future generations—for a reason. She wanted to share her secrets with us.”
“And they should remain secrets,” Madge protested.
“They will,” said Willo. “No one will know the recipes. We’ll just be sharing the wonderful end product. Think about it. How much is flour, sugar, butter, and eggs? Maybe we can barter with other farmers, or the grocery? We can make a little profit. Maybe enough to tide us until next year.”
“Where do we sell them?” Madge asked, suddenly becoming swept up in her daughter’s unbridled enthusiasm. “How do we sell them?”
Willo rotated in a circle, like a top that just wouldn’t stop spinning. She stopped, midspin, her eyes as big as the barn lights that dangled behind her. “What if we moved Grandma and Grandpa’s old log cabin to the front of the property?” she asked. “It’s just sitting there empty now. You said it would cost too much now to update and renovate. It doesn’t even have central air or heat. Mom, there’s still an outhouse.”
Madge shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s … my history.”
“Let’s keep it that way then,” Willo said. “If we moved it to the front of the orchard, we could put up a plaque about its history, and people would learn the history of the people who founded it. We could sell pies out of it. We’ll advertise. Put up a billboard.” Willo suddenly leapt into the air. “And what if we made the orchard a U-Pick next year? People in the city love driving into the Michigan countryside to pick their own fruit, get pumpkins in the fall, all that fun stuff. That way, there would be multiple streams of income always coming into the business: fruit, food, U-Pick. We wouldn’t be reliant on one thing anymore should disaster strike again.”
“I need to think about this,” Madge said. “We’ll need to talk to Wilbur and Gordon.”
“I know,” Willo said. She looked intently at her mom and then walked over to the picnic table, where she began to put the index cards ba
ck into the recipe box. “Mom, we’re at war. People need some happiness and nostalgia in their lives. I really think this could work.”
Madge walked over and handed the recipe cards she was holding to her daughter. Suddenly, she stopped, her face as frozen as the weather outside.
“I don’t ever remember seeing this card before,” she said. “It must have been tucked in the back or something.”
“What’s the recipe?”
“It’s not a recipe,” said Madge, looking at the card.
“What is it then?”
“A sign,” Madge said. “From my mother.” Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away and read the card. “‘You bake for someone because it is an act of love.’”
Madge stopped and picked up her granddaughter, giving her a big kiss on the top of her head. She looked at Willo. “I think this could work,” she said.
Madge began to twist like a top, just as Willo had done moments before. “I make the best pies in the world, thanks to my mom. And we have the best pie crust recipe ever.” She lifted Deana into the air and laughed. Then she turned to Willo and said, “Your grandma was tough as nails. She and your grandpa worked themselves to death to pass this orchard along to their family. I will not let them down.” She hesitated, and her voice became emotional. “The women of this family will save this orchard.”
“Let’s go bake some pies then,” Willo said.
Twenty
“Why didn’t you ever tell me all that before?” Sam asked her grandma when she had finished her story. She looked at her mom. “Why didn’t you?”
The two women looked at one another. “You always wanted to know the recipes,” her mother said, “but not the history behind them.”
“You were always looking ahead,” Willo said. “But sometimes looking back is what gives you perspective.”
Sam’s heart sank, and she thought of her talk with her father.
“There is no limit to what this place can be,” Deana said. “In many ways, your grandma and I feel we’ve only scratched the surface.”
The Recipe Box Page 17