“Frank?”
“Especially Frank.”
She looked up.
“Really?”
“They were worse when they were younger.”
“That’s hard to imagine.”
“They once bet five hundred dollars on who could back a hay wagon through the co-op loading bay fastest.”
“Who won?”
“Nobody.”
“They both hit things.”
Avery smiled.
Then it faded.
“I miss him.”
Earl looked toward his hands.
“Me too.”
Silence.
Then he pointed at her notebook.
“But he didn’t know chickens.”
Avery laughed.
“No.”
“So maybe this one gets to be yours.”
November dried out.
The orchard floor firmed.
The chickens became easier to rotate.
Avery moved them deeper into blocks where harvest had finished.
She began noticing bare soil patches where leaf litter had been thick.
That worried her.
She reduced residence time.
Added temporary straw around vulnerable root areas.
Dr. Ramirez visited in person the week before Thanksgiving.
He arrived in a university SUV with a graduate student named Priya Shah and enough sampling equipment to make Earl suspicious.
“You people always bring this much stuff to count bugs?”
Priya answered:
“Yes.”
Earl nodded.
“Respect.”
They spent six hours in the orchard.
Soil cores.
Litter samples.
Larval counts.
Vegetation assessment.
Bird distribution.
Avery followed with her notebook.
Dr. Ramirez finally said:
“You can stop writing every word I say.”
“I’ll decide.”
He smiled.
At sunset they sat on overturned crates inside the packing shed.
Priya entered numbers into a tablet.
Ramirez looked at Avery.
“Your bird-treated rows show substantially less intact windfall fruit.”
“I know.”
“Surface larvae in our sampling are lower too.”
“How much?”
“Do not quote me.”
“How much?”
“Preliminary.”
“Luis.”
He sighed.
“Forty to fifty percent in some blocks.”
Avery stared.
“That’s huge.”
“In some blocks.”
“Not across the orchard.”
“Not enough replication.”
“Not enough time.”
“Do not turn this into a headline.”
Avery smiled.
“I won’t.”
Earl said:
“I will.”
Ramirez pointed at him.
“Especially you.”
They laughed.
Then Priya looked up.
“What about mowing?”
Avery handed her records.
Priya scrolled.
“You eliminated eleven tractor-hours already?”
“Compared to last fall cleanup.”
“Fuel?”
“Forty-seven gallons.”
“And labor?”
“Depends how you value mine.”
“Value it.”
Avery hated that.
Her spreadsheets often treated her own time as free because cash did.
Researchers did not allow that fiction.
They added a labor rate.
The numbers worsened slightly.
Still positive.
Priya looked impressed.
“What about eggs?”
Avery showed her.
The calculation changed again.
Now more positive.
Ramirez leaned back.
“You’re not saving the orchard with chickens.”
Avery’s smile disappeared.
Then he continued:
“You may be building a second enterprise that pays for an orchard-management tool.”
She stared.
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
“Better?”
“More credible.”