She recorded the growth but did not trust it as evidence of anything more than early development. Fast-growing birds could also be expensive birds, and a hen that ate too much for every egg she produced was an ornament rather than a business. She began measuring feed against weight instead of considering size alone, and she discovered that the pullets were more efficient than their appearance suggested. Even so, she knew that they would not earn their keep until the eggs arrived, and there was no way to hurry a living body into maturity because the bank account demanded it.
In May a dust storm crossed the county so thickly that the afternoon disappeared into a brown half-light. Vera saw it coming from the west as a line that seemed to rise from the ground, and she ran to close the barn doors before the first hard gust struck. The air filled with grit, the kitchen windows rattled, and dry soil pushed through every seam in the house. She spent the worst hours in the barn with a scarf over her nose, trying to keep the birds' water clean and their enclosure protected as dust settled on the floor like fine flour.
She had survived other storms, but this one felt personal because she had finally begun to imagine a future worth protecting beyond the next planting. At one point a loose board tore free of the outer wall and struck the ground close enough to make every bird jump. Vera braced the opening with an old table and waited until the wind began to ease. When she emerged after dusk, the fields lay under a new layer of drifting soil and a section of the fence had vanished beneath a low dune. The birds were unharmed, but a day's work had become several days of repairs.
Daniel arrived the following morning with a shovel over his shoulder. He stood at the north fence, took in the damage, and asked whether the barn roof had held. Vera told him it had, though she was less certain about the southwest corner, where the boards had lifted during the storm. He offered to help reset them, and she told him she could manage. He nodded, walked back to his own property, and returned an hour later with a basket of biscuits left by his sister, saying he was only passing through to check whether she had eaten.
Vera might have been irritated if she had not been so hungry. They sat on overturned buckets outside the barn and ate while the morning sun revealed the full extent of the dust on the yard. Daniel did not mention the chicks until she did, and when she described spending half the night guarding the brooder, he looked at her with something gentler than worry. "Your father would have done the same thing," he said. Vera swallowed a mouthful of biscuit and looked away, because the sentence had landed exactly where she was least protected.