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Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

Chapter 3

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Marcus smiled. "Every farm in Virginia has an oak tree, Grandma.""I know it," she said, but she stood there a while longer anyway.Uncle Walter was less sentimental. He came out once in July, looked over the rocks and the clay, and shook his head. "You're the best young mechanic I've ever trained," he told Marcus. "You could have your own shop in five years, and you're out here pulling blackberry vines in 90-degree heat.""I know what I'm doing," Marcus said."I hope so," Walter replied. "Because nobody's going to hand you a second chance if this goes wrong."That night, Marcus lay awake running numbers in his head: fuel, seed, fertilizer, repairs. His paycheck from the shop covered his share of the household bills and not much else. If the first hay crop failed, he wouldn't be able to buy seed for a second one.Marcus's goal was simple: he would turn the Stony Waste into a working hay farm; he would prove the doubters wrong; and he would give his grandmother back a piece of what the family had lost, even if it wasn't the same land. He had put everything he owned into those nineteen acres. There was no backup plan.By mid-October, the leaves on the ridges had turned orange and red, and the mornings came with a sharp chill. Marcus had finally cleared enough of the lower pasture to begin plowing. It was the moment he had been working toward all year. He climbed onto the Farmall just after sunrise, lowered the disc plow into the ground, and started across the field at a steady three miles an hour. The steel discs bit into the red clay and rolled it over in long, dark furrows. For the first time, the Stony Waste looked like a real farm.He was halfway across the lower pasture when it happened: the engine groaned, the rear tires spun and threw mud, and a deep metallic shudder ran up through the frame so hard that Marcus had to grab the steering wheel to keep from being thrown out of his seat.The plow had hit something, and it wasn't giving.Marcus cut the engine immediately. In the sudden silence, he could hear his own heart pounding. His first thought was the plow: if he had cracked a disc or bent the frame, he didn't have the money to replace it. He climbed down, stepped into the fresh furrow, and walked back, fully expecting to find a slab of limestone and a ruined blade.The plow was fine. But the discs had scraped something that caught the morning light. It wasn't rock; it was metal.
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Black Boy Bought 19 Acres Nobody Wanted — Then His Plow Hit Something Buried Below

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