Yield.
Problems.
Ideas.
Most farmers kept records.
Her father kept arguments with himself.
APRIL 17 — SHOULD HAVE PLANTED THREE DAYS EARLIER.
MAY 2 — SOUTH FORTY HOLDING MOISTURE BETTER THAN EAST.
JUNE 11 — SOYBEANS STALLING. ROOTS TOO SHALLOW?
JULY 8 — TEST SUNFLOWERS STILL GREEN. DEEP ROOTS FINDING SOMETHING.
The first time the Farm Girl found the sunflower notes, she had been ten.
She remembered asking what the plants were.
Her father had pointed to a narrow strip along the back fence.
“Experiment.”
“With what?”
“Being wrong.”
She had laughed.
He had not.
“Best thing a field can do is tell you you’re wrong before you bet the whole farm.”
The sunflowers had never become part of the main operation.
Only small test strips.
Half an acre one year.
Two acres the next.
Then none.
Her mother had become ill around that time.
Hospital bills followed.
Experimentation stopped.
Soybeans were familiar.
Corn contracts predictable.
Her father returned to what kept the farm alive.
But he never stopped writing.
The Farm Girl found the final sunflower entry only after his death.
A loose sheet had been folded inside the back cover.
SOUTH FORTY.
DON’T FORGET THIS GROUND.
DEEP ROOTING CROP HANDLED DRY YEARS BETTER THAN I EXPECTED.
CLAY LENS ABOUT 5–6 FT DOWN ON EAST HALF. HOLDS SUBSURFACE MOISTURE.
IF INPUT COSTS KEEP CLIMBING, SUNFLOWERS MAY MAKE SENSE HERE SOMEDAY.
SOMEDAY.
The word had stayed with her.
Her father had written it twenty-eight years earlier.
Now diesel cost too much.
Fertilizer cost too much.
The farm carried debt from her father’s final medical expenses and a combine repair he had financed six months before diagnosis.
Soybeans could still make money.
But not comfortably.
Not with the contract prices available that spring.
Sunflowers required less fertilizer.
Their roots could reach deeper.
Prairie Oilseed had opened a new crushing facility sixty miles west.
The buyer offered a contract that looked risky but possible.
So the Farm Girl signed.
She did not tell the Old Farmer about the ledger.
Not because it was secret.
Because she had learned something during the eleven months after the funeral.
People listened differently when an idea came from a dead man.
If she said, “My father believed this could work,” they would nod respectfully.
If she said, “I believe this can work,” they would start explaining farming to her.
She wanted the decision to be hers.
Even if the notes helped her make it.
Planting began four days later.
The Farm Girl started before sunrise.
Her father’s tractor was twenty-six years old.
The cab fan worked only on its highest setting.
The seat had a split along one side.
A strip of duct tape covered it.
She refused to replace that tape.
Her father had put it there.
She knew sentimentality was foolish.
She also knew grief did not care.
The sunflower seed came in heavy paper sacks.
Black shells.
Striped varieties.
Hybrid seed treated with fungicide.
She calibrated the planter twice.
Then a third time.
The Old Farmer appeared again before noon.
This time he climbed out of his truck.
He stood beside the fence with two neighboring farmers.
The Farm Girl saw them from the tractor.
They watched.
She continued planting.
At the end of the row, she stopped.
Climbed down.
The Old Farmer nodded toward the planter.
“Population?”
She told him.
His eyebrows lifted.
“That low?”
“Sunflowers need room.”
“You planning giant heads?”
“I’m planning roots.”
One neighbor laughed.
The Old Farmer did not.
“You consulted somebody?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“County extension. Cooperative agronomist. Two growers west of Hays.”
The Old Farmer folded his arms.