Della had inherited them along with responsibility.
For several years, continuing cattle felt almost like keeping the men themselves present.
But the ledger did not care about sentiment.
Horse return per acre was higher.
Horse feed could use Della's sourcing network.
Training produced value without requiring more ground at the same rate cattle did.
The cattle tied up pasture and labor.
Della spent a winter studying the numbers.
Then sold the herd in stages.
No dramatic final day.
No speech.
Just fewer cattle each year until there were none.
She wrote the final sale in the ledger.
Closed the cattle account.
Sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
Then turned the page.
By the end of 1979, Della's savings account held roughly forty-one thousand dollars.
No mortgage.
No machinery loan.
The six acres paid for.
The horse operation profitable.
Feed costs unusually low.
Equipment old but maintained.
A neighbor once told her:
"You could expand faster if you'd borrow."
Della asked:
"Why do I need faster?"
He had no answer that interested her.
Then the 1980s arrived.
Agriculture changed brutally.
Interest rates rose.
Operating loans that had once seemed manageable became dangerous.
Land values that had climbed through the 1970s began dropping.
Farmers who borrowed heavily against increasing land values discovered that the land beneath the debt was now worth less.
Commodity prices weakened.
Cash flow tightened.
Banks became nervous.
Then aggressive.
Within twelve miles of the Mayes place, eleven farms experienced serious financial distress between 1981 and 1985.
Four lost land.
Two liquidated major equipment.
One family left agriculture entirely.
Della attended auctions she did not want to attend.
People sold tractors they had expected to die owning.
Families stood beside machinery while strangers inspected it.
The atmosphere was nothing like the Holmgren sale.
That had been voluntary.
These were not.
Della hated when outsiders later reduced the farm crisis to irresponsible farmers.
Some farmers had made poor decisions.
Of course.
Every industry had poor decisions.
But many good farmers had expanded under conditions that appeared rational.
Land was rising.
Credit available.
Interest manageable.
Then the economics shifted faster than the operations could adjust.
Dale Kettner was one of them.
Dale farmed about six hundred acres three miles east.
He had laughed at the carrot auction in 1971.
Della remembered.
She did not resent him for it.
Dale had expanded aggressively in the late 1970s.
Good land.
Modern equipment.
Borrowed money.
When corn was above three dollars and interest manageable, the numbers worked.
Then they didn't.
By 1983, debt payments consumed the margin.
Dale sold machinery.
Refinanced.
Cut costs.
Worked longer.
None of it changed the arithmetic enough.
The bank took two hundred acres from his east ridge holding.
Della watched from the road one afternoon.
Good ground.
Flat enough for machinery.
Natural drainage.
Deep soil.
She knew exactly what it was worth to her.
She did not know what the auction would demand.
Her own operation remained stable.