Story Hunter Ridge

Chapter Thirty-Four

By early June the farms had entered that deceptive season when everything looked easy from a distance. The real planting was behind them, the heavy harvest still ahead, and the land seemed to breathe in long, green waves under the warming sun. But Don had learned enough to know the middle season could fool a man. This was when neglect did its quiet damage. Weeds rooted deep while no one was looking. Insects laid eggs under perfect leaves. A dry spell could stress a young tree before its leaves ever showed the loss. The work now was not dramatic, but it mattered as much as plowing or picking.

Most mornings began before the heat gathered. Don walked the vegetable garden first, coffee in one hand and notebook in the other. The sweet corn stood knee high, darker after its first side-dressing. Beans had begun climbing Jay’s netting, tendrils catching the black cord as if they trusted it. Tomatoes were blooming along the lower trusses. He pinched suckers when Sophia asked him to and left them alone when she told him he was being too enthusiastic.

“A tomato plant is not a construction dispute,” she said one morning, watching him hover over a Cherokee Purple. “You do not have to resolve every branch.”

Dot worked behind him with a short-handled hoe, cutting weeds from between the rows while they were still thread-thin. She preferred to strike early. “You let them get big, you’re not weeding anymore,” she said. “You’re negotiating.” She moved down the peppers with the same calm precision she brought to everything else, checking the undersides of leaves for aphids and flea beetles. If she found trouble she marked the row with a clothespin on a stake and came back later with the sprayer.

The tobacco tea had become part of the garden’s scent, sharp and bitter beside the greener smell of tomato stems and damp mulch. Dot mixed it light and used it carefully, never spraying blossoms when the bees were working and never letting it run to waste. Marigolds and nasturtiums thickened along the borders, drawing in pollinators and confusing the beetles. Basil had taken hold between the tomatoes. Dill, cilantro, and borage leaned together in companionable disorder near the cucumbers, alive with small beneficial wasps.

Craig handled water with a soldier’s suspicion of small failures. Every other day he lifted the lid on the irrigation manifold and checked filters, pressure, and timer cycles. Bill flushed the end caps on each line so grit would not clog the emitters. Jay followed behind, repairing pinholes with barbed couplers and short pieces of tubing. The drip system ticked quietly at dawn, watering roots without wetting leaves, and by the time the sun rose high the soil surface looked nearly dry even while the ground beneath stayed moist.

Sophia worried over the cabbages and broccoli. The cool-loving crops had begun to resent the longer days, so Jay and Bill stretched shade cloth over low frames at the south end of their block. The white fabric lifted and settled in the breeze, softening the sun without trapping heat. Under it the leaves kept their waxy blue-green color instead of turning tough and pale. Freja inspected the work and declared it acceptable, which from Freja meant excellent.

The orchard demanded a different patience. Apples had set well, too well in places, and the crew spent several mornings thinning fruit by hand. Don hated doing it at first. Each tiny apple seemed like a promise he was breaking. Sophia showed him how the clusters worked, how leaving one good fruit every few inches gave the branch strength and the remaining apples size.

“You are not wasting them,” she said, dropping marble-sized apples into a bucket. “You are choosing which ones the tree can finish.”

Don considered that as he worked. It was the same lesson the land kept teaching him in new forms. Not every shoot stayed. Not every fruit matured. Not every plan deserved all the energy available. A good harvest came partly from restraint.

The peach trees needed propping. Summer thunderstorms had broken old limbs at the Andersson place more than once, and Sophia refused to lose good fruit to laziness. Craig cut forked saplings from the woodlot and trimmed them into supports. He and Bill set them under the heavier branches, tying cloth strips where wood met bark so nothing rubbed raw in the wind. The peaches swelled beneath their fuzz, still hard and green but already fragrant if one held a fruit close enough.

Pears set more lightly, which Sophia said was no tragedy. Pears were moody. They looked sturdy beside apples, but they could sulk over weather, soil, or an insult no one remembered making. Freja walked those rows with special attention, checking leaves for fire blight and pruning out anything suspicious at once. She cleaned the pruners with alcohol between cuts, muttering in Swedish whenever a shoot displeased her.

“What did that tree do?” Bill asked after one particularly sharp phrase.

“It knows,” Freja said, and moved on.

The nut orchards were quieter but not forgotten. The pecans had put on strong growth after the spring feeding. Their compound leaves made fine shade along the rows, and the clover beneath them had been cut once and left as mulch. The black walnuts grew straighter and more serious, darker leaved, their trunks taking on strength. Don inspected each tree with Craig, checking guards, mulch rings, and soil moisture readings from the wireless sensors. He still imagined the future when the shakers would work these rows and burlap bags with the Hunter Ridge logo would stack in the processing building. For now the real harvest was growth.

The American chestnut seedlings had been moved outside to harden under a shade frame near the workshop. Don checked them every evening. The little trees looked too delicate to carry the weight of all the history attached to them, yet they kept growing. Sophia teased him for fussing over them like children. Then she would water them herself when he forgot, one hand resting unconsciously over the place where their own child was growing.

Pregnancy had changed the rhythm without stopping her. Sophia still rode the rows in the Pioneer, still carried pruners, still argued about seed spacing, but she had learned to surrender the heavier buckets before anyone could make a production of taking them. Don watched her closely and tried not to hover. Sometimes he failed. She forgave him most of the time.

Preservation preparations continued in parallel with the growing work. The summer kitchen had been cleaned from ceiling to floor. Dot inventoried jars again, then inventoried them a second time because she did not trust numbers written by tired hands. Lids were sorted by size. Rings were checked for rust. The blast chiller was tested, the freeze dryer cleaned, and the pressure canners scrubbed. Freja sharpened knives and washed the old berry strainers. Sophia updated the ledger with projected yields: strawberries first, then early greens, then peas, beans, cucumbers, peaches, tomatoes, apples, pears, and eventually nuts.

“A garden is not ready when the plants are ready,” Freja said, setting clean funnels in a row. “It is ready when the kitchen is ready before the plants are.”

No one argued. They had all seen how fast abundance could turn into panic. A cucumber ignored in July became three gallons of pickles by supper. Tomatoes ripened in waves. Peaches waited for no one. Apples gave more grace, pears less. Don had once believed harvesting was the important part. Now he understood harvesting only opened the gate to a second season of work.

By midmonth the farm had settled into a daily circuit. Garden at dawn. Orchards after breakfast. Livestock and equipment before lunch. Summer kitchen or shop work during the worst heat. Then one more round at dusk, when the light was softer and trouble showed itself differently. Don liked the dusk checks best. The air smelled of clover, dust, tomato leaves, and warm fruit. Bees drifted home toward the hives. The drip emitters clicked on in the nut grove, one quiet pulse after another.

One evening Don found Craig standing among the apples, studying a branch they had thinned earlier. “Feels wrong taking fruit off,” Craig said.

“I thought so too,” Don replied. “Sophia says the tree can only finish what it can carry.”

Craig nodded slowly. “That applies to people.”

They stood there without saying more. Beyond the orchard the vegetable garden lay in narrow green bands, trellises straight, shade cloth pale against the earth. The pear rows held their small, patient fruit. The peaches leaned into their supports. The young nuts gathered height, and the chestnuts waited in their frame like a wager placed on history.

Harvest had not begun, not truly. The first strawberries had only teased them. The first cucumbers were still yellow stars on vines. Apples, peaches, pears, pecans, walnuts—all of it remained ahead, hidden in growth and weather and the daily discipline of care. But the farms were readying themselves. So were the people.

Don closed the gate behind him as the evening settled. He looked once more across the garden and orchards, seeing not just plants and trees but systems that had begun to hold together: water, soil, bees, shade, pruning, kitchens, jars, hands. All of it prepared before need arrived. That, he thought, was the secret. The harvest would come when it came. Their job was to make sure nothing was waiting unready when it did.
 
