The goats were the reason she was there. For the previous four years, Nora had grazed them on ten acres of rented pasture belonging to a widower who had moved to live with his son. It was ordinary ground, not generous but manageable, with a small spring in wet weather and fencing Nora had repaired piece by piece. Then the family decided to sell. The buyer wanted the land vacant before the end of summer and had no interest in renewing the grazing arrangement.
Nora owned the animals, their trailer, a collection of electric netting, and the kind of practical equipment that accumulated in a life spent making do. She did not own a pasture. The next affordable lease was farther away than she could manage while keeping her part-time job at a feed warehouse, and the closer properties cost more than the goats earned. Selling the herd would have paid a few immediate bills, but it would also have erased years of breeding, training, and work. She had raised most of them from kids, and every animal had a temperament she knew before it left the trailer.
Her daughter Tess thought about the problem differently. At twenty-two, Tess had inherited Nora's stubbornness but preferred numbers to instincts. She worked mornings in the bookkeeping office of a farm supply cooperative and spent evenings helping with the goats. When Nora first showed her the county listing, Tess turned the page over to see whether she had missed another digit in the asking price.
"One dollar for thirty-eight acres," Tess said. "Which means somebody is charging us in a way they haven't put on the front page."
"They put it on the second page," Nora said. "There's a fire lane to open."
"How long?"
"From the road to the culvert."
"How far is that?"
Nora unfolded the county map. The route ran diagonally through the worst portion of the vegetation before bending toward the low ground. Tess measured it with a ruler, checked the scale, and went quiet.
"Mom, they aren't giving you land. They're giving you a deadline."
"They're giving us somewhere the goats can eat."
"If we can get them inside it."
Both things were true. That was why Nora went to see the property three times before signing, once in sunlight, once after rain, and once with Wade Doolin, a pecan grower who owned an established orchard two roads over. Wade had known Nora since Tess was in elementary school. He wore an old straw hat through most of the year and spoke slowly enough that people sometimes mistook thoughtfulness for uncertainty.
He approached the gate carrying a walking stick and studied the vegetation for a long time. Then he pushed one blackberry cane aside, exposing another behind it, and let the first swing back into place. There were wild grapes high in the canopy, a thicket of young privet beneath, and enough old rose canes to make the interior look woven rather than grown.
"They'll eat the edges," he said. "Blackberry leaves, greenbrier tips, young privet. They'll do well on what they can reach."