The next morning after breakfast, everyone rushed over to check the “Chore List” that Mr. Morgan posted on the pantry door.
“We’ve got kitchen duty,” Jessie said to Benny.
“Sarah and I’ve got something called . . . mulching,” Violet said.
“Henry and I will be pitching hay this morning,” Danny said, bending down to pull on his heavy rubber boots.
“Do you and Henry get to ride in the tractor?” Benny asked.
“Afraid not.” Danny tossed Henry a pair of thick work gloves. “Here, put these on. You’ll need them because the bales of hay are really scratchy.”
Everyone trooped outside to start their chores, and the kitchen was quiet as Benny and Jessie began clearing away the breakfast dishes. Suddenly Mrs. Morgan appeared carrying a giant black cooking pot. She set it carefully on the stove and smiled at the children. “You’ll find some clean aprons at the bottom of the pantry,” she said, tying an apron around her waist. “You’d better put them on, so we can get started right away.”
“Started with what?” Benny asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to put on an apron.
Mrs. Morgan looked surprised. “Didn’t anyone tell you? This is a very special day. We’re making jams and jellies for the Cooperstown Fair.”
Benny grinned. Jams and jellies? Things were looking up.
“Sunny Oaks always wins ribbons for its preserves,” Mrs. Morgan said proudly. She thumbed through her recipe book. “I think we’ll start with ginger-peach jam,” she said thoughtfully. “If you’ll get me a dozen or so peaches from that bushel basket by the door, we’ll get started.”
“I helped pick these!” Benny exclaimed. He filled his arms with peaches and dumped them on the counter.
“That’s right, you did,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Everything we enter in the fair is grown right here at Sunny Oaks.”
Benny was thrilled. It seemed amazing that “his” peaches could end up in a jar of jam!
“How do we get started?” Jessie asked.
“We need to peel about three pounds of peaches,” Mrs. Morgan said. She filled the cooking pan with water and turned on the stove. “If we put the peaches in boiling water for a minute, the skins come right off.”
They worked steadily for the next half hour. The kitchen was bright and sunny, and they hummed as they worked.
After the peaches were peeled and crushed, Benny added lots of sugar, a little lemon juice, and some candied ginger. Jessie added a package of pectin to make the jam thicken and stirred the big pot on the stove.
“I’ll show you how to melt the paraffin, Jessie, but you have to be very careful,” Mrs. Morgan warned. “The trick is to do it slowly, and watch it every second.”
Jessie picked up a sheet of hard, waxy material. “It smells like a candle,” she said, surprised.
Mrs. Morgan nodded. “That’s how we’re going to seal the jars of jam,” she explained. Jessie plunked the sheet of paraffin into a pan and watched as it slowly turned to liquid.
“I think the jam is ready,” Benny spoke up.
Mrs. Morgan peered into the cooking pot and nodded. “It looks perfect, Benny. I’ll pour the jam into these glass jars, and then we’ll seal them with melted paraffin.”
With Mrs. Morgan’s help, Jessie poured hot paraffin on top of each of the jars of jam. The liquid paraffin immediately hardened into a thick white crust, like ice on a lake.
“Wow! It’s like magic,” Benny exclaimed.
Mrs. Morgan lifted up one of the jars. “Looks like a winner to me. You and Jessie did a great job.”
A little while later, Jessie was surprised to hear a soft tapping on the door.
“That’s Lamby,” Mrs. Morgan said. “If you want to feed her, Jessie, Benny and I will start making sandwiches for lunch.”
“I’d love to,” Jessie said eagerly. She hurried to the refrigerator where Danny kept Lamby’s bottles. Since her mother had died, the baby goat had to be fed with milk supplement four times a day. Jessie warmed Lamby’s bottle under hot water from the tap, and rushed to the back door. Lamby was waiting impatiently. The moment Jessie sat on the steps, Lamby nuzzled her hand, eager to start on her bottle. Jessie patted her downy fur, while Lamby guzzled contentedly. Jessie was happy, too.
Meanwhile, Violet was learning all about mulching.
“Mulch is such a funny word,” she said to Sarah. “I thought it would be a lot messier than this.”