Chapter Thirty-Five

The first honest heat of summer arrived without ceremony. One week the mornings still held a trace of spring coolness, the kind that made a man grateful for long sleeves until the sun cleared the ridge. The next week the air settled heavy over Hunter Ridge, humid and still, and by seven o’clock every metal handle on the tractors felt warm to the touch. Don had been expecting it. Missouri did not ease a person into summer. It opened the door, shoved him through, and waited to see if he had sense enough to work early and rest when the sun stood high.

They shifted the schedule accordingly. Garden checks began before breakfast. Irrigation filters were cleaned while the shadows still stretched long across the vegetable rows. By midmorning the crew moved to shaded work—repairing tools, sharpening blades, labeling jars in the summer kitchen, or servicing equipment under the open side of the shed. Anything that required bending over bare soil after noon was either urgent or foolish. Dot said heat did not care how tough a person thought he was. It simply waited until pride made him stupid.

The garden responded to the heat as if it had been waiting for permission. Corn jumped overnight, each blade darker and wider than the day before. Beans climbed Jay’s trellis netting in looping green fingers. Cucumbers sprawled toward the paths despite Sophia’s best efforts to keep them trained upward. Tomato blossoms turned into small hard fruit, pale green and ribbed, tucked under leaves that smelled sharp whenever Don brushed against them. The cabbages under shade cloth held a little longer than expected, though Sophia warned they were living on borrowed time.

Freja took charge of the strawberry stand in the mornings. The first pick-your-own customers came in small family groups, buckets swinging from their hands, children already red-faced and excited before they reached the rows. Freja stationed herself beneath a canvas fly at the little table by the lane, ledger open, cash box in place, and a jug of ice water wrapped in a towel. She gave directions, weighed berries, and reminded overeager children that green fruit did not turn red in a bucket no matter how hard they wished.

Sophia came and went between the stand and the house, refusing to sit still for long but accepting the folding chair Don had placed in the shade without comment. Sophia had found herself with child early in June and everyone was surreptitiously keeping an eye on her. Her pregnancy was still early enough that most of the world would not have noticed unless told, but everyone at Hunter Ridge noticed everything. Don noticed when she paused with one hand on the small of her back. Craig noticed when she skipped lunch because the smell of frying onions turned her stomach. Dot noticed when cucumber salad disappeared from the refrigerator and quietly made another batch.

“You all are terrible at pretending not to watch me,” Sophia said one afternoon, catching Don hovering near the wash table while she sorted berries.

Don picked up a crate that was nowhere near full and set it on the shelf, as if that had been his purpose all along. “I’m not watching. I’m managing logistics.”

“You are managing my patience.”

He smiled and backed away. “Understood.”

The strawberry crop came in heavier than expected. What customers did not pick, the family processed. The summer kitchen earned its keep for the first time that season. Berries were washed, capped, frozen, dehydrated, turned into jam, and folded into sheet pans for the freeze dryer. The blast chiller pulled heat out of fresh jam faster than anyone expected. Dot wrote the timing in the production notebook, along with the batch size, sugar ratio, and yield. Freja corrected her spelling in the margins and Dot threatened to hide the good coffee.

The bees worked everywhere. They moved through clover, borage, berry blossoms, cucumber flowers, and the orchard edges in a steady golden drift. Sophia checked the hives at first light, when the heat was still manageable and the colonies were calmer. Don helped when invited, fully suited and careful not to move too quickly. The new cypress boxes he had built were already darkening slightly in the weather, their waxed surfaces shedding rain and morning dew. Several colonies had filled their supers faster than she expected.

“If this keeps up,” she said, lifting a frame heavy with capped honey, “you may get your mead sooner than you deserve.”

“I thought marriage improved my standing.”

“It improved your housing situation,” Sophia said. “Do not confuse the two.”

He laughed, and the sound carried across the bee yard to where Craig was repairing a fence brace. Craig looked up, shook his head, and went back to work.

Trouble arrived in the garden on a Thursday. Dot found the first squash bug eggs—neat copper-colored clusters glued to the underside of a zucchini leaf. By lunch she had found three more clusters and two adult bugs hiding near the base of the plants. She called a small council beside the new shed. Sophia, Don, Craig, and Jay gathered around while Dot held up the leaf like evidence in a trial.

“We can hand-pick eggs every morning,” Dot said. “Lay boards out at night; bugs crawl under, we lift and crush them before breakfast. If we get lazy, they’ll take the squash and cucumbers both.”

“No poison near the bees,” Sophia said.

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Dot set the leaf in a bucket to be burned. “This wants discipline, not panic.”

By the next morning short pieces of scrap board lay between the squash hills. Every dawn someone lifted them and dealt with what had hidden below. The method worked well enough. They lost two plants at the lower end of the row, but the rest held. Don found the whole exercise unpleasant and effective, which Dot said described half of farming.

Heat built through the week. The drip irrigation ran longer just before dawn, and Craig added an evening cycle for the youngest chestnut seedlings after Don found one wilted under the shade frame. The little trees recovered by morning. Don still stared at them longer than necessary, bothered by the thought that a single hot wind could undo months of careful work. Sophia found him there at sunset, one hand resting on the frame, eyes narrowed in concentration.

“You know,” she said, “children also wilt occasionally. You cannot stare them strong.”

“I was hoping it worked on trees first.”

She stepped beside him and looked over the seedlings. “They have roots now. Help them, but let them do their part.”

That became the lesson of the week. Help, but do not smother. Water, but do not drown. Thin fruit so branches could bear what remained. Pick berries before they rotted. Kill pests before they multiplied. Rest people before heat turned effort into danger. The farm demanded attention, but it also punished interference born from nerves. Don saw himself in that balance more than he liked. He had spent so much of his former life forcing outcomes—contracts, lawsuits, accounts, protections—that patience still felt like neglect until the land proved otherwise.

On Saturday evening, after the berry customers were gone and the last jars of jam had been moved to the cooling racks, Don carried a small table out to the edge of the patio. He set out cold cider, strawberry shortcake, and a bowl of the first sugar snap peas. It was not a formal dinner. Everyone came as they were—sweaty, tired, and clean enough after a quick wash at the hydrant. Freja claimed the best chair. Dot sat with her boots stretched toward the fire pit. Craig and Bill leaned against the low wall, arguing quietly about whether the squash bugs respected Marines more than soldiers.

Sophia ate slowly, smiling at something only she seemed to hear. Don watched her in the fading light: the set of her shoulders, the way one hand occasionally drifted to her middle, the strength in her even when fatigue had softened the edges. He thought of the chestnuts under the shade frame, the fruit thinned from the apple branches, the bees filling boxes with sweetness one trip at a time. Nothing important happened all at once. It arrived through repetition, through care, through doing the right small thing before it became urgent.

After dark, lightning flickered far to the west, too distant for thunder. Don rose and walked to the edge of the lawn. The garden lay beyond the pool lights, mostly shadow now, but he knew every row by memory. Corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, greens, cabbages under cloth. The strawberry beds rested after a hard picking. The orchards held their young fruit. The hives murmured in the warm dark. Behind him came voices and laughter, the ordinary sounds of people who had worked hard and belonged exactly where they sat.

Sophia came to stand beside him. “Storm might miss us.”

“Might not.”

She slipped her hand into his. “Either way, we’re ready enough.”

Don squeezed her fingers. Ready enough was not the same as ready for everything, but it was honest. The land would bring heat, insects, storms, abundance, disappointment, and work enough to fill every daylight hour. A child would come when winter leaned close again. Trees would grow or fail. The people would learn, adjust, and keep watch. That was all any farm could promise.

