“My father would haunt me.”
Casey smiled.
“Maybe he’d be impressed.”
“He was rarely impressed.”
“You inherited that.”
Warren signed.
Credit releases did not arrive all at once.
The first tranche came after initial restoration milestones.
Another after hydrologic performance.
Later releases depended on vegetation and management standards.
Sales also depended on buyers.
Some months, nothing happened.
Then a road project purchased credits.
Later an industrial expansion.
Then a residential development in the approved service area.
Payments arrived in stages.
Not lottery money.
Not instant riches.
But substantial.
More importantly, the eighty acres no longer consumed seed, fertilizer, herbicide, diesel, harvesting time, and repeated drainage repairs only to produce mediocre yields in wet years.
Casey built a spreadsheet.
She compared twenty years of historical net crop return on the bottom eighty against projected wetland revenue after management costs.
Warren studied it.
“You are cheating.”
“How?”
“You're including failed years.”
“They happened.”
“Not every year failed.”
“I included the good years too.”
He stared.
The wetland won.
Not every year.
Over time.
Warren leaned back.
“Don't show your great-grandfather.”
Casey laughed.
The first major credit sale changed the farm.
Warren paid down the remaining operating debt.
Not all of it.
Enough.
He replaced the combine he had kept repairing beyond reason.
Bought used, not new.
Casey argued for GPS guidance.
Warren complained it was unnecessary.
Then used it once and refused to give it back.
The farmhouse roof was replaced.
A machinery shed received new doors.
Warren finally repaired the sagging porch step Louise had asked him to fix six years before she died.
That one made him sit down afterward.
He looked at the new board.
Then whispered:
“Took me long enough.”
Casey heard.
Said nothing.
Gerald Voss remained with Cornerstone for less than a year after the settlement.
Warren never learned whether he left voluntarily.
He did not ask.
A new agricultural lender took over the account.
Her name was Susan Bell.
First meeting, she sat at the same kitchen table.
She asked Warren:
“What is the farm’s largest nontraditional revenue source?”
Warren looked offended.
“Bird swamp.”
Casey covered her face.
Susan looked confused.
Casey translated.
“The wetland mitigation project.”
“Grandpa calls it the bird swamp when he wants to annoy me.”
Susan smiled.
“Does it work?”
Warren poured coffee.
“Apparently.”
The eighty acres changed with the seasons.
Spring brought water.
Summer brought dense green vegetation.
Autumn brought migrating birds.
Winter flattened reeds and opened long views over shallow pools.
The site never looked exactly the same twice.
Casey learned it intimately.
Which monitoring well responded first.
Where ducks gathered after cold fronts.
Which patch of sedges expanded.
Where beavers attempted to alter a structure and created three days of work.
Warren helped with fences.
Mowed access lanes.
Complained about mosquitoes.
He still farmed the upland acreage.
That mattered to him.
The Puit farm did not become a nature preserve with a decorative cornfield.
It remained a working farm.
Soybeans on one field.
Corn on another.
Cover crops.
Machinery.
Grain contracts.