Soil tests.
Tree mortality.
Crop yields.
Failures.
She emphasized failures.
People preferred success stories.
Failure taught more.
One young man pointed toward the oldest bur oaks.
“How much timber value?”
Emily looked at him.
“I have no idea.”
He seemed shocked.
“You never calculated?”
“Not seriously.”
“But they're valuable.”
“Probably.”
“So isn't that part of the return?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe for whoever owns this after me.”
He frowned.
“You don't plan to harvest?”
“Some trees eventually.”
She looked upward.
“But if you think the purpose is lumber, you missed the field.”
She led them toward the slope.
Rain had fallen the previous evening.
Ground remained damp beneath the rows.
She pushed a soil probe down.
Then handed it to the student.
“That's the return.”
He looked confused.
Emily smiled.
“You'll understand after a drought.”
Ray Mercer grew older.
At seventy-two, he finally stopped farming full-time.
His son took over.
Ray still drove around checking everything.
One fall afternoon, he stopped at Emily’s farm.
She was repairing a gate.
Exactly as she had been years earlier.
Ray climbed out slowly.
His knees had become unreliable.
“You’re still fixing that thing?”
“Different hinge.”
“Same gate.”
“Maybe.”
He walked toward the tree row.
Some trunks were thick now.
Shade connected overhead in places.
Leaves covered the ground.
Ray looked down.
Dark soil.
“You know what annoys me?”
Emily smiled.
“Long list.”
“I don't remember exactly when I stopped thinking you were crazy.”
“Probably when your soil started leaving.”
“No.”
“When?”
Ray leaned on the fence.
“The storm.”
Emily stopped working.
He looked toward his property.
“I watched water come off my place brown.”
Then hers.
“And yours wasn't.”
He shook his head.
“Couldn't argue with that.”
“You tried.”
“Of course.”
Emily laughed.
Ray became serious.
“Your grandfather would've liked this.”
She looked up at the branches.
“I think so.”
“You know he talked about trees once.”
Emily turned.
“What?”
Ray nodded.
“Years ago.”
“When?”
“Before you were born, maybe.”
Her heart tightened.
“What did he say?”
Ray thought.
“Something about putting permanent roots across that slope.”
Emily stared.
“He told you?”
“Everybody.”
“What?”
“We laughed.”
Ray smiled sadly.
“Apparently tradition.”
Emily looked toward the house.
For years, she assumed Henry kept the idea mostly to himself.
Ray continued.
“He couldn't afford it.”
“I know.”
“Your father thought annual crops were the only practical option.”
“He wasn't wrong.”
“No.”
Ray nodded.
“Timing matters.”
He looked at Emily.
“You got his idea at the moment everybody thought you were too young to have one.”
Emily smiled.
“That's almost poetic.”
“Don't tell anyone.”
He left before sunset.
Emily went inside.