My grandmother Bibi once told me that the key to farm life is to establish routine while flexing with the unexpected. At the time, I thought she was doling out unnecessary advice. Of course we would establish a routine. Farming was based on the seasons, right? Crops would be planted on a schedule, weeded on a schedule, picked on a schedule, and sold on a schedule. Animals had needs and expectations that had to be met—on a schedule. Even our personal lives would revolve around Mother Nature’s whims, with vacations reserved for the weeks between fall harvest and winter indoor planting. I had a plan, and that plan would govern our lives at the farm. Better for everyone.

Ah, but what is the Hebrew saying? “Man plans and God laughs”? That about sums it up June at Washington Acres. The only thing predictable on the farm was that the unpredictable would occur.

Like a Vietnamese potbelly pig being illegally stored in a Winsome storage facility—a pig who would come to live at Washington Acres. A pig who would steal our hearts.

Or a murder in a state park that would have the town of Winsome—indeed, the entirety of Eastern Pennsylvania—up in arms, the murderer allegedly an orphaned teenage boy with a tragic past.

Or an unlikely bond between my grandmother, an orphaned pig, and an orphaned teenage boy accused of murder in the court of public opinion.

This particular day in June, the sun would eventually shine and the weather would be perfect, not quite the backdrop for mystery and mayhem. I got up at 4:38 a.m. to complete silence and graveyard darkness. Bibi often gets up before me, but on this day I was the only one in the house awake. At some time in the middle of the night, my dog Sadie had left me for Bibi’s room (Bibi promises she doesn’t let Sadie sleep on the bed, but she does—our secret). I could hear their gentle snoring duet through Bibi’s bedroom door. And Gunther, our Polish Tatra Sheepdog, had chosen to bunk with the goats, something he was doing with more and more frequency. So I slipped on jeans and a t-shirt, made a pot of hair-on-your-chest coffee, and headed outside to collect eggs from the chickens. At least the girls seemed happy to see me.

The goats were a little less ebullient with their morning greetings. Heidi barely lifted her adorable little head, just looked at me with one round eye before nodding off again. Dimples stood and stretched but seemed torn as to whether she wanted to rise before daybreak. Gunther hopped to attention, always our protector, and moved to my side. But even his great white body, still warm from slumber, felt tense beside me.

The farm wasn’t quite ready to wake up.

By 5:45, my farm manager, Clay Hand, had arrived. By six, Brian “Brick” Porter, my farm hand, had shown up. By seven, the three of us were planting seeds in the greenhouse, chatting over the day’s chores. By noon, I was dunking heads of butter lettuce in ice cold water, readying the heads for sale or for use at the café, and wondering why I hadn’t heard from my boyfriend, the town veterinarian, Dr. Denver Finn. No matter, I had chores to do. There were vegetables to pick and new ones to plant, and Alvaro, our chef at Washington Acres Café, had an order for fresh produce he needed filled, pronto. No one wanted to keep Alvaro waiting.

But wait, he would. Once Denver called at 2:12 that day to say he needed me at Mimi’s Warehouse and Storage facility, nothing much else would get done around the farm. As with many things in life, one thing led to another. Camilla the precious pig was a harbinger of things to come.

But then, some things are more important than sticking to a schedule. Bibi was right, as she often is. We would flex, and in doing so, hopefully justice would be done.

You can read more about Megan in Ripe for Vengeance, the fifth book in the “Greenhouse” cozy mystery series, released July 16, 2019.

It’s late spring in Winsome, and Washington Acres is alive with the sights and sounds of farm life. The flowers are blossoming, the vegetable gardens are thriving, the pollinators are buzzing, and the Pennsylvania countryside has fully awakened from its deep winter slumber. Only this season, rebirth comes with a price.

College friends of Megan’s beau, the handsome veterinarian Dr. Denver Finn, are in Winsome for a corporate volunteer event. They will be mentoring troubled kids from a nearby school during a hiking and camping trip. When one of Dr. Finn’s friends is murdered at the state park, a student–a boy with a brutal history–becomes the prime suspect.

With a teen’s life at stake, Megan digs into the victim’s past to clear the boy’s name. She learns that the victim sowed conflict wherever he went. As Megan worms her way closer to the truth, she realizes her own life is at stake, as well as the lives of those she loves.

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About the author
Wendy Tyson is a writer, lawyer, and former therapist whose background has inspired her mysteries and thrillers. Wendy writes two mystery series, the bestselling Greenhouse Mystery Series and the popular Allison Campbell Mystery Series. Wendy’s short stories have appeared in literary journals, and she has short fiction in two anthologies, Betrayed and The Night of the Flood. Wendy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Penn Writers, and International Thriller Writers, and she’s a contributing editor and columnist for International Thriller Writers’ online magazines, The Big Thrill and The Thrill Begins. Wendy and her family live in Vermont.

To learn more about Wendy, visit her website at watyson.com, or on Facebook, and on Twitter.

All comments are welcomed.