Judy allowed herself the luxury of sleeping late the next day, but Ken was still lost to the world. Eventually, she got up, took a bath, and hunted through the drawers for her sexiest lingerie. Putting on a robe, she went to the living room and turned on the television. It was Saturday morning, and there was nothing but cartoons. She found herself getting interested in the adventures of the Smurfs; she had enjoyed them when she was younger.

Eventually she heard the toilet flush. She turned off the television and went toward the bedroom. As she got there, she heard the shower running, so she went to change the bed linen; Ken had been filthy after two days on the Oliver.

Ken came out of the bathroom, to find his wife lying on the bed, wearing some lace that covered nearly nothing, and a "come hither" look. There was a blue ribbon with a bow tied around her waist. "Happy Anniversary, darling," she said.

"Why the bow?" he said, smiling at the scene.

"I didn’t have time to get you a present, so I’ll have to be it," she said. "We’ve got the day off. Your mother even said she’d do the chores." Ken could see her firm breasts straining against the transparent black fabric, and suddenly more sleep didn’t seem as important.

They were still only partly dressed some time later, when they invaded the kitchen for lunch. The blue ribbon with its now-matted bow was still around Judy’s waist, but Ken could see it through her open robe. He glanced out the kitchen window, then took a longer look. It was still raining. "All right, get it out of your system," he said to the sky. "Rain all week. See if I care."

"It sure was nice of Roger and the others to help," Judy commented.

"Yeah," Ken said, setting down an armload of lunch meat, potato chips and bread. "We couldn’t have done it without them. That’s what scares me."

"How’s that?" Judy asked, grabbing a package of lunch meat.

Ken sat down. "Next spring, we get to start all over again," he said, opening the bread. "And, we can’t depend on the neighbors helping us out every year."

Judy nodded. "It wouldn’t be right," she agreed.

"I’ll tell you what, Crip," Ken went on. "I spent an awful lot of time out there thinking while I was driving the Oliver this fall. If we have to struggle like this every year, sooner or later a bad year will wipe us out. Even if we can pull through a bad year, it’ll set us back with the bank. The way we’re going, I don’t know if we’ll ever pull even."

"So what can we do about it?" she asked before biting into a sandwich.

"I don’t know," Ken said. "I’ve got a gut feeling that something isn’t right about the whole operation."

Judy swallowed and asked, "What do you think it is?"

"I don’t know." Ken admitted. "But I’ve got all winter. Maybe I can figure it out."

"Do you think your Dad or Tom knew that?"

"Maybe," Ken said, "maybe not. They might have been too close to the forest to see the trees. One thing’s for sure: I don’t want to go through another fall like this one."

Judy set her sandwich down and looked at her husband. "Promise me one thing," she said.

"What’s that?"

She smiled, peeled back her robe and said. "Think about it tomorrow. We’ve got other things to think about today."

It was still raining Monday, and Ken stayed inside. About 9:30, Judy’s father called from his job at the feed mill. "They just cut the checks on the November grain deliveries," he said. "If you want to save yourself some interest, come on down and pick it up."

"Thanks, Norm, I’ll be right down," Ken said, knowing that if they mailed the check, it would take a day or two to get to him.

Down at the mill, Norman asked, "You want to talk about contracts for next year yet?"

Ken mentally flipped a nickel and then said, "I don’t know that I want to raise all that much corn next year. Look, talk to me like a relative, not like a grain buyer. What do you suggest?"

Norman lowered his voice; it wasn’t something he wanted breezed around. "Hold off, I think," he said. "I think November and December deliveries are going to go up next month."

That had been Ken’s gut feeling, but Norman had the data to back him up. "Well, let me see how much corn I’m going to run," he answered.

Back in the pickup, Ken started for Geneva. On the outskirts of town, he stopped at the library and picked up an armload of books. They were mostly US Department of Agriculture "Yearbooks," and Extension Office publications, as well as a lot of recent farm magazines. But, in searching through the stacks he found an old book he’d heard about at college, but never read: Malabar Farm, by Louis Bromfield.

Done at the library, he drove downtown to the Farmer’s and Merchant’s State Bank. Henry S. Daly had been the Sorensens’ banker for years. Ken had met him several times, but had never had to talk business with him. He thought to touch base, just to get the ball rolling for next year.

"Sorry to hear about your father," Daly said. "I’ve done business with him for years. Did you get your corn in all right, with all this rain?"

"It was a struggle at times," Ken understated.

"I heard about you leasing out your new combine," the banker went on. "Then, when I heard you were out picking corn with that old Oliver, I could hardly believe it."

"It was a lot of work, but it saved a lot of money," Ken said. "We’ve already got part of the production loan paid off from last summer. I’ve got a check here that will pretty well take care of the rest of it. I’ve got January sales contracted that will pay for the rest of it, and the rest of the annual payments."

"Are you going to have anything left over?"

