Another year.
Another ledger.
Then eighty thousand dollars.
Cash.
By the early 2000s, Della spent more mornings with coffee than tools.
Carol ran most operations.
The horse program became slightly smaller.
More selective.
Twenty-four horses had been manageable at Della's peak.
Carol preferred eighteen to twenty.
The waiting list remained.
The feed network changed as canneries consolidated, but the principle survived.
Rejected root vegetables still arrived.
Now sometimes in bulk bins instead of burlap bags.
A small powered washer eventually handled most of the work.
Carol bought it only after the ledger justified it.
The old hand-cranked washer stayed in the shop.
Retired.
Not discarded.
One winter afternoon, Carol's daughter, Emily, came into the shop.
She was ten.
She pointed at the rusted machine.
"What is that?"
Della smiled.
"Your inheritance."
Emily looked horrified.
Carol laughed from the doorway.
Della walked over.
She showed Emily the weld.
The brush drum.
The chute.
"This bought part of the farm."
Emily stared.
"This?"
"Not by itself."
"How?"
Della pulled out the old ledger.
The 1971 book.
Pages yellowed.
She found the entry.
HOLMGREN AUCTION LOT: $60.
Below it:
BRUSH STOCK: $11.
WELDING ROD/HARDWARE.
BAGS.
STORAGE.
FUEL.
Then sales.
Frances Oberlin.
Other buyers.
Emily looked between the numbers and the machine.
"So you bought carrots?"
"Yes."
"And sold them?"
"Yes."
"That's it?"
Della laughed.
"Pretty much."
Carol said:
"Do not let her make thirty years sound that simple."
Della shrugged.
"The arithmetic was simple."
"The work wasn't."
That was closer.
On another page was the Kettner purchase.
April 1985.
200 acres.
$80,000.
Emily's eyes widened.
"You had eighty thousand dollars?"
Della said:
"Not after I wrote the check."
Carol laughed.
Emily stared at the two entries.
Sixty.
Eighty thousand.
Children naturally searched for a direct line.
"Did the carrots turn into the land?"
Della thought.
"In a way."
"How?"
"Imagine you save a dollar."
Emily nodded.