The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

Bandits at Four O’Clock

One of the great things about Inn life is you get to rise early in the morning when

it’s peaceful, cool and dark, to prepare breakfast for the guests. Great if your a robin,

not so great if you’re an owl. And four o’clock is earlier than anyone who needs to get

up. That’s the time when the banging and clattering started in the garden shed, behind

the “Summer kitchen.”

The Summer kitchen is a later wood frame addition to the original stone house.

A Summer kitchen was used, as the name implies, during the Summer when it was hot,

so that the cooking stoves wouldn’t heat up an otherwise cool house. It was also where

the women put up preserves and processed all the garden produce for the Winter. I

can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must have been when they were cooking and

canning during the hot, hot days of Summer, before air conditioning or even electric

fans. The original small wood door has now been enlarged into an archway that

connects it directly to the main kitchen. The shed that is attached to the Summer

kitchen is accessible only from the outside, but the hollowwood walls boom loudly with

the echoes from the banging within.

Back in the city, night noises likethis would have panicked me. But here I know

that whatever is making the noise is probably more afraid of me than I am of it.

Probably rightly so. Humankind has done more damage to nature than nature has ever

done to us. So, I pulled on a sweater and crept quietly to the kitchen and rummaged in

the “junk drawer” for a flashlight. The steps were cold and wet beneath my bare feet but

I never care about that when I’m hunting out my friends.

As I creaked open the shed door and shone the light around inside, scurried

rustlings behind the wheelbarrow revealed my quarry. A small pointy face stared back

at me. Then two, three, four more culprits popped into view. Caught red-handed, four

black-masked bandits were stuffing themselves with bird seed that Michael forgot to

store in a metal storage bin.

Momma raccoon had returned, with three babies this year. She’s never quite

comfortable with humans, not like city park raccoons and I don’t want to tame her.

Published by Bookmice.com

Country Cooking