"Some," Ken admitted. "Not a lot. I’m going to hold off a while and see if the corn market goes up any before I sell what’s left. I’m sure we’ll have you paid everything as agreed." He took pride in the statement; three months before, the cause had looked hopeless.

"Well, that’s good to know," the banker grunted. "Look, I think you ought to know now. I’m not sure we’ll be able to front you production money next year."

Ken stiffened. "What?"

The banker’s voice softened. "Look, I know you’ve done an admirable job this year, but you’ve got problems. First, money is a lot tighter. The bank board is getting a lot stiffer with marginal loans, and considering your indebtedness and lack of experience, you’re a marginal loan."

Helplessness arose in Ken. "We’ve taken a big bite out of our indebtedness," he argued.

Daly nodded. "Yeah, but to do that, you’ve taken a big bite out of your production capacity. You don’t expect that Oliver to hold together forever, do you? Besides, the bank is going to be reluctant to approve anything with your father’s will not probated yet, and you’re going to have problems there."

"The last I heard, our lawyer, Ray Needham, didn’t think there were going to be any problems."

Daly shrugged. "I keep my ear to the ground in a lot of places. Have to, in this job. I shouldn’t tell you how I know, but believe me, you’re going to have trouble getting your father’s will probated."

Ken was even angrier. "What are we supposed to do, just give you the farm?" he said in a loud voice.

"Calm down," the banker said. "I didn’t say things were hopeless. Look, if you can come in here in a month or so with a good, tight plan for next year, for a smaller production loan, and contracts for enough of your crop to meet interest payments and take something off the principal – well, we’ll see."

Ken found Judy with his mother at her house. He sat down at the kitchen table and repeated the distressing news from the bank.

"I didn’t expect that to be a problem," Lydia said.

Ken was still upset. "All I can say is, I want to go in there with a plan that’s so tight that we don’t have to go back there again for production money," he said. "We’re going to cut every corner we can to keep the costs down this year, too."

"When you go back, I think I’d better go with you," Lydia said.

"He said something about problems with Dad’s will being probated," Ken said. "Have you heard anything?"

Ken’s mother nodded. "I heard Friday, but I was so busy I didn’t pay a lot of attention. Mr. Needham doesn’t think it will come to anything, but Carolyn’s contesting the will."

Grimly, the three drove back into Geneva, to Needham’s office. The lawyer was in court, and they had to wait seemingly forever before he showed up. "She wants a quarter share, same as you," the lawyer told Ken. "Failing that, she wants half your share."

"Can she get it?" Ken asked.

"It’s possible," the lawyer said. "The claim she has is kind of dumb, but she has a good lawyer, and the judge we’ve got on this case is kind of dumb, too. On the other hand, you stand a good chance of beating it."

"How long is this going to take?" Lydia asked.

Needham shook his head. "If we can get this through by this time next year, we’ll be doing well."

Ken winced. One of the ideas he’d been thinking about since the bad news from the bank was selling out now, before the time came to get the next crop in. It wouldn’t leave a lot of money left over for Lydia, but it was an idea. Even so, with the will still up in the air, they couldn’t sell if they wanted to. "Is there any way to speed things up?" he asked.

"If you want to settle with Carolyn for half your share," the lawyer said, "She’d probably take it. We could have things settled by spring."

"No way," Lydia said. "She didn’t contribute anything to the farm, and now she wants a big bite out of it. If she wants a quarter of the farm, she also has to pay a quarter of the bills."

"What do you think, Ken?" the lawyer asked. "It’d be your hide it comes out of."

"Fight it, I guess," Ken said.

"Look, let me give you some advice. As your estate is set up now, Mrs. Sorensen, even if Carolyn loses, she’s still going to have a good case set up when you die," Needham went on. "Your husband just wrote up that will and had it notarized, without coming to me. If I’d had something to do with it, we could have set up some way to do what he wanted without these kinds of problems, and could have avoided most of the tax bill, too. You still can, for the majority of the farm."

I can’t believe she would have that kind of gall," Lydia told the younger Sorensens back at home in her kitchen. "She told me there was nothing for her here. She didn’t have the decency to come to Chet’s funeral, and now she wants a big piece of this farm for free."

"I’m darn near ready to let her have it, anyway," Ken replied, still upset. "She doesn’t think I have the experience to manage her share of the investment. Neither does the bank. Let her fight it out with the bank and let her see how far she gets."

"Well, there’s not a lot we can do about it now," Judy said, "Except hope it works out for the best. It’s like these," she said, holding up her crutches. "We don’t have to like it; we just have to make the best of it."

Ken started to say something, then stopped to reflect on what Judy had said. Even if they lost the whole thing, what would that be like measured against what Judy had been through? Judy had been the only one who had kept their head that long day. "You’re right," he said finally. "It’s like picking corn this fall. The only way to do it is however you can."

"So what are you going to do?" his mother asked.

"Like I told Judy Saturday, I don’t know," Ken told her. "All I know is that we’ve got a month or so to figure out what to do with the farm next year. I thought about it an awful lot this fall, and I do know there are some places where we’ve got to make some changes."

