Nobody ever did.
The county extension office sent one person the next morning.
By afternoon, three more were coming.
The first agent was a middle-aged white American man who arrived expecting perhaps a dozen neglected homestead apple trees.
He stopped halfway down the slope.
“What am I looking at?”
The girl pointed.
“Row one.”
He looked toward the vines.
“Where?”
She showed him.
The agent walked the spacing.
Counted steps.
Examined graft unions.
Then pulled out his phone.
The girl frowned.
“Who are you calling?”
“A horticulture specialist.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't know enough.”
The older farmer, standing nearby, whispered:
“Good answer.”
The girl elbowed him.
The specialist arrived two hours later from the state university.
A woman in her fifties stepped from a dusty SUV carrying pruning tools, flagging tape, sample bags, and none of the excitement the local newspaper reporter would later bring.
She looked at the nineteen-year-old.
“You own this?”
“Yes.”
“For three dollars?”
The girl closed her eyes.
The specialist smiled.
“Sorry.”
“No, you're not.”
“No.”
She entered the orchard.
For the next hour, she barely spoke.
She examined buds.
Bark.
Graft unions.
Old pruning scars.
Root collars.
She cut tiny samples from questionable twigs.
At the ninth tree, she said:
“Alive.”
At the twelfth:
“Dead.”
At the seventeenth:
“Alive but stressed.”
At the nineteenth:
“Probably salvageable.”
The girl followed with a notebook.
The older farmer followed because no one could stop him.
Her father followed quietly.
At the twenty-fourth tree, the specialist noticed the metal tag.
“Where did you find this?”
“Exactly there.”
“You didn't move it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She photographed it.
Then another tag.
Then another.
The extension agent asked:
“Any idea what they are?”
The specialist shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“What do you think?”
“I think somebody maintained this place professionally.”
The girl’s pulse lifted.
The specialist immediately pointed her pruning shears at her.
“That does not mean valuable.”
The young woman sighed.
“Why does everyone keep telling me what it doesn't mean?”
“Because you are nineteen.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“At nineteen, excitement outruns invoices.”
The older farmer laughed.
The girl looked at him.
“You bought a bull without fertility testing.”
His face dropped.
Her father started laughing.
The specialist looked between them.
“I'm going to like this place.”
By late afternoon, they had mapped seventy-one old trunks.
Forty-two living.
Eleven uncertain.
Eighteen dead.
And they had cleared less than two acres.
That number silenced everyone.
The specialist stood at the top of the slope, staring into the remaining kudzu.
“If spacing continues…”
The girl waited.
The specialist did not finish.
“How many?”
The young woman asked.
“I don't know.”
“Estimate.”
“I don't like estimating.”