Chapter 21

The money that came back from all of it was not the kind that changes everything in a single season, but it was more than enough to move the farm forward: to fix the barn roof properly, to repair the well and stabilize the pressure, to replace the failing irrigation equipment with a modest but functional system, and to grade and reseed the approach road that had washed in the storm.He made a list of those priorities on a piece of notebook paper the evening after the distributor visit and taped it to the inside of the barn door, where he could see it every day when he came in.Curtis Sloan came back to Sundown Acres on the Saturday of the farmers market. He'd heard the harvest numbers through the county network, and he drove out in the afternoon to find Bryson back at the farm, working on the barn roof repair with borrowed equipment.Curtis parked, walked across the yard, and looked up at him. He said he wanted to revisit the conversation they'd had in Louise's kitchen at the beginning of the summer, and that if Bryson was open to a different number, he was willing to have that discussion.Bryson came down from the roof and stood in front of Curtis. He told him that he understood why the original offer had made sense: Curtis had been looking at the same farm everyone else had been looking at, and he'd come to the same conclusion everyone else had.But he told him something else. He said the offer made in the summer was made because Curtis believed Bryson was about to fail. What Bryson had now wasn't just a crop yield; it was an understanding of what the land was, what it needed, and how to work with it rather than against it. And that understanding belonged to him in a way it hadn't belonged to any of the previous owners. He wasn't selling it.Curtis looked at him for a moment with an expression that was somewhere between respect and the discomfort of a man who has just been told something accurate that he didn't fully want to hear. He nodded, said, "Fair enough," and went back to his truck.

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