He looked once more toward the dark rows and then back to the circle of lamplight where the others waited. Summer had truly begun, and with it the long test of everything they had prepared. Don no longer feared that test the way he once might have. Hunter Ridge was not finished, and neither was he. But the roots were deeper now, the hands steadier, and the harvest—whatever shape it took—was already on its way.

Mid-June, the peaches began ripening. People came out for the “pick-your-own” but soon tired and just bought peaches in baskets. Freja had hand baskets that would hold a couple of dozen, ½ bushel, and full bushel baskets. Most of the crop was freestone peaches mostly used for canning. Freja had seasonal workers picking daily, sorting the bruised peaches out for canning on her own, or at least she had help from Sophia and Don’s farm also. They canned them in sugar syrup for the majority but also froze some. After peak season for peaches the figs and plums would began producing and those were usually dried. Some people bought them for cooking, other to eat them in their dried form. The figs were dried and pressed into cakes using a mold similar to a butter mold. Don bought more yearlings to replace the ones butchered during the fall and winter. The farms would stay busy with harvests up until late October or November, ending in the nut harvests. Don bought two more commercial dehydrators for the figs and plums. Local women looking to make a little money, were hired to remove the seeds from the plums and load the drying racks. Figs took less work. They just needed to be washed and graded, dried and pressed.
 
Chapter Thirty-Six

They produced more one-pound blocks than they realized. When the last tray came out of the dehydrator and the final batch was pressed and cooled, the kitchen counter and the long folding table in the pantry held neat ranks of them—far more than the household would use before the next season. Don and Sophia stood looking at the haul for a quiet minute. The blocks were dense, dark, and fragrant, the result of weeks of steady work with the excess fruit that had come on early and hard.

They kept a careful portion for their own pantry and for winter baking. The rest went into clean cardboard boxes, 12 to a box, lined with parchment. Two mornings later Don loaded the truck and drove the short distance to the community fruit stand a couple of miles from the house. The stand sat under a wide metal roof at the edge of a gravel lot, open on three sides, its shelves already heavy with local peaches, early apples, jars of honey, and bundles of herbs. The woman who ran it took the boxes without surprise and paid them cash on the spot. By the end of the day most of the blocks were gone. Word moved quickly in a place where people still paid attention to what their neighbors grew and preserved.

Sophia watched the truck pull away that morning and felt the familiar pull of the next project already forming. She wanted to do the same with the plums when they ripened. In the years before there had usually been too many. The trees would load themselves until the lower limbs nearly touched the ground, and after the household and the neighbors had taken what they needed the surplus went to a nearby hog farmer who was always glad for the soft fruit. It was better than watching it rot under the trees, but it still felt like a waste of something that could have been kept.

The problem was numbers and variety. She only had a dozen trees of the kind from which proper prunes were made—Italian-type prune plums with the high sugar and the freestone habit that dried into something worth keeping. The Damsons were different. You could dry Damsons if you were stubborn enough, but the result was tart and more often ended up in jam or preserves than in anything that could be eaten out of hand through the winter. The prune plums were the ones that mattered for long storage.

Those trees were already heavy. By mid-July the fruit had sized up and begun to take on the dusty blue bloom that meant August would be busy. Sophia walked the short orchard almost every evening after the heat eased, counting clusters and estimating yield. There would be more than they could pit by hand without losing half the crop to fatigue and soft fruit. Don had seen the same thing. One afternoon he sat at the kitchen table with the laptop open and a notebook beside it, searching manufacturers of small-scale pitting machines. Most of the commercial units were built for orchards that moved tons a day. He finally found a company that still made a compact model designed for farm kitchens and small processors—solid stainless, a hopper that would take a few pounds at a time, and a clean ejection of the pits. He ordered it. The machine arrived in a heavy wooden crate two weeks later. They set it up on a sturdy workbench in the processing room and ran a few test batches of early cherries just to learn the rhythm. It worked cleanly.

In August the plums would ripen in a fairly tight window. The plan was already clear. They would harvest in the cool of the morning, sort for quality, and dry the fruit in the big dehydrators until the skins wrinkled and the flesh concentrated. Only then would they soak the dried prunes and run the them through the pitter. Pitting after drying kept more of the natural sugars inside the fruit and made the final product denser. Once pitted, the prunes would not be pressed into the old shrink-wrapped cakes like the figs. Those had worked, but the resealable plastic stand-up zipper pouches were better for both storage and sale. The pouches stood upright on a shelf, kept air out once sealed, and could be portioned without exposing the whole batch. A few would stay in the pantry. The rest would go to the same community stand, or farther if the demand was there.

But that was still weeks away. For now the main energy was focused on the garden.

The garden had come on strong after the long, wet spring and the sudden heat of early summer. Rows of bush beans hung heavy. The pole beans on their trellises were already climbing past the top wires. Tomatoes—early girls, romas, and a few heirloom slicers—were turning in waves. Sweet corn stood tall enough that a man walking between the rows disappeared from the shoulders up. Peppers, both sweet and hot, were setting fruit. Summer squash and zucchini had to be checked twice a day or they grew past usefulness overnight. The potato vines were beginning to yellow at the edges, a sign that the first dig would not be far off.

Every morning Sophia and Don were in the garden before the sun cleared the eastern trees. They worked with baskets and five-gallon buckets, moving down the rows in a practiced rhythm. Beans snapped clean. Corn ears were twisted free with a sharp downward motion. Tomatoes went into shallow trays so the ripe ones would not bruise under their own weight. By mid-morning the shade of the porch was full of produce waiting to be washed, sorted, and processed.

The outdoor kitchen became the main workplace. Water boiled in the big canners. The pressure canner sat ready on the back burner for the low-acid vegetables. Freezer bags and vacuum-seal rolls were stacked on the counter. They blanched beans in batches, plunged them into ice water, drained them thoroughly, and packed them into labeled bags for the deep freeze. Corn nibblets were cut from the cob, some of it packed raw for freezing, some of it lightly cooked and sealed. Corn on the cob was trimmed to a convenient length, blanched and frozen. Tomatoes were peeled by the scald-and-slip method, then either crushed for sauce or left whole in their own juice. The sauce went into jars for the water bath; the thicker batches were reduced further for pizza sauce and for the winter stews that would need a deep tomato base.

The work was hot and steady. Steam fogged the windows. The smell of vinegar and garlic from the pickle batches mixed with the sweeter scent of simmering tomatoes. Sophia moved between the stove and the cutting board with the calm efficiency of someone who had done this many seasons. Don handled the heavier lifting—carrying full canners, working the pressure gauge, sealing the big vacuum bags. They talked little while the critical timing was underway, but the silence was comfortable. When a batch of jars came out of the canner and the lids began to ping as they sealed, both of them would pause a moment to listen. Each successful seal was a small, solid victory.

Some evenings they worked past dark under the porch lights, finishing the last of a harvest that could not wait. Other days they stopped earlier and simply sat with glasses of cold water, looking at the rows of cooling jars and the freezer bags stacked like bricks. The pantry shelves that had looked sparse in late spring were filling again. The freezers hummed with new weight.

Sophia kept a running list on a clipboard hung by the back door: what had been put up, what still needed doing, how much space remained. She noted the prune plums separately, a reminder that August would bring its own concentrated labor. The pitting machine sat ready in the processing room, its hopper clean, its gears lightly oiled. She sometimes walked past it and rested a hand on the cold stainless steel, already calculating how many pounds the trees would give and how many pouches they might fill.

The fruit stand would take the excess again if the quality was high. People still valued food that had been grown and dried and packed by hands they knew. The one-pound blocks had proven that. The prunes would do the same.

