But the rain didn't stop when it should have.
One storm followed another.
Low areas filled with standing water.
The creek near the northern boundary rose above its usual banks.
And a narrow section of the eastern field began collecting water that had nowhere to go.
The farmer believed an old underground drainage channel had collapsed.
He remembered his grandfather mentioning a buried outlet near the northern edge of the property, but the original plans had been lost decades earlier.
He tried locating it with ordinary farm equipment.
Nothing worked.
The ground remained wet.
Several rows of corn began yellowing.
And each passing storm threatened to damage more of the crop.
The family owned eighty-six acres outside the fictional farming community of Alder Bend, Pennsylvania, less than a mile from the southern shore of Lake Erie.
The land had been in their family for generations.
It wasn't enormous by modern agricultural standards.
There were larger farms nearby.
Operations with hundreds of acres, expensive machinery, and equipment that could harvest a field in a fraction of the time.
But the old farm mattered.
Its white farmhouse stood near a line of maple trees beside a weathered red barn. A narrow gravel driveway connected the house to the county road, and beyond the barn stretched long rows of corn that rolled gently toward a wooded ridge.
In the distance, the land dropped toward Lake Erie.
The northern boundary followed an old drainage depression that appeared on modern maps as little more than an intermittent creek.
Beyond it rose a series of steep shale-and-sandstone bluffs.
The boy had spent his entire life exploring the safe trails around those hills.
He knew where deer crossed the fields.
Where water collected after storms.
Where wild blackberries grew.
And which parts of the old creek bank were too unstable to approach.
His father had taught him those things.
His grandfather had taught him others.
Stories.
Legends.
Fragments of local history that seemed impossible until someone looked carefully enough.
The boy had always loved those stories.
His father had once loved them too.
But years of financial pressure had left little room for imagination.
At forty-six, the farmer looked older than his age.
His hair was streaked with gray.
His hands were rough.
And the deep lines around his eyes reflected too many seasons spent worrying about bills.
He'd inherited the land after his father died.