Farmed and Dangerous Read Online Free Page A

Scotch bonnet pepper from the freezer. Garlic and onions from the basket in the closet. A jar of her own canned tomato sauce. Rosemary and sage from the covered herb bed near the back door. And a ham bone simmered in stock with cut-up ham from Tendercrop Farm over in neighboring Newbury, which raised all its own meat animals.
    A glass of a hearty Cabernet Sauvignon and a hunk of sourdough bread rounded out the meal. She settled at the wide, worn table where farmers had been eating for decades. Where she herself had eaten all her meals during her childhood summers, alone with Great-Aunt Marie and Great-Uncle Albert while her own academic parents had been off at far-flung research sites. She’d had her older relatives’ full and kindly attention and had learned about farming and self-sufficiency without even trying.
    The stew tasted even better the second day. Cam hadn’t committed to being a locavore, unlike many of the subscribers to the Attic Hill Farm CSA, her farm-share program. But growing and selling food locally so they could feed their enthusiasm for local foods? No-brainer. By the end of March, though, even the locavores would be craving fresh, crunchy produce, a hard find in an environment where the ground consisted of either frozen soil or mud.
    Eating the stew, she perused the local newspaper. An article about a proposed farming restriction caught her eye. She picked out the names Montgomery and Broadhurst. She sipped her wine and read on. The article said Richard Broadhurst, a local apple farmer, had made an offer to buy the Montgomery farm. He’d proposed adding an agricultural preservation restriction so that it would always stay farmland. He was seeking approval from the town. Bev didn’t want the land to be developed, and the restriction would give the owner a payment up to the difference between the fair market value and the current agricultural use value.
    But both Albert and Bev had said Ginger had proposed to develop the land. Did she not know what her mother’s wishes were? Maybe the look Ginger and Richard had exchanged involved the plan to develop.
    Cam finished reading the paper, amused by several of the items in the small town paper’s police blotter column: “Saturday, 2:00 p.m. Lost identity investigated on Maple Street.” “Monday, 9:00 a.m. Suspicious person reported walking on Main Street.” She imagined an old lady gazing out her window and calling in about a pedestrian who might have appeared a little bit out of place.
    She carried her wine over to her desk and fired up the laptop. She always had farm business to deal with, but that could wait for tomorrow. Tonight she wanted to prowl the Internet for information on Ginger Montgomery and on Oscar, as well. His temper didn’t seem to mesh well with taking care of elderly residents. It didn’t take long to discover that Ginger, in fact, sold and developed real estate and owned an apartment complex in Boston. But she’d also developed a property in the nearby small city of Newburyport, building a condo complex at the edge of town, on a piece of land that had been a dairy farm. Cam dug a little deeper, until she ran across a letter to the editor complaining bitterly about the shoddy construction of the Montgomery condos and about the absence of a response from the developer to disgruntled owners. Interesting. How had Ginger gone from growing up on a farm to building poorly constructed housing on farmland?
    Cam couldn’t recall if Ginger sported a wedding band. Perhaps she was married to someone unscrupulous. She headed over to Facebook and examined Ginger’s page. Even though they weren’t Facebook friends, Ginger hadn’t set many privacy settings. Cam could see her whole profile. It didn’t indicate her relationship status, but lots of people would just as soon keep that optional field private, anyway.
    Now for Oscar Zerezghi. Cam had just typed his name in the search text