But the garden would not wait. The beans kept coming. The tomatoes kept ripening. The corn needed to be picked before the raccoons found the sweetest ears. Every day the work continued—harvest, wash, blanch, pack, process, label, store. The rhythm was older than either of them, and it felt good to fall back into it. Outside, the orchard waited its turn. Inside, the shelves grew heavier, and the future felt a little more secure with every sealed jar and every filled bag.
 
Chapter Thirty-Seven

They had staggered the two different types of heirloom sweet corn so the yellow and the white would never tassel at the same time. Cross-pollination would have ruined both, turning the carefully saved seed into a muddle of mixed kernels that no one wanted to eat or plant again. The yellow came first. By the time its ears were stripped, blanched, cut from the cob, and sealed into quart jars, the white was only beginning to show silk. That deliberate gap meant the kitchen never had to handle both crops at once. The pressure canners stayed hot for nearly two solid weeks on the yellow alone, the big stockpots boiling water for the blanching baskets, and the counters stacked with cooled jars waiting for the pantry shelves.

Three hills of pumpkins were all they had put in. The vines had sprawled farther than expected and the fruit set well, but Don had never intended a roadside stand crop. A few pies, a couple of baked casseroles, maybe some roasted seeds for winter snacks—that was the limit. There were already enough farmers in the county growing for the markets, and hauling heavy orange fruit down the lane for a few dollars did not appeal to him. The three hills would be plenty.

By mid-September the pantry shelves told the story of the season. Quart jars of green beans, tomatoes, corn, and pickled beets stood in neat rows beside smaller jars of peach jam, blackberry jelly, and apple butter from the orchard. Bulk containers of rice, flour, sugar, and dried beans ordered through the summer filled the lower shelves and the metal racks against the back wall. It would carry the farms for a few months without strain. The commercially canned goods still stacked in the store room would rotate in gradually, oldest first, so nothing sat unused until its date passed.

Nut season arrived at the end of the month the way it always did—quietly at first, then all at once. The equipment had been checked and serviced the week before: the vacuum sweepers cleaned and their filters replaced, the shellers oiled, the sorting tables scrubbed, the storage bins aired out. A brief stretch of lighter chores had given people room to breathe. Some took short trips to see family. Others simply stayed home and let the daily list pass them by. Don kept the paychecks the same either way. He had learned that forcing everyone to stay busy when the work was light only built resentment. As long as enough hands remained for the essential jobs—feeding livestock, checking fences, keeping the kitchen running—the rest could rest without guilt.

When the nuts began to drop, the pace changed again. The vacuum sweepers, following the shakers, rolled under the trees each morning while the dew was still on the grass, sucking up pecans, English walnuts, and the thicker-hulled black walnuts before the squirrels could claim too many. The crew worked methodically, section by section, so that no area was left long enough for the fallen nuts to mold or be carried off. By the time the last of the major drops had been gathered, the tally stood at roughly eight hundred pounds of pecans, six hundred pounds of English walnuts, and three hundred fifty pounds of black walnuts, all still in the shell.

The pecans processed fastest. Their thin shells cracked cleanly, and the meats came out in large halves more often than not. Two hundred pounds of shelled pecans were bagged and frozen within the first ten days. The English walnuts followed without much trouble. Their shells were thicker, but the mechanical crackers handled them well, and the meats separated cleanly once the moisture content was right. The black walnuts were another matter. They were left in their thick green husks long enough for the larvae of the walnut husk fly to finish their work. The soft, blackened husks then slipped off more easily, though the job still stained every pair of gloves and left the processing shed smelling sharp and earthy for weeks. Once the husks were gone, the hard black shells waited for their new sheller, designed for the tough nuts. Yields from the young trees were nothing to brag about yet, but they were respectable. Don expected the real volume to arrive in eight or ten years, when the orchards reached full bearing age. Until then, every pound was counted, cleaned, and stored with care.

The work settled into a steady rhythm. Mornings belonged to gathering. Afternoons were spent cracking, sorting, and bagging. Evenings often found someone still at the sorting table under the shop lights, picking out the last bits of shell from a tray of meats. The black walnuts required the most patience. Their flavor was stronger and oilier than the English, and a few people preferred them for baking, but the labor of getting them ready was higher. Still, no one suggested leaving them on the ground. The trees had been planted for a reason, and the harvest, modest as it was, belonged to the farms.

By the time the last of the nuts were in storage, the pantry shelves looked fuller still. Jars of corn and beans stood beside bags of shelled pecans and carefully labeled containers of walnut meats. The bulk staples remained untouched for now. The metal-canned goods from the store would continue their slow rotation. Nothing was wasted, and nothing was taken for granted. The season had given what it could. Next year the trees would be a little older, the yields a little heavier, and the same careful timing would be applied again—corn staggered so the canners never overlapped, pumpkins limited to what the kitchen could use, nuts gathered before the squirrels and the weather could claim them.

Don walked the rows one last time after the heavy work was done. The empty corn stalks rattled in the evening breeze. The pumpkin vines were already yellowing. Under the nut trees the ground was bare and raked clean. He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, listening to the quiet that always followed a big harvest. The farms had what they needed for the months ahead. The people had earned their rest. And the trees, young as they still were, had already begun to repay the years of care that had gone into them.

The nuts that were bagged were going to a community farm stand. The nuts the farm was keeping for their own use were either frozen or placed in glass jars and sealed. Dot took several pounds and made a snack mix using brown sugar, butter, mini-pretzels and toasted nuts. Bags were frozen for later use.
 
Chapter Thirty-Eight

With the harvest finally wrapped up, the garden was plowed under and sown to winter rye for cover. The green would hold the soil through the freezes and give the ground something living to work with come spring. Most of the equipment had been cleaned, greased, and put away under tarps or in the shed, except for the tractors that would stay in service through the winter. Don had the crew check the hydraulics on those machines and on the landscape blades they could mount for snow removal. The Farmers’ Almanac was calling for a hard winter—plenty of precipitation, ice, and snow across the region—and the weather the last few years had been unpredictable enough that he saw no reason to take chances. He ordered a full pallet of ice melt for the walks and steps around the buildings, then bought a pair of hitch-mounted spreaders for the trucks. A truckload of sand and another of rock salt arrived the next week. The men mixed them in the proportions Don wanted and covered the pile with a heavy tarp weighted down with scrap tires and concrete blocks so the rain wouldn’t wash the salt away.

November stayed overcast and wet. Most days it was only a fine mist that soaked everything without ever turning into a proper rain, but every few days the sky opened up and the ditches ran full. The roads held up better than expected, thanks to the limestone the crew had put down earlier in the fall, but the constant damp kept everyone in rain gear and made outdoor work slower than usual.

The day after Thanksgiving the men left early for a quail hunt over in Pike County. They came back mid-afternoon with a good bag and a quieter satisfaction that only comes from walking the coverts with other men who understand the work. The bunkhouse filled with the smell of fried quail, biscuits, and gravy while the women were still out battling the Black Friday crowds. Dot had gone with Sophia and Freja; the three of them returned after dark with bags of sale items and the weary look of people who had survived the aisles. Don met them at the door with coffee and the observation that the men had spent the day more productively. Dot only smiled and said the freezer would be fuller for it.

December settled in with the first hard freezes. The rye stood green against the brown fields, and the mornings brought frost that stayed in the shaded hollows until nearly noon. Don kept the men busy with the smaller jobs that always stack up once the big harvest work is done. They cleaned the gutters on the house and the bunkhouse, checked the stove pipes, and stacked the last of the firewood closer to the doors. The smokehouse got a thorough scrubbing and a fresh coat of whitewash so it would be ready when the next hogs came in. Sophia and Freja spent long afternoons in the kitchen putting up the last of the late apples and pears, the kitchen windows steamed and the smell of cinnamon and clove drifting out into the cold air.

