Expenses.
At six weeks, optimism wore thin.
The novelty disappeared.
The goats still needed water.
Fences still needed moving.
The acreage ahead still looked endless.
One evening, Mara sat in the driver’s seat of her truck after sunset.
Hands blistered.
Back aching.
Bank account lower than she wanted.
The entire north hillside remained green.
She thought about the two previous owners.
Maybe they had not lacked imagination.
Maybe they had simply calculated sooner.
Fifty acres.
Twelve goats.
One woman.
At that rate, the land could take years.
Mara rested her forehead against the steering wheel.
The next morning she almost did not come.
Then she remembered the county agreement required active vegetation control.
Stopping would not erase the problem.
It would only hand the problem back.
So she drove out.
Released the goats.
And that was the first morning Hazel stopped at the northern wall.
Three days later, Mara stood inside the opening she had cut and realized she was looking at rows of apple trees.
The discovery changed her fatigue instantly.
Not because she knew the orchard had value.
She didn’t.
Most old apple trees were not commercially important.
Many were seedlings.
Common varieties.
Poorly maintained remnants.
Some produced terrible fruit.
An orchard could be historically interesting and economically worthless.
Mara understood that.
But she also understood something else.
Someone had invested enormous labor here.
The regular spacing ran beyond what she could see.
Some trees were massive.
At least several decades old.
Perhaps much older.
She walked carefully.
The goats stayed behind the opening.
Now she saw why they had stopped.
The orchard boundary contained an old woven-wire fence nearly invisible beneath the vines.
Much of it had collapsed, but one section remained tensioned at chest height for a goat, wrapped in thorny blackberry and woody kudzu.
Hazel had likely encountered the wire beneath the foliage and decided pushing through was not worth it.
The others followed her.
Not mystical.
Not prophecy.
Experience.
A physical barrier hidden exactly where the orchard began.
Mara almost laughed.
Twelve goats had noticed the old fence before she had.
She cut a safe opening through the tangled wire.
Only then did Hazel enter.
The goats immediately began stripping kudzu around the nearest trunks.
“Of course,” Mara said.
Now that she had done the dangerous part, they were perfectly willing to help.
She prevented them from browsing the apple bark.
Then called her father.
Dean arrived forty minutes later.
Mara met him downhill.
“You need to see something.”
“What broke?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s suspicious.”
She led him through the opening.
Dean stopped.
“What in the world?”
“Apple trees.”
“I can see that.”
He walked between the rows.
Touched one trunk.
Looked upward.
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon counting visible trees.
Eighty-three.
That was only in the first accessible section.
Many were dead.
Several had broken trunks.
Others were so covered in vine that condition could not yet be determined.
But dozens were alive.
Fruit appeared on perhaps twenty.
Different fruit.
That mattered.
One tree held small yellow apples.
Another dark red fruit.
Another green apples with rough brown russeting.
One bore flattened, strangely shaped fruit with pink-red streaks near the stem.
“This isn’t one variety,” Dean said.
“No.”
“Commercial orchard?”
“Maybe old home orchard.”