Calvin smiled.
“You’re bad at negotiating.”
“You’re worse at generosity.”
“Seven days.”
She accepted.
Her twelve goats arrived on a humid Monday morning.
Hazel first.
Then Juniper.
Molly.
Bean.
Sadie.
Pepper.
Two yearling wethers named Amos and Eli.
And four younger does Mara had bought cheaply from a dairy farmer reducing his herd.
The neighbors noticed immediately.
So did motorists.
For the first week, pickup trucks slowed along the county road to watch.
Mara began at the lower west boundary where access was safest.
Portable electric netting enclosed less than an acre.
Water in.
Goats released.
Within minutes, they disappeared.
That frightened her the first time.
Twelve goats entered a solid wall of kudzu and seemed to vanish from earth.
Then leaves began moving.
Branches shook.
Hazel’s head appeared six feet away.
Mara laughed.
By evening, the change was visible.
Not cleared.
Nothing close.
But thinned.
The top leaves had disappeared.
Vines were opened.
Light penetrated lower.
On day two, goats ate again.
Day three, Mara shifted the fence.
Repeated browsing mattered more than one pass.
Kudzu was a storage machine.
Roots underground could hold enough energy to regenerate repeatedly.
Goats would not eradicate it in a week.
Mara knew that.
Her plan required seasons, not days.
That was one reason people thought she was foolish.
“There are chemicals for that,” a neighbor named Harold Kemp told her.
“I know.”
“Faster.”
“Sometimes.”
“Cheaper too.”
“Maybe.”
Harold looked toward the goats.
“You think twelve animals will eat fifty acres?”
“No.”
“What do you think?”
“I think twelve animals will show me fifty acres.”
He frowned.
Mara smiled.
“Different job.”
The first weeks were harder than she admitted.
Portable fence sounded simple until it had to be carried across a forty-percent slope.
Water was worse.
One gallon weighed more than eight pounds.
The goats could drink dozens of gallons in heat.
Mara hauled tanks as far as the truck could travel, then carried hoses and smaller containers where it could not.
She fell twice.
Once into mud.
Once into blackberry.
The blackberry was worse.
Electric fencing shorted against wet vegetation.
Goats escaped.
Amos discovered how to lift the bottom edge with his horns.
Mara spent an afternoon chasing him through a cleared strip while a passing delivery driver honked.
Rain turned the access lane to soup.
Heat turned it to concrete.
A storm dropped a dead limb across her fence.
Another night coyotes called from the ridge, and Mara barely slept in her truck because she was convinced they would test the enclosure.
Nothing romantic happened.
Nobody drove up and announced she was a visionary.
Most days she smelled like goat, sweat and plant sap.
By the seventh day, Calvin Moss returned for his trailer.
Mara was exhausted.
She had cleared perhaps two acres enough to see the ground.
That was far less than she imagined when she started.
Calvin climbed from his truck.
“Ready?”
Mara looked at the trailer.
Then at the goats.
“Not really.”
“A deal’s a deal.”
“I know.”
Calvin walked uphill.
He had seen the parcel before.
Everybody local had.
He stopped near the first cleared section.
An old stone wall had emerged from beneath the vegetation.
Not tall.
Three feet in places.