Christmas approached with the usual mix of practical work and quieter moments. Dot and the younger women decorated the main house simply—evergreen boughs on the mantel, a few red berries, candles in the windows that would shine for anyone coming up the lane after dark. The men cut a small cedar from the edge of the timber and set it in the bunkhouse common room. There were no elaborate lights, just the tree and a string of old bulbs that still worked, and the room felt warmer for it. On Christmas Eve the whole place gathered for a meal that stretched long into the evening: ham from the smokehouse, sweet potatoes, green beans put up the previous summer, and pies that Freja had been practicing for weeks. Someone brought out a guitar, and the singing went on until the they called it a night.

Christmas Day itself stayed quiet. A few of the men rode over to check on neighbors who lived farther back, carrying extra meat and a couple of jars of preserves. Craig and Dot stayed home. They walked the property in the afternoon, checking the stock tanks and the gates, talking about the year that was ending and the one coming. The sky stayed gray, but the air was still, and the only sound was the occasional lowing of a cow.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s brought the first real snow. It started as a fine sleet in the early morning and turned to heavy flakes by noon. By evening three inches had settled, and the world looked softened and new. Don had the men out with the tractors and blades before first light the next day, clearing the main lane and the paths to the barns and the bunkhouse. The mixed sand and salt went down on the steeper stretches and around the buildings. It was not a deep snow by northern standards, but it was enough to make the work necessary, and enough to remind everyone why the preparations had been made.

The rest of the week stayed cold. The men finished a few indoor projects that had waited all year—repairing harness, sharpening tools, building a new set of shelves for the root cellar. In the evenings the bunkhouse filled with card games and quiet talk. Sophia and Freja took turns reading aloud from old farm journals they had found in a box in the attic, the words of earlier winters carrying a strange weight in the warm room. Sophia kept the main house kitchen going, turning out bread and soups that stretched the leftover Christmas ham through the last days of the year.

New Year’s Eve came clear and cold. The temperature dropped into the teens, and the stars stood sharp over the fields. They kept the celebration simple. A few bottles of the better wine came out, along with a jug of hard cider one of the neighbors had traded for a side of bacon earlier in the fall. Someone started a fire in the outdoor pit behind the bunkhouse, and the men stood around it with their coats open, talking about the next planting season and the work that would come with the longer days. Inside, the women set out the last of the holiday sweets and watched the clock. When midnight arrived there were no fireworks, only a few gunshots from farther down the road and the quiet satisfaction of having made it through another year with the place still standing and the people still together.

The first morning of the new year broke clear and still. A thin crust of ice covered the snow that remained in the shaded places. Don walked out early, checking the tractors and the fuel levels, looking over the rye that still held its green under the white. The air smelled of wood smoke and cold earth. He stood for a while at the edge of the garden, watching the light come up over the timber, then turned back toward the house where the coffee was already on and the day was waiting. The winter was only beginning, but the work of the last months had left them ready for it.
 
Chapter Thirty-Nine

Don stood on the deck drinking coffee in the early light and watched Craig and Dot heading out in the ATVs. They were after a couple of snow or Canadian geese down by the pond. There was a blind at the edge of the willows just down from the pond dam that would give them a good shot as the birds dropped low to clear the trees before landing on the water—an often-used flight path. Craig had told him the evening before what they planned. They had gone through the holidays eating all kinds of good food but just wanted some wild game. Bill had taken a deer a week earlier down near the south end of the black walnut trees, and they had enough venison for now.

Don heard tapping on a glass pane in the door and turned around. Sophia stood there crooking her finger at him.

He went back inside and stood behind her as she poured her coffee.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Go with me to the malls today.”

“Do you have something specific in mind you want to shop for?”

“No, not really. I just want to get away from the farm a little while.”

“Okay, no problem. Leave about 09:30?”

“That would be perfect!”

Don showered after breakfast and put on his walking shoes, knowing there would be plenty of that.

They started in Brentwood at the REI store and wandered around just looking. Sophia found them both Patagonia rain jackets and added them to her cart. She always needed a cart to push around, even when she had no firm intention of buying anything, so she could set her purse down. Don picked up a couple of Nalgene water bottles. From there they moved on into a coffee shop—not Starbucks—and took a break, talking about how quiet the farm had felt after the holiday rush and how the geese had been working the pond more regularly this week.

They went to Target next, then rambled through a pottery store where Sophia ran her fingers over a few glazed bowls before deciding against them. At Hammonds Books Don found a clean copy of Foxfire 12 to add to the set he already had. They headed next to St. Louis Premium Outlets, figuring the size of the place would tire Sophia out. It did not. She found kitchen gadgets she decided she needed, lotions from Bath & Body Works, a pair of kick-around shoes at Skechers, and they both had tacos at El Salto.

After that they drove over to Saint Louis Galleria and walked the corridors for a couple of hours. Nothing jumped out as particularly interesting, though the place was busy with post-holiday shoppers still hunting bargains. When they finally decided it was time to leave and try somewhere else, they stepped out into the parking lot and found the weather had turned. A steady mix of sleet and snowflakes was falling, coating the asphalt in a thin, slick layer that already shone under the lights.

“Let’s go home now before the Richard Pettys get out on the road thinking they can drive,” Sophia said.

Don agreed. He brushed the accumulating mix off the windshield while she settled into the passenger seat, bags at her feet. The temperature sat right around freezing. The sleet was fine and sharp, mixed with soft wet flakes that stuck wherever they landed.

They pulled out of the Galleria lot in Richmond Heights and worked their way toward the interstates. Traffic was already slower than usual. Brake lights flared ahead of them every few hundred yards. Don kept a bigger gap than normal and stayed off the brake whenever he could. The first miles on the surface streets were the worst—stop-and-go, with the sleet building a thin glaze that made the tires feel greasy under hard steering.

Once they reached the highway the road surface was better treated, but the mix was still falling hard enough to reduce visibility. Headlights of oncoming traffic threw a bright, fragmented glare through the wet windshield. Don kept the wipers on intermittent and the defroster running. Sophia watched the road with him, quiet for a stretch, then said, “It’s the kind of stuff that looks harmless until somebody does something sudden.”

He nodded. “Sleet on top of wet snow is worse than either one alone. Gets slippery fast if the temperature drops another degree.”

They stayed on the main routes heading northwest out of the metro area. The drive to the farm was roughly forty-five to fifty miles under normal conditions, mostly interstate and then two-lane once they left the denser suburbs. Today it was going to take longer. Traffic thinned as they moved farther from the city core, but the weather did not improve. The sleet turned heavier for a while, then lightened into wet snow that stuck to the trees and the guardrails.

Don kept the truck in a lower gear on the grades and avoided sudden inputs but kept it in 2-wheel drive. He watched the shoulders for vehicles that had already slid off or pulled over to wait it out. A few cars sat half on the median with hazard lights blinking. One pickup had spun far enough to end up facing the wrong direction on the shoulder; its driver was outside walking around the vehicle, checking for damage.

“People still drive like it’s July,” Sophia said.

“Until the first time they feel the rear end step out. Then they either learn or they sit in the ditch.”

Conversation stayed light but practical. They talked about the geese Craig and Dot might have taken, about whether the temperature would drop enough overnight to freeze everything solid, and about how the farm roads would be once they left the highway. Don tuned the radio to a local news station to see what was happening. The last stretch was two-lane blacktop that wound through open country and scattered timber. Snow already dusted the fields. The ditches held standing water that would turn to ice if the cold settled in.

Don slowed further when they left the divided highway. The road surface here had less salt and more packed mix. He could feel the tires searching for grip in the curves. The wipers worked steadily. Every few minutes a heavier burst of sleet rattled against the glass like fine gravel.

