Thread: Applewood Fields (kaigen & MetalMelissa)

With the rising of the sun over Applewood Fields there came a new dawn and a new day, and for Lauren Smith, the same old tired life. August was never a time for her to rest on her laurels or dream of what could have been, however, for August brought the beginning of apple season. At Applewood, that meant a shifting of attention from the farm to the orchard, and this year Lauren had high hopes for the company's produce. The past eighteen months or so had seen the buxom blonde take on a greater role in the running of both the farm and the orchard, and judging from the latest quarterly projection, business was firmly on the up and up. Lauren's husband John, owner of Applewood since the death of his mother Ann-Marie seven years ago, had almost run the business into the ground with his growing indifference to profit and to life in general, but his wife was proving herself more than capable of running the business for him. If nothing else, it provided her with a sense of satisfaction that John had long given up on providing her with. On this day she rose at six thirty, showered and dressed, and made her way downstairs to prepare breakfast. At thirty-four years of age, Lauren cast a striking figure in a loose white blouse and tight denim cut-offs that ended just beneath the gentle curve of her plump behind. Her skin was lightly bronzed from the summer months just past, and her luxuriant blonde hair hung down over her shoulders in gentle waves, here cascading down her back, there framing her sizeable cleavage where it was bared by two open buttons at the top of her blouse. She was pretty too, possessed of a lightly freckled nose between bright blue eyes, and narrow lips that were quick to curl into a slightly crooked smile. As a child she had dreamed of being a country music singer, but all of that changed after one frivolous night of carnal indulgence. She became pregnant at sixteen, a mother at seventeen, and by nineteen was married to a different man than the one who had begot her with child. It was years later when she discovered that that man was incapable of providing her with more children, though his mother at least provided her with a profitable business. Ann-Marie Smith had been a very astute businesswoman, and her husband had given her a good name for apples. Her son John, on the other hand, had been a high school football player with aspirations of playing in the National Football League until he blew his knee out in the spring of his senior year. If that had grounded him as a person, the damage it did extended beyond his body and his dreams John was now a forty year old man with zero ambition, and a penchant for spending his weekends in this or that local bar pounding whiskeys. He could work the farm all right, but were it not for his wife there may well not have been a farm to work. Of the numerous recent changes that Lauren had introduced, the most successful had been the employment of transient volunteers whose labour she compensated with food and board. The majority of these workers came to her through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms organisation, or WWOOF. Still others came by word of mouth, or answered adverts posted in the town of Silverton, a mere ten minutes drive away. The months of August and September saw the greatest demand for labourers, though of course the greatest supply was available in the summer months, when many a student opted to spend his or her summer travelling from farm to farm and taking in the sights and sounds of new cities and rural localities. Now, at the first dawn of August, four such workers remained Tammy Birtwhistle and Alan Purcell were a bright, sociable couple from England who had stayed the majority of the summer with the Smiths, and who would return home at the end of the month to prepare for their final year of university Juan Ortega was an Argentinian-Mexican American from just outside of Houston, who on occasion would break out an acoustic guitar and lead a rendition of David Allan Coe's Tennessee Whiskey , or Lead Belly's Cotton Fields to name a couple most recently employed was a quiet drifter by the name of Eric, of whom Lauren knew very little. He was a curious fellow, possessing a camper van and a customised motorcycle that Juan was somewhat enamoured with, and as such he had no need to make use of the accommodation offered to Applewood's other volunteers. Lauren's new employment scheme proved such a success that she and her husband no longer needed to employ much in the way of permanent staff. The only two that remained outside the Smith family were a pair of burly brothers from Silverton named Donny and Ronny Drake. Neither of them were particularly bright, but they were good workers, and amiable to boot. The Smiths worked alongside them more often than not, though now that August had arrived, husband and wife would divide their duties between the farm and the orchard. The former would be manned at all times by John and the Drake brothers. Lauren and the volunteers would still work some days on the farm, but for the most part they would she would lead them around the orchard picking and collecting apples by hand before transporting the ripe ones for storage.