Every oak.
One autumn morning, Dale came again.
Older now.
Gray beard.
No flatbed.
Just his pickup.
They walked together to the place where the first slab had been taken.
Grass covered most of it.
Wild asters grew along the edge.
“You remember?”
He asked.
“You cried.”
Margaret frowned.
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“Dust in my eyes.”
“It had rained.”
“Humidity.”
Dale laughed.
They reached a remaining stone shelf.
Dale sat carefully.
“My knees are finished.”
“That’s because you spent forty years kneeling on rocks.”
“Good theory.”
They watched light move across the field.
Dale said:
“Do you ever think about selling?”
“The farm?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Jessica?”
“She’ll decide after I’m gone.”
“Fair.”
“You?”
“What?”
“Retiring?”
Dale shook his head.
“I tried for two months.”
“Terrible.”
Margaret smiled.
“What would Grandma Ruth say about all this?”
Dale asked.
Margaret thought.
“She’d say we spent too much money on machinery for something people used to do with hammers.”
“That sounds right.”
“And then she’d check our walls.”
“Find something wrong.”
“Definitely.”
They sat in comfortable silence.
Far off, a truck loaded with limestone moved toward the county road.
Not Margaret’s stone that day.
Rick Malone’s property.
His southern ridge had tested well years earlier.
The network had spread.
Small operations.
Local processors.
Restoration markets.
Nothing enormous.
Nothing resembling a mining boom.
That was good.
Harden County remained farmland.
It simply became better at acknowledging that farmland could contain more than crops.
That December, Margaret attended one final co-op holiday meeting.
She brought Grandma Ruth’s sugar cookies.
Everyone complained she had reduced the icing.
“Inflation.”
Margaret said.
Dennis Wright, eighty now and moving slowly, sat beside her.
During the meeting, a young farmer stood.
His land was wet.
Low.
Poor for corn.
He was experimenting with native reeds and specialty wetland plants.
Several older members looked skeptical.
Margaret recognized the expression.
She leaned toward Dennis.
“You going to tell him he’s not a real farmer?”
Dennis looked offended.
“I’ve evolved.”
“Good.”
After the meeting, the young man approached Margaret.
“Mrs. Foster?”
“Yes?”
“I read about you in college.”
“That is deeply upsetting.”
He laughed.
“My professor told your story.”
“I’m trying something people around here think is stupid.”
“They might be right.”
His smile disappeared.
Margaret continued.
“That’s why you test it.”
“Don’t build your identity around proving everybody wrong.”
“Build evidence.”
“Find buyers.”
“Know your costs.”
“Protect your land.”
“If it works.”
“Good.”
“If it doesn’t.”
“You learned cheaply enough to try something else.”
The young farmer nodded.
“That’s less inspirational than the article.”