Sophia kept an eye on the side mirror and the road ahead. “I’m glad we left when we did. Another hour and this would have been ugly.”

“Yeah. Better to get home and be done with it.”

The final miles felt longer than they were. The Defender’s headlights picked up the wet snow spinning in the air and the dark shapes of fence posts and the occasional mailbox. When the familiar entrance to the farm finally appeared, the lane itself was already covered in a thin white layer that the tires cut cleanly. Don eased up the drive, parked under the carport and shut the engine off. The sudden quiet after the steady thrum of the road and the wipers felt complete.

They sat for a moment listening to the soft tick of cooling metal and the sound of the mix still falling on the carport roof.

“Good trip,” Sophia said. “Even with the weather.”

Don reached over and squeezed her hand. “Next time we’ll check the forecast twice.”

They gathered the bags and the jackets and the new water bottles and headed inside. Behind them the sleet continued, quiet and steady, covering the tracks they had just made.
 
Chapter Forty

Six inches of wet snow did not stop work at the farm. By mid-morning the sky had lightened to a flat pewter and the temperature sat just above freezing, so the snow clung instead of blowing. It packed underfoot with a dull crunch and stuck to the tractor tires in heavy cakes that had to be knocked off every few passes. They went out not to open the roads for travel—there was nowhere pressing to go—but to keep meltwater from ponding in the low spots. A crowned gravel road sheds water if the crown stays intact. Once water sits, it soaks the base, freezes, thaws, and leaves a soft pocket that becomes a pothole by March. They had learned that the hard way two winters back, when a low dip near the machine-shop spur turned to soup and ate a trailer axle.

Craig ran the old Ford tractor with the rear blade, taking long, slow passes down the main lane and the spur that led to the bunkhouse and machine shop. He kept the blade just shy of the gravel so he would not peel the crown. Bill walked behind with a square-point shovel, knocking the windrows off the edges so they would not form dams when the thaw came. Every so often he stopped and packed a small outlet with the heel of his boot where melt had already begun to find the ditch.

“Leave that one,” Craig called over the diesel. “That’s the old tile line. If you plug it we’ll have a lake by Tuesday.”

Bill waved and moved on. He scraped a shallow V at the next low spot so the melt would have a path instead of a pond. The wet snow packed heavy on the shovel; he knocked it off against the fence post and kept walking. Sophia and Freja came out later with the ATV and a homemade drag—two railroad ties chained behind a section of cattle panel weighted with sandbags. They scraped the shorter paths around the garden, the smokehouse, and the path to the root-cellar door. The work was quiet except for the diesel, the scrape of steel on frozen gravel, and the occasional clink of a chain. By afternoon the roads were bare enough that any thaw would run off instead of sitting. Steam rose off the tractor hood. Craig shut it down and let it tick while he wiped the blade with an oily rag so the wet snow would not freeze to the steel overnight.

Inside, the kitchen stayed warm all day. The wood range held a steady heat and the windows fogged at the corners. Sophia and Freja had pulled jars and bags from the fall stores and set themselves the job of finishing two recipes they had been chasing since November. The pecan pie used no corn syrup. They creamed packed brown sugar with eggs and melted butter until the mixture ribboned off the spoon, folded in the last of the toasted pecans from the southwest grove, and poured it into a deep dish lined with a lard crust they had rolled that morning. Sophia tapped the pan once on the counter to settle the nuts and slid it onto the lower rack. She watched until the center just trembled when the oven door opened—set, not soup.

The peach-pecan jelly cake was more work. They reconstituted dehydrated cream cheese with a little reserved whey from the last batch of farmer’s cheese, beating it until it lost the grainy look and took on a dairy sheen. A spoonful of the peach jam they had put up in August went in next, then a pinch of salt. They spread it between thin layers of yellow cake that Freja had baked two days earlier and wrapped in cloth so the crumb would stay tender. Chopped pecans went between the layers and on top. Pumpkin and winter-squash pies baked alongside. The squash one was darker and denser, made from the Hubbard they had cured in the root cellar until the skin went dull and the flesh sweetened. Freja grated nutmeg fresh and added a little blackstrap for depth.

“Taste this,” Sophia said, holding out the spoon from the cream-cheese bowl.

Freja did. “That’s not jar cheese. That’s the real thing.”

“Whey does it. Don’t tell the bunkhouse or they’ll want it every Sunday.”

They worked without hurry. Jars of last summer’s jam lined the back of the counter. The smell of browning pecans and baking squash filled the house and drifted down the hall toward the mudroom. When the pies came out they set them on the wire cooling shelves by the window, where the cold glass would pull the heat without cracking the crusts.

The bunkhouse crew judged after supper. They ate standing around the big table because the benches were still stacked against the wall from morning chores. Forks clicked against plates. Steam rose off coffee poured from the enamel pot. The no-syrup pecan pie won on texture—the filling set firm without being sticky, the pecans still crisp instead of soggy. The jelly cake disappeared first. Two of the younger hands went back for second slivers and pretended they were only checking the layers.

“Cream-cheese frosting tastes like it came from a dairy rather than a jar,” Bill said. He had a smear of peach on his thumb and did not bother to wipe it.

The squash pie took second place for the way the spices sat against the earthiness of the Hubbard. Someone asked if they had used allspice or cloves. Freja said both, light on the clove. Sophia wrote the final proportions on a card—brown sugar, eggs, butter, pinch of salt, no syrup—and tucked it into the recipe box behind the stove. Freja wrapped the last two slices of pecan pie in waxed paper for the crew to take back to the bunkhouse.

Down in the machine shop Craig had rolled a small propane forge onto the concrete pad and lit it. The shop smelled of hot steel and cutting oil. A single overhead bulb threw a hard circle of light; the rest of the bay stayed in shadow. He was working leaf-spring stock he had saved from an old truck—5160, good spring steel if you treated it right. Chromium in it enough to take a quench without cracking if you did not get greedy with the heat. He cut blanks with the chop saw, forged the tangs and the distal taper on the anvil, and drew the points down until they would slice paper after the grind. He normalized each blade three times: heat to a low red, air cool to black, repeat. Grain had to settle before the quench or the edge would chip the first time it hit bone.

Sparks lifted and died against the dim overhead lights. Bill sat at the workbench with two shed antlers they had found last fall near the oak grove in the southwest corner. One still had velvet stain in the grooves. He cut handle scales on the bandsaw, drilled for pins, and shaped the grips with rasp and sandpaper so they would sit in a hand without hot spots. He tested each one against his own palm, then against Craig’s thicker fingers, and took a little more off the swell.

Dot had the leather side of the bench. She cut deer hide and a piece of heavier cowhide, wet-formed the sheaths over wooden lasts she had carved the week before, and stitched them with waxed paracord strands. The awl punched a steady rhythm. She burnished the edges with a deer-bone slicker until they shone dull. The finished knives would not be fancy—no file work, no fancy bolsters—but they would hold an edge and stay in a pocket or on a belt. Craig planned two camp knives and a smaller neck knife for the spring turkey season. Bill wanted a skinner with a dropped point.

No one talked much. The forge hissed when Craig opened the air. The sewing awl punched. The radio played low, an old station that still came in on the high ground when the weather was right. Outside the snow had started again, finer this time, falling straight down in the still air. It dusted the tractor hood and the ATV and the bare gravel they had cleared that morning.

They worked until the light faded because there was nothing else that needed doing except the daily checks on the cows. Craig banked the forge and hung the tongs. Bill swept the antler dust into a tin. Dot hung the last sheath to dry on a nail. They pulled on coats and walked the short path to the loafing shed. The cows were up, chewing, breath steaming in the doorway. One yearling had a little ice on her poll; Bill broke it off with a gloved thumb. Hay was still in the bunk. Water troughs had a skin of ice that he cracked with the shovel handle. Nothing needed more than that.

