“This place here is where my friend Shawn lives,” Weston said, pointing to the right as they drove past the yard — surrounded well by trees as every yard in the area was.
“Okay,” Andie said. “I’d imagine we’ll be meeting him tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure,” Weston replied. “There’s an auction out at Namao tomorrow, and I think Dad was going to take us, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I’ve never been to an auction, that might be fun,” Andie said. “I know it involves bidding on things, but I’ve never seen one. What are they selling?”
“Equipment and household goods,” Weston replied. “It’s going to be kind of like a glorified garage sale, really.”
“With bidding instead of price tags,” Andie said.
“Yeah,” Weston replied.
“Okay,” Andie said. “Is it from just one farm?”
“Yes,” Weston replied. “The farmer and his wife, the Rutledges, are retiring and their son-in-law is taking over, but he’s not wanting to run a dairy anymore, so they’re selling off the equipment that has to go with that mostly, I think, but I think Saul was also wanting to upgrade some of the equipment, as some of it’s pretty old.”
“But he’s going to farm still?” Andie asked.
“Yeah,” Weston replied. “He’s going to do custom heifer raising.”
“What’s that?” Andie asked.
“Basically, it’s when a farmer has some calves, girl calves, which are called heifers, he’ll sometimes raise them himself, but some guys don’t necessarily have the space, so they’ll send them to a guy like Saul, who feeds the calves as they grow up until they’re old enough to be milked, then they’re shipped back to the farmer, who adds them in with the cows he has and they become cows because they’re grown up,” Weston explained.
“Oh,” Andie said. “Almost kind of like a boarding school for cows?”
“That’s probably the closest equivalent,” Weston replied, turning on the signal and decelerating.
“This is the farm?” Andie asked.
“It is,” Weston replied as he rounded the corner, past the familiar mailbox that had the family name written on it and between the caragana bushes that flanked the end of the driveway, behind which towered poplars covered in heart-shaped leaves that were a somewhat dark shade of yellow-green, their mature colour.
To the right was the machine shed Dad had put up when Weston had been just a few years old, which still looked fairly new, to the left, behind some coarse-barked elm-type trees that were shorter than the poplars and spruces that formed the main perimeter of the whole yard was the house and its yard, ahead was the gothic-roofed barn, which Dad had clad in sheet metal a few years ago so as to no longer need to hire painters to redo the siding every five or so years.
Despite the fact that the metal had vertical ribs compared to the horizontal boards that had previously covered the building, the barn was still its original red with white trim thanks to the ability for metal to be painted almost any colour.
Pronunciation:
Namao: nahmayoh
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