Clear barn.
Prune trees.
Find income.
The last item remained underlined.
She still had savings from her marketing job.
Enough for perhaps eight or nine months if she lived carefully.
Not enough to drift indefinitely.
She considered freelance marketing.
Remote work.
Renting part of the acreage.
Selling the property.
Then Grant Ashby knocked on her door.
Grant was fifty-two.
Broad shouldered.
Gray at the temples.
He had worked for Halverson Orchards for twenty-seven years.
Everybody in the area knew him.
He arrived wearing work pants and a jacket with the Halverson logo stitched above the pocket.
“You Emily Carter?”
“Yes.”
“Ruth’s granddaughter?”
“Yes.”
He removed his cap.
“Sorry about your grandmother.”
“Thank you.”
Grant looked toward the field behind the house.
“Heard you might be looking for ways to get some use out of the back acreage.”
“Depends on the use.”
He smiled.
“Good answer.”
Three miles away, Halverson Orchards operated on a scale Emily had never understood as a child.
Hundreds of acres.
Storage buildings.
Packing lines.
Forklifts.
Cold rooms.
Trucks leaving daily during harvest.
Fruit moved into supermarket contracts, juice production, institutional buyers, cider operations, and distributors.
But commercial fruit had standards.
Size.
Firmness.
Sugar content.
Color.
Bruising.
Shape.
Pest damage.
An apple could be edible and commercially useless at the same time.
Halverson produced thousands of pounds of rejects.
Windfalls.
Bruised fruit.
Hail-damaged apples.
Soft lots.
Overripe fruit.
Loads that failed sorting.
Some went into juice.
Some animal feed.
Some compost.
Some still required hauling to a commercial composting operation two counties away.
That cost money.
Diesel.
Drivers.
Tipping fees.
Time.
Grant explained.
“We have a reject stream that keeps growing when we’re heavy.”
“How much?”
“Depends on week.”
“How much?”
“Couple truckloads.”
Emily imagined pickup trucks.
Grant must have seen it.
“Flatbeds.”
“Oh.”
“You interested?”
“In what?”
“Taking some.”
“What would I pay?”
Grant stared.
“Pay?”
“For the apples.”
He laughed.
“We pay to get rid of them.”
Emily’s attention sharpened.
“You would bring them here?”
“If we agree on access and location.”
“For free?”
“Emily, I’m asking permission to dump rejected fruit on your property.”
“Yes.”
Grant stopped.
“That fast?”
“Yes.”
“You know what several tons of overripe apples smells like?”
“No.”
“Wasps?”
“I assume bad.”
“Raccoons.”
“Already have those.”
“Bears occasionally.”
“That part is less appealing.”
Grant laughed.
“What do you want them for?”
Emily looked toward Ruth’s old cider barn.
“I have an idea.”
“What idea?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Grant stared at her.
Emily added:
“I know what I want to test.”