They stood a minute under the eave and watched the snow. It would melt. The roads would hold if they kept the water moving. In a week or two the ground would thaw enough for real spring work—pruning the orchard before the sap rose, soil tests in the garden beds once the frost left the top three inches, walking the irrigation lines that had been buried before the first freeze to look for heaves and cracked fittings. The smokehouse needed a new length of stovepipe. The southwest grove still had two pecan trees that wanted a light trim. None of it was urgent tonight.

Craig checked the loafing-shed latch twice out of habit. Bill kicked ice off his boot heel. Dot said she would start the sheaths’ second stitch in the morning if the shop stayed above freezing. They walked back in single file, the finer snow already filling their tracks. Until then the shop and the kitchen were enough. The pies would be gone by morning. The blades would wait on the rack for the quench tomorrow. The farm did not ask for more than they could give on a short February day, and they gave it without making a speech about it.
 
Chapter Forty-One

Bill gathered eggs the next morning while the last of the night’s freeze still clung to the grass. Jay tagged along without being asked, boots crunching through the crusted snow that had started to soften at the edges. The coop sat quiet except for the usual muttering of hens. Jay cleared the thin sheet of ice from the waterers with the heel of his glove and dumped fresh mash while Bill worked the nests. They talked little. The air was still cold enough that breath hung in front of their faces.

Bill kept a third of the eggs for the bunkhouse and carried the rest up to the kitchen door of the house in the wire basket. Sophia was already up and dressed, hair pulled back, a pot of coffee on and a pan of cinnamon rolls just out of the oven. She poured him a cup without asking and set a roll on a plate.

“They look good this morning,” she said, nodding at the basket.

“Fair number. Jay helped with the waterers. Ice was thicker than I expected.”

Don came in from the mudroom, stomped snow off his boots, and poured himself a cup. He sat down and took a roll.

“As soon as this snow clears we need to fertilize the trees.”

“We’ve already got 20-10-10 on pallets in the warehouse,” Bill said. “You want to add the zinc phosphate too?”

“Yeah. Pecans need the zinc or the leaves yellow and the nuts stay small. Did we get that load of 16-16-16 for the walnuts?”

“Yep. I checked yesterday. We’ve got enough to take them all the way through October. Before you ask, the 10-4-6 for the black walnuts is stacked too. We’ll prune where it needs it while we’re out there. Same trip.”

“Good.” Don took a bite of roll and washed it down. “That’ll keep them from stressing when the heat hits.”

Bill finished his coffee, thanked Sophia, and headed out. Don stayed at the table.

“You have anything on your agenda today?” he asked Sophia.

“Momma and I are going to town to start stocking canning supplies. It’s about time they start getting summer stock in. We can order case lots through the manager at Walmart if we talk to him early. Last summer we ended up buying jars and lids last-minute and paying extra. I don’t want that again.”

“Check over-the-counter medicines while you’re there. See if you can find deals we can add to inventory. Elderberry capsules especially. Spring cold season won’t wait. Anything different with the canning this year?”

“Not much. More wide-mouth jars. They stack better and the guys in the bunkhouse go through strawberry preserves like an addict does cocaine. I want to freeze-dry more strawberries this year too. Those bags disappear fast.”

Don chuckled. He knew he was one of the guilty parties. A whole bag could vanish in front of the television on a quiet night.

Sophia watched him a second. “How are Craig and Dot getting along?”

“Don’t know and don’t care. They’re adults. They can decide who they sleep with.”

“So they are sleeping with each other?”

“I don’t know. I don’t go around peeking in windows.”

Sophia grinned. She liked getting under his skin now and then. She’d make it up to him later.

Don stood, kissed the top of her head, and went to his office. While it was on his mind he ordered six more well-water test kits from Amazon. He liked to keep that many on the shelf. Then he clicked the Augason Farms bookmark and added more pouches of Cheesy Broccoli Soup mix. A pouch of that with a hunk of sourdough garlic bread made a decent meal when nobody wanted to stand at the stove. He looked a little further and added Tomato Basil Parmesan and Creamy Potato as well. Some nights they had been outside all day and a bowl of soup plus farmer’s bread was enough.

He sat back and opened the food-storage notebook they kept in the desk drawer. The pages were stained and the numbers were in his handwriting and Sophia’s. They had been meaning to do another warehouse-club run since January. The snow had delayed it. Now that the roads were opening he wanted it done before planting and fertilizing ate the rest of the month.

He walked back to the kitchen. Sophia was packing the last of the rolls into a tin for the bunkhouse.

“While you and your mother are at Walmart, Bill and I ought to take the truck to Sam’s and Costco. We’re light on a few things we said we’d keep six months ahead on.”

Sophia closed the tin. “How light?”

“Rice is down to four fifty-pound bags. We should have eight. Pinto and black beans are okay but the navy and great northern need another case each. I’ll get some in cans but I’ll order pails from the grain dealer we use in Utah. Pasta is fine for now. Flour and sugar we can live with, but I’d rather add two more fifty-pound sacks of each while the price is still decent. Cooking oil—we’ve got plenty of the small bottles but the big jugs of vegetable and olive are getting thin. Honey and peanut butter too. The #10 cans of vegetables and fruit are holding, but we should grab another case of diced tomatoes and green beans. And toilet paper and paper towels before they get picked over again.”

“COSTCO has those big Kirkland chicken and tuna cases,” Sophia said. “We used the last of the tuna in January. If you’re going that far you might as well get the freeze-dried fruit and vegetable pouches they carry now. The strawberries we freeze-dry ourselves won’t last the summer if the bunkhouse keeps eating them the way they do.”

Don nodded. “Bill can ride with me. We’ll take the flatbed so we don’t have to stack everything in the cab. I’ll call and see if they still have the five-gallon buckets with gamma lids. We can rotate the older rice and beans into those while we’re there.”

Sophia wiped the counter. “Momma and I can handle the canning jars, lids, pectin, and the medicine. You two do the bulk dry goods and the long-term stuff. If you see those big bags of oats or the emergency ration bars, grab a couple. They store easy.”

“I’ll make a list before we leave. We can go tomorrow if the roads stay clear. That way we get it done before the fertilizer work starts.”

Sophia poured the last of the coffee. “Good. I don’t want to be running to town every other week once the garden and the orchard get busy.”

Don went back to the office, wrote the list in the notebook, and added a note to aerate the water-storage barrels and test them. Then he called Bill on the radio and told him the plan. Bill said he’d have the truck fueled and the chains ready in case any of the back roads still had ice.

By mid-morning the sun had come out strong enough that water dripped from the eaves. Don stood at the office window a minute and watched it. The trees would be ready for fertilizer soon. The pantry and the warehouse needed to be ready first. He closed the notebook and put it back in the drawer. Tomorrow they would fill in the gaps.
 
Chapter Forty-Two


As soon as the last dirty patches of snow melted off the orchard floor, they started fertilizing the nut trees. Timing mattered. They needed the feed in the ground before the buds broke, when the trees would pull hardest on whatever they could reach. A soil test came first. Once they had the numbers, they set the spreader for the right rate and worked the fertilizer in a wide ring under each canopy, never closer than twelve to eighteen inches from the trunk. Close to the bark invited burn and invited mice. The same pass would give the clover a jump start once the ground warmed. They watered the fertilizer in that same afternoon so the water could carry the nutrients to the roots.

