Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park Page A

walked next to Mr. Maxwell and asked a bunch of questions. I didn't follow everything they said, but I did learn that commercial farming was cheaper—that it cost a lot more for Mr. Maxwell to run his farm than it did for commercial farmers to run theirs. Which meant that happy-chicken eggs were more expensive in the grocery store, which was why most people kept buying battery eggs.
    That made things trickier than I'd thought. At first I'd wondered why everyone didn't farm the way Mr.
Maxwell did—it seemed so sensible. But it turned out that underneath all those cool small details, there was a bigger picture that was a lot more complicated.
    During the rest of the field trip, Mr. Maxwell showed us the barn and the sheepcote, where the animals stayed in the winter. We got to climb into the barn's loft and jump down onto a big pile of hay—that was a blast. We rode on a tractor. And everybody got to take a turn going into the chicken coop and finding an egg.
    We got to keep the eggs, too. Mr. Maxwell gave us all cartons to put them in. I couldn't wait to eat mine—I wondered if it would taste different from a battery egg.
    On the bus ride home, and then as we walked to Mr. Dixon's house, I kept thinking about that first pasture. I liked the idea of the cycle—the cows, then the chickens, then the sheep, and starting all over again. For some reason it made me think of our worms. Egg, then worm, then cocoon, then moth, and back to egg again.
    Â 
    Mr. Dixon was sitting outside when we got to his house.
    "We can't stay long today," Patrick said. I'd told him about getting in trouble with my mom. "We have to be home in time for dinner."
    "Best event of the day," Mr. Dixon said. "Wouldn't want you to miss that."
    We picked twice as many leaves this time, thirty altogether. Patrick and I had talked it over, and judging by the holes in the leaves, we had guessed the worms were going to need at least five at a time starting in another day or two.
    Boy, were we ever wrong. In the next two days the worms ate twenty-two leaves! They had turned into eating machines. The incredible thing was, we could actually
hear
them eating. I never would have thought that worms made noise. But ours did—
crunch crunch, munch, nibble nibble, crunch.
Even Kenny quieted down and stood still to listen.
    We had to go back to Mr. Dixon's just three days later. I was half afraid to tell my mom that, and she put on her perfect face when she said it was okay for us to go, but she didn't seem to be really mad anymore. Maybe it helped that she'd raised silkworms before and knew how much they could eat.
    "Back so soon?" Mr. Dixon called when he saw us. He had a pair of garden shears in his hand and was cutting some really pretty flowers that grew against the fence. Pink and purple ones.
    "Those are really nice, Mr. Dixon," I said. "What kind are they?"
    "Sweet pea," he answered. He skipped the
t
again,
so it came out like "swee-pee."
    "Now, do you two have time for a little visit, or do you need to be running along?"
    I looked down at the ground and was trying to think of what to say when Patrick answered for me.
    "We can't stay, Mr. Dixon. Julia's mom made us promise not to take too much of your time, so we're supposed to just get the leaves and go home right away. She—she likes to be sure where we are all the time."
    Mr. Dixon nodded. Then he said, "Sounds to me like she's being a good momma. Too many kids running wild these days, and their mommas got no idea what they're up to."
    Maybe that was it. Maybe my mom was just being a good mom....
    "But I'd like her to know that I surely do enjoy a visit from young people every now and again," he went on. "Tell you what. I got some homegrown peppers in my freezer. From last year's crop—it's still too early for anything this year, of course. I'd like to send a few of them home with you. And you tell her from me that I'd be pleased to have you stay and chat sometimes."
    I looked up