“Maybe you were thinking of muck. Mucking out the stalls is a really messy job,” Sarah told her. “Mulching isn’t so bad. And it keeps the weeds away.” She and Violet were spreading mulch around rows of yellow wax beans and black-eyed peas. They had just finished three rows of blueberry bushes and five dozen pepper plants.
“You mean it keeps the weeds from growing?” Violet asked.
“That’s right,” Sarah said. “On big farms, they have mechanical mulchers. They lay strips of black plastic along the ground between the plants. But Dad likes the old-fashioned way. He thinks that there’s nothing better than a mixture of grass clippings, leaves, and wood chips.”
Violet thought about the scene in the barn the night before, and wondered if she should mention it to Sarah. Would Sarah tell her the truth about Star? She was positive that there was more to the story than Mr. and Mrs. Morgan had told her. She was wondering how to bring it up, when Sarah interrupted her thoughts.
“It’s noontime,” she said, glancing at the blazing sun that was high in the sky. “I’m ready for lunch, how about you?”
Violet nodded as her stomach rumbled. “I’m more than ready!”
In the meantime, Henry and Danny had been pitching bales of hay from a flatbed onto a conveyer belt that carried them to the barn loft. The square bales were much heavier than they looked, and Danny pitched one every five seconds. Henry found it hard work.
“I think we’ve done enough for the morning,” Danny said. He didn’t even seem tired, and Henry wondered if he was quitting early on his account.
“Are you sure?” Henry asked.
“I’m sure,” Danny said, jumping down from the truck. “We could pitch hay all day and still not finish the job.”
“Why do you need so much of it?” Henry asked. As far as he could tell, there was enough hay in the loft to last forever!
“It goes a lot quicker than you think,” Danny explained. “The cows eat twenty pounds of hay every single day during the cold months, and the horses eat hay, too.” He gestured to the fields behind the barn. “It takes a whole acre of hay just to feed two of our cows for the winter.”
“I understand,” Henry said, wiping his face with his bandana. He was glad that he had worn gloves. The bales of hay were spiky and had scratched his upper arms.
“We always stop working at noontime, anyway,” Danny explained. “The guests need a break and so do we.” He glanced at Henry who was rubbing his aching arms. “Don’t feel bad, Henry. My arms hurt, too!”
When Jessie finished feeding Lamby, she discovered that the kitchen was empty. Mrs. Morgan and Danny had already passed out box lunches, and everyone was eating outside at picnic tables covered with bright red-and-white-checked cloths. They had left Jessie’s lunch on the kitchen counter—a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, a glass of lemonade, and a thick wedge of chocolate cake.
She rinsed out Lamby’s bottle and was about to bring her lunch outside when a magazine rack caught her eye. Would Mrs. Morgan mind if she borrowed a magazine to read while she ate her sandwich? Probably not, she decided. She thumbed through the pile and settled on a new issue of Horse Sense. Like her sister, she loved horses. She picked up her cheese sandwich and carried it to the kitchen table.
Jessie read about a Thoroughbred named Swaps, a Kentucky Derby winner. The article explained that the Thoroughbred is the result of many generations of careful breeding and is one of the fastest horses in the world. She finished the article and was flipping through the magazine when she gasped in surprise. There was a full-page picture of Star, the horse she had seen in the stable last night!
Except his name wasn’t Star, according to the magazine. It was Wind Dancer. Jessie’s hand trembled as she took a closer look. Wind Dancer was a beautiful chestnut-brown, with a white star on his forehead—just like Star. Yes, she was almost positive that Wind Dancer and Star were the same horse. But why would the Morgans change his name? And what would he be doing at a place like Sunny Oaks?
The caption beneath the picture said that Wind Dancer was a famous racehorse, and had a wonderful future ahead of him. He came from a distinguished line of racehorses. He was sixteen hands high and weighed eleven hundred pounds. Violet remembered the way the chestnut Thoroughbred had pranced into the barn, his head held proudly. He was every inch a champion and he knew it.
The question was: did the Morgans know it? And if they knew who he really was, why did they lie about him? Violet rolled up the magazine as tightly as she could and headed outside. She had to find Henry and the others and tell them what she had discovered.
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