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    Black Gold
    Black Gold
    Black Gold
    Ebook66 pages30 minutes

    Black Gold

    By Sara Cassidy and Helen Flook

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Black Gold is the third book featuring Cyrus and Rudy’s adventures on the farm, following Not for Sale and Blackberry Juice.

    Cyrus and Rudy spend the last days of summer selling dahlias, blackberries and tomatoes at their roadside stand. When a neighbor drops off a bin full of red wigglers, California earthworms that break down compost into fertilizer, Rudy and Cyrus become worm moguls as they discover just how in demand the Eisenia fetida are.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateNov 7, 2017
    ISBN9781459814240
    Black Gold
    Author

    Sara Cassidy

    Sara Cassidy is a writer and editor. Her 17 children’s books have been shortlisted for many awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award (Nevers), the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize (Nevers, Genius Jolene), the Bolen Books Children's Book Prize (Skylark, Nevers), the Silver Birch Express Award (A Boy Named Queen, Genius Jolene), the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award, the Rocky Mountain Book Award and five titles for the Chocolate Lily Award. Sara also writes nonfiction and poetry for adults and works in communications for the BC Ministry of Health. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

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      Book preview

      Black Gold - Sara Cassidy

      Ten

      Chapter One

      Last week Rudy and I dragged an old table down to the road that wriggles like a worm past our new house.

      Blackberries grow like crazy around here. I worry I’m tricking people by making them pay for something they can just reach out for. It’s like selling dandelions. Or flies.

      We sell the blackberries in a box that we make with a paper plate, some ninja-like folding moves and a few staples. The tomatoes we sell in brown lunch bags. Rudy folds the tops down carefully. The dahlia bouquets stand in water in tomato-soup cans. Customers can take the soup cans if they want, but usually they don’t.

      I love dahlias, Rudy sighs. He’s staring into a pink flower that’s like a cheerleader’s pom-pom or a sea anemone. They’re so silly, and… Rudy leafs through the giant book he carries with him everywhere. He found it a month ago, in the attic, when we first moved to the farmhouse. It’s a kind of dictionary called a thesaurus. …elegant. That’s it. They’re the only thing that’s both silly and elegant.

      Hee-HAW.

      Rumpley, my donkey, brays from his spot in the field in front of our house. I give Rudy a look. No, Rudy protests. Rumpley is not silly, he’s awkward. And he’s not elegant— Rudy ruffles the pages of his thesaurus —he’s dignified.

      Rudy’s my little brother. He’s eight. I’m nine. We moved to the country at the start of summer.

      When we lived in the city, we’d add water to a can of pink slush from the grocery store, set up a card table on the sidewalk and call it a lemonade stand. In those days, we didn’t have dirt under our nails. We never scavenged in barns or pushed each other into bushes or lay in bed at night running our fingers across the thorn scratches on our arms and legs. Our skin was clean, and we only took baths once a week. These days we need baths nearly every night. These days, if we wanted to sell lemonade, I think we’d start with actual lemons.

      A dented pickup truck rumbles up in front of our stand. The driver hops out, leaving his keys in the ignition and his door open. His radio is playing a country song that my dad likes:

      you and me go fishing in the dark…

      down by the river in the full moonlight…

      The man is wearing the regular outfit around here—jeans, work boots, white T-shirt under a plaid jacket, and baseball hat, bill in

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