“Not nothing.”
“I can borrow Mr. Keller’s mini excavator if I help him replace the track rollers first.”
“I’d need fuel.”
“Then fingerlings.”
“Feed.”
“Water-test supplies.”
“Maybe aeration depending on what the numbers look like.”
“How much?”
“I’m still pricing.”
Grant nodded.
“Then you don't have a plan.”
“I have most of one.”
“You have an idea.”
The sentence hurt because it was accurate.
Eli nodded.
“Yes.”
Grant took another bite of roast.
“Come back when it’s a plan.”
Roy laughed.
Eli almost did too.
Because Grant had not said no.
That night, Eli opened the spiral notebook on his desk and wrote at the top of a fresh page:
MAKE IT A PLAN.
He underlined it twice.
Eli Tanner was seventeen.
He was a junior in high school, though most adults who met him assumed he was older because he was already six feet tall and had developed the permanent tan line around his neck that belonged to people who spent summers outside.
He had grown up on the Tanner farm.
Three hundred eighty acres owned by Grant and another two hundred rented from neighboring families.
Soybeans.
Corn.
A little winter wheat.
Twenty-eight beef cows.
Nothing exotic.
Nothing particularly glamorous.
The family had survived by doing familiar things carefully.
That was precisely why Eli’s idea sounded absurd to them.
Fish belonged in lakes.
Crops belonged in fields.
Those categories had seemed permanent his entire childhood.
Then two things happened.
The first was a flood.
The previous spring, fourteen inches of rain fell across six weeks.
Water pooled in the west corner until young soybean plants yellowed, then disappeared.
Grant replanted.
Another storm arrived.
Half drowned again.
At harvest, the quarter-acre depression produced so little that Grant muttered it had probably cost more diesel to cross than the beans were worth.
The second thing happened that winter.
Eli watched a video about integrated farm ponds.
Not one of the ridiculous videos promising thousands of dollars from a plastic tub.
A university presentation.
Actual numbers.
Water quality.
Feed conversion.
Stocking density.
Mortality.
Marketing.
Risks.
That sent him searching.
For three weeks, he read.
Aquaculture extension bulletins.
Private pond construction guides.
Fish-health articles.
State regulations.
Hatchery catalogs.
Water chemistry.
Ammonia.
Dissolved oxygen.
pH.
Alkalinity.
Temperature.
He discovered quickly that fish farming was not putting fish into water and waiting for money.
Water was livestock habitat.
Every gallon had limits.
Every fish consumed oxygen and produced waste.
Feed that was not converted into growth became a problem somewhere else in the system.
The more Eli learned, the less simple his idea became.
That made him trust it more.
He created sections in his notebook.
SITE.
CONSTRUCTION.
WATER.
STOCKING.
FEED.
HEALTH.
MARKET.
COST.
RISK.
Under RISK, he wrote:
-
Pond leaks.
-
Oxygen crash.
-
Disease.
-
Bad market.
-
Feed too expensive.
-
Fish die.
-
Roy never shuts up.
That last one stayed.
The following Tuesday after school, Eli drove to the county extension office.
He nearly left before going inside.
The building sat beside the county administration annex and looked exactly like the kind of place where teenagers were expected to arrive only for 4-H forms.
He carried his notebook anyway.
A receptionist asked:
“Can I help you?”
“I need to talk to someone about building a fish pond.”
“Recreation?”
“No.”
“Aquaculture.”
She looked at him.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
That answer produced a pause.
Then:
“Wait here.”
Ten minutes later, a woman came through a side door wearing work boots, dark jeans, and an extension-service jacket.
“Eli?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Denise Okafor.”
“Soil and water specialist.”
“You're the fish farmer?”