Avery worried about soil disturbance.
She moved them earlier than planned.
Earl watched her reposition fencing.
“Thought the whole point was to let them tear things up.”
“The point is controlled disturbance.”
“That sounds like something professors say after they make a mess.”
Avery pushed a fence post into the ground.
“The soil is too wet.”
“You changing the plan?”
“Yes.”
Earl smiled.
“Good.”
Avery looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I like when young people discover plans are fictional.”
She threw a glove at him.
He ducked.
By the second week, people stopped driving out just to watch.
That helped.
The jokes continued in town.
A photograph appeared on a local Facebook page.
Avery standing in mud surrounded by hens.
Caption:
CEDAR HOLLOW GOES FREE-RANGE CRAZY.
Comments followed.
Someone asked whether she was opening “Chicken Disneyland.”
Someone else wrote:
THOMAS WOULD ROLL OVER IN HIS GRAVE.
Avery read that one twice.
Then closed the app.
She did not reopen it for eleven days.
The birds did not care.
That became one of the things she liked most about them.
They did not know her age.
Her debt.
Her father.
The bank.
Frank Wheeler.
They responded to feed, water, weather, predators, light, and whatever happened to be beneath their feet.
If Avery managed badly, they showed it.
If she managed well, they showed that too.
No flattery.
No pity.
By day eighteen, the first useful pattern appeared.
Paddock A had been rotated twice.
Avery counted fallen apples across ten marked sample quadrats.
Before birds, she recorded an average of 18.6 intact or partially intact windfalls per quadrat.
After two rotations, 4.1.
The birds had not eaten every apple.
They shredded many.
Others disappeared into the soil surface or became unrecognizable.
More important were the insects.
Avery used corrugated cardboard bands and soil emergence traps in selected rows.
Too soon for final conclusions.
But larvae counts beneath heavily cleaned trees were lower.
She called Dr. Luis Ramirez, the Iowa State entomologist she had bothered for weeks.
“I have numbers.”
“You always have numbers.”
“These are different.”
“That is what everyone says before sending me a spreadsheet.”
She sent it.
He called back twenty minutes later.
“This is interesting.”
Avery sat straighter.
“Interesting good?”
“Interesting interesting.”
“I hate academics.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have untreated control rows?”
“Eight.”
“Comparable variety?”
“Mostly.”
“Tree age?”
“Logged.”
“Soil moisture?”
“Logged.”
“Bird density?”
“Logged.”
“Rotation timing?”
“Logged.”
There was a pause.
“Avery.”
“Yeah?”
“You may actually be collecting something useful.”
She smiled for the rest of the afternoon.
Then one of the water lines froze overnight and she spent three hours carrying buckets.
Useful data did not reduce work.
At the end of October, egg production stabilized around 320 to 360 eggs per day.
Avery had not planned to build an egg business immediately.
The birds forced the question.
You could not own five hundred laying hens and treat eggs as a side effect.
She called every restaurant within thirty miles.
Most already had suppliers.
Some required certifications and volumes she could not provide.
Then she called Bell & Pine Bakery in Cedar Falls.
The owner, Maria Jensen, listened.
“How many dozen?”
“Twenty-five a day right now.”
“Right now?”
“Could be more as they settle.”
“Feed?”
“Commercial ration supplemented with orchard access.”
Maria paused.
“Orchard?”