While two of the crew ran the dump truck and the box blade, placing fresh gravel on the soft spots in the farm roads, the rest of the outfit moved over to Freja’s farm. They fertilized her apples and peaches the same way, then moved down the rows of everbearing and day-neutral strawberries. Freja paid them the only way she knew how. Don had smoked a pork shoulder back in the fall and left it wrapped in the freezer. She pulled it, baked Yukon Gold potatoes into a bubbling au gratin with the top browned and crisp, dumped a couple of jars of last summer’s hand-snapped green beans into a pot with ham scraps, and baked yeast rolls and two apple pies from the dried apples she kept in the pantry. Sophia helped her load the pans and carry them to the bunkhouse Saturday afternoon. Don had already warned the crew what was coming so nobody made other plans. No one EVER turned their back on one of Freja’s meals.

Before the first daffodils opened, Freja and Sophia sat at the kitchen table with their canning inventory. They had washed and saved jars all winter, so the list was short. Sophia still ordered a case of the fancy four-ounce quilted jelly jars for the giveaways they always sent out with the first berries and the first jars of peach jam. By the time the farm stores and Walmart started running low, their shelves would already be stacked and labeled.

Pre-season work on the equipment started the same week. The tractor that pulled the fertilizer spreader got its oil and filters changed, the hydraulic fittings greased, and the tires aired to spec. They pulled the nut harvester out of the machine shed, checked every belt and chain, replaced two worn rollers, and ran it empty across the gravel lot until the bearings sounded right. The tiller that would turn the garden later got new tines and a fresh shear bolt. Even the little walk-behind that they used between the strawberry rows received a spark plug and a clean air filter. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet work that kept a breakdown from landing in the middle of harvest.

They also placed the order for more printed jute bags. Last year’s run of bags, stamped with the farm name and a simple line drawing of a walnut branch, had sold out by November. The printer needed six weeks, so they ordered early and added fifty extra of the larger size for the pecan lots. The bags would sit in the loft until hulling started, then they would fill, weigh, and stitch them the same way they always had.

Out in the garden they spread composted manure over the winter vetch and plowed the whole cover crop under. The ground would sit that way until the danger of the last frost passed. After that they would be ready for another season of fruit, nuts, vegetables, and the long rows of jars that always seemed to fill themselves once the work began.

With the spring preps done, Don decided they ought to get away a few days before planting began. Sophia had been talking about Branson since Christmas, restaurants and music shows and a hotel that did not smell like diesel and wet dogs. Don reserved them a room at Marriott’s Willow Ridge Lodge beginning Tuesday. They would come home Sunday. That should fill up her music cup. Sophia spent an inordinate amount of time packing. Don packed one bag and hung a blazer in the truck.

They left early Tuesday morning for the four-hour drive and rolled into town at lunch. Before they went to the hotel, Don drove straight to Joe’s Crab Shack on Branson Landing. It had been a long time since he had cracked king crab, and that, along with Bass Pro, was his one honest reason for taking Sophia to Branson. They sat by the windows overlooking Lake Taneycomo. Don worked through a pile of legs and claws while Sophia picked at shrimp and watched the boardwalk fill with people who were not thinking about last frost dates. After lunch they walked the south end of the Landing to Bass Pro Shops White River Outpost. The store was built like an Ozark lodge, stone fireplace and log work and a long aquarium stocked with bass and crappie. Don tried on a couple of jackets he did not need, handled a few reels, and bought Sophia a pair of walking shoes that would last through the week. They came out with a bag of socks, a new fillet knife, and two souvenir mugs.

Check-in at Willow Ridge was four o’clock. The villa had a kitchen, a washer, and a balcony that looked into the trees. Sophia unpacked as if they were staying a month. Don hung the blazer and set his one bag on the chair. They were early enough to sit in the lobby and go through the handful of theater brochures Sophia had already collected. She wanted Dolly Parton’s Stampede that first night, and Don did not argue. They changed, drove to the arena on 76 Country Boulevard, and arrived in time for the Horse Walk. Sophia lingered at the stalls. Don watched the riders warm up and thought about how much work it took to keep thirty-two horses sound. Inside, they were served the four-course feast at their seats: creamy vegetable soup and a hot biscuit, then a whole rotisserie chicken, hickory-smoked pulled pork, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes, with dessert and unlimited tea. The arena filled with trick riding, a North-and-South competition that was more comedy than contest, and a new aerial segment called Butterfly Dreams that sent winged horses and acrobats through colored light. The patriotic close, set to Dolly’s own “Color Me America,” put Sophia’s hand on Don’s arm and kept it there until the lights came up.

Wednesday they slept later than either of them had in months. After coffee in the villa they went back to Branson Landing and walked the length of it. Sophia tried on Pendleton and Chico’s and bought a light cardigan. Don stood outside Boot Barn and waited. They watched the free fountain and fire show on the waterfront at noon, then drove the short hop into historic downtown so Sophia could disappear into Dick’s 5 & 10. She came out with rock candy, a tin of old-fashioned mints, and a small wooden puzzle she said was for the bunkhouse. That afternoon they took boarding passes at the Titanic Museum Attraction on the Strip. Each ticket was matched to a real passenger from 1912. They walked the recreated grand staircase, put a hand on the iceberg wall, and came out quieter than they had gone in. Dinner was simple, White River Fish House on the water, trout and a shared piece of pie, then an early night.

Thursday Sophia had circled The Haygoods at Clay Cooper Theatre. Five brothers and a sister on more than twenty instruments, tight harmony and enough production that Don admitted, halfway through, that it was not the same as a church special. They ate lunch first at Gettin’ Basted, pulled pork and brisket, then spent the afternoon at Shepherd of the Hills. The old farm and the outdoor drama grounds were still waking up for the season, but the views off the ridge were enough. Don bought a small bag of roasted nuts from a stand and told Sophia they were not as good as theirs. That night the Haygoods filled the house. Sophia hummed in the truck all the way back to Green Mountain Drive.

Friday was shopping and another show. They drove out to Tanger Outlets in the morning. Sophia worked the racks with a list she had written on hotel stationery. Don carried bags and found a pair of work gloves he liked better than the ones at home. After lunch they stopped at Hazel’s Blown Glass Factory and watched a man pull color through a gather of hot glass until it became a vase. Sophia bought a small blue bowl. That evening they took seats at Presleys’ Country Jubilee, Branson’s original family show on the Strip. Gospel, country, and the kind of slapstick comedy that had been running since before most of the newer theaters had poured their slabs. Sophia sang under her breath on the choruses. Don clapped when he was supposed to and meant it. Don was able to score tickets for the Peterson’s afternoon show at the Little Opry Theater. That was an enjoyable afternoon.

Saturday they saved for the water. Don booked the afternoon dinner cruise on Silver Dollar City’s Showboat, the old Branson Belle paddlewheeler on Table Rock Lake. They boarded in time to find a table by the window. The four-course meal came while the shore slid past and the live show worked through music and comedy in the dining room. Sophia leaned against him when the boat turned for home. After they docked they still had light, so they walked the Aquarium at the Boardwalk, tanks of rays and sharks and a tunnel that put fish over their heads. Sophia bought postcards in the gift shop and wrote two of them at a bench before they drove back to the lodge.

Sunday morning they packed without hurry. Sophia folded the new cardigan on top of her bag and set the blue bowl in a sweater so it would not roll. Don hung the blazer again and put the fillet knife in the door pocket. They stopped once more at the Landing for coffee and a last look at the lake, then pointed the truck toward home. The four hours went easy. By late afternoon they were back on their own gravel, the nut trees already showing the first swell at the buds, the garden waiting on the last frost.

Sophia put the brochures in a kitchen drawer, determined to put them to use again. Don put the new knife in the block. Planting would start soon. For a few days they had eaten someone else’s cooking, sat in someone else’s seats, and let other people do the work of putting on a show. That was all she had asked for, and it had been enough.
 
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