Free Down Daisy Street by Katie Flynn

decided against it. It can’t possibly rain all winter, he told himself, beginning to snap the sprouts off a particularly well-grown plant. The family never ate the actual sprouts themselves but used the bushy tips of the stalks instead, so Alec shoved the plant tops into the bottom of his sack as he worked.
    By the time the sack was full, Alec’s hands were so cold that, mercifully, he could no longer feel them, and without the shelter of the sack across head and shoulders his ears, nose and chin were in a similar condition. He was glad to lean the full sack against the nearest hedge whilst he went across the field and into the Five Acre to fetch the cows home. The Hewitts possessed six cows and used their landlord’s bull to keep the cows in milk. Most of the milk was either sold locally, used by the Hewitts themselves, or turned into butter for market. Normally, Alec would have brought Patch out with him to fetch the cows from the top of the pasture, but he had not thought it fair to do so on this occasion because it would have meant Patch’s hanging around in the rain whilst he, Alec, picked the sprouts. Still, cows are pretty eager to be milked as the day wears on and their udders fill up, so Alec threw open the gate and shouted and presently the cows, a motley bunch, came surging out of the field, brushing joyfully past him and heading for the yard. On the other side of the hedge, Alec could hear Clark and Gable slithering and snorting as their great hooves met the mud and became mired to the fetlock, but he did not intend to let the horses into the yard, though he would bring them a bale of hay later and chuck it into the meadow where the mud was not so bad. Until then, the great horses would just have to endure the rain and turn their backs to the wind as they always did in rough weather.
    Alec retrieved the sack of sprouts and hurried back to the farmyard in the wake of the herd. His favourite cow was Fenny, a gentle thorn-coloured creature who had caught his fancy at Acle Market some three years previously, when he had been a mere lad of thirteen. He had pointed out her many charms to his father and since she was undersized and going cheap Bob Hewitt had taken a chance and bought the wide-eyed, wobbly-legged calf, warning his son that if she did not thrive and prove a good milker she would have to be sold on. Fortunately, despite her small size, Fenny had always produced a high yield of very rich milk, and so far her calves had all been heifers. Mr Hewitt told his son that he thought Fenny was probably almost pure-bred Jersey, which would account for the richness of her milk and her small size, and the family thought themselves lucky indeed to own her.
    The cows did not need to be persuaded into the cowshed tonight; they jostled and pushed in the doorway, steam rising both from their hides and their nostrils, each animal making for her own stall and beginning without delay to pull down mouthfuls of hay from the rack before her. Alec’s father came into the cowshed, his pipe clamped between his teeth, and grunted approval when he saw his son tethering the cows and then fetching milking stools and galvanised buckets from the end stall. ‘You start that end, bor, an’ I’ll start this,’ he said gruffly. ‘Your ma want to make butter so keep Fenny’s milk separate from the rest. We don’t need a great deal ’cos there won’t be many folks at market tomorrow if this here rain keep up. I reckon we’ll make it in the kitchen, sittin’ round the fire and a-warming our toeses.’
    ‘Aye, right you are,’ Alec said, taking his place by Fenny and burying his head in her warm flank. The rich creamy milk began to hiss into the bucket and Alec glanced sideways at his father, amused as always that the older man had continued to grip his pipe upside down. In wet weather he always did this to stop the bowl filling with rain, but he usually forgot to right it again when the rain stopped, though his wife and son