Over the next hour, they talked about the problem. Judy finally found a scratch pad, and started taking notes.

She made a note when Ken said, "Somehow, we’ve got to cut costs, even if it cuts yields back a little. We’ve got to start thinking in terms of profit per acre, not just yield per acre."

They talked around the problem some more. At one point, Judy said, "I hate the thought of you out there killing yourself on the Oliver again next fall."

"Yeah," Ken said. "I don’t want to, either; but now, we don’t have any way to harvest small grains at all. At the same time, I hate to go long in corn again, because of the cost and the Oliver."

"You two worked awful hard this season," Lydia said. "I don’t know how many hours you put in, but I’ll bet you didn’t make much per hour."

"Right," Ken said, as Judy started to make another note. "I’d love to come up with some way to cut down the hours, especially the field time. But, if we have a choice between spending time or money next year, I think we’d better spend the time."

"I know you’ve talked about getting rid of the 4630, and the equipment that goes with it," Judy commented, "But that’d make things a lot worse."

Ken nodded. "We’ve about got to stay with what we have, unless we can find a cheap replacement that will do the job without adding too much time," Ken agreed. "One of the problems is that we can’t do anything that’s too different from what we’re doing now."

"How’s that?" Judy wanted to know.

"Well, say we wanted to raise apples," Ken said. "We don’t have the time to let the trees grow, the money to live on in the meantime, or the money needed for the equipment that goes with apples. We can change what we’re doing around a bit, though. Like, if we wanted to triple the size of the beef herd, we pretty well could. We could convert grain to pasture, and pasture some beef."

"I don’t see how we could do that," Lydia said as Judy made another note. "We haven’t got enough time to increase the number of calves, and feeder calves are expensive. Maybe we could cut the beef out altogether; we’d at least save some work."

By the time they talked themselves out, Judy had a list of a dozen items or more that needed attention. The problem was that most of the items were interconnected; it wasn’t simple to work on one problem without making another one worse. "The thing of it is," she said, "that whatever we do, we’re guessing. We really don’t know what works and what doesn’t."

"You’re getting at something," Ken said. "I don’t see what."

"Lydia," Judy asked. "Did Chet keep good records of what his costs and income were?"

"He always was pretty good about keeping records," Lydia said. "But I don’t know what you can learn."

"Neither do I." Judy stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I keep thinking that there might be something there that’ll tell us something. I’d like to put the records of the last few years on the computer, and then run them through a spreadsheet program. We might learn something that’ll help us."

It was still raining outside. Ken drove the loader up to the back porch, threw a tarp over his father’s file cabinet, and walked it out to the loader bucket. That evening, Judy found herself at the dining room table, sorting through years of records, trying to figure out where to start. Ken looked at her and shook his head. "I’ll help where I can," he said, "But I can’t even play games on the computer worth much."

"I don’t know if it’ll help," Judy said, "But it can’t hurt. Just help me out when I don’t understand the records."

"All right," Ken said. "I guess I’ll curl up with some of that stuff I got from the library."

Ken relaxed in what had been Tom’s chair, a glass of iced tea by his side. The stack of library books was daunting, to say the least. He closed his eyes, and grabbed one at random. It proved to be Malabar Farm.

Ken started skimming the book, and learned that Louis Bromfield had once been a prominent writer, living in France before World War II drove him out. He had returned to his home county in central Ohio, where he bought several worn-out farms and began to rebuild them. Much of what Bromfield said seemed dated to Ken, to say the least; many of the marginal farming practices Bromfield ranted against were lost in the past, but there was an undertone of working with the land, rather than against it, that Ken felt made sense. Where Bromfield talked about the history of the valley, or the cute actions of the farm animals, Ken skipped by, but when he caught the author talking about working with the soil, he found himself slowing up.

"Are we going to bed tonight?" Judy asked finally.

Ken looked up at the clock. It was after midnight; he’d lost all track of time. "Guess we’d better," he said. "How’s it coming?"

"I’m getting to the point where I can get started," Judy told him. "But I’d like to run into town and see if I can scare up a farm-oriented spreadsheet program. I could dig out the Pascal manual and write something from scratch if I had to, but it’d be a lot of work."

"Suppose we can," Ken said, turning off the light.

Judy spent most of her time the next few days at the keyboard of the computer her father had given her almost two years ago. In that time, she had learned to do a lot with it, but up until now, it had just been learning and schoolwork and play. Now, it might mean something, so she kept herself at the records and the keyboard with a determination that matched Ken picking corn on the Oliver a few days before.

Meanwhile, Ken was in and out. When he was home, he read a lot; mostly library materials or pamphlets from the Extension Office. But, he was gone a lot, too. One time, he drove to Athens and back in a day, to have a long talk with his old soil chemistry professor. A couple days later, he did it again, carrying a carful of soil samples from around the farm.

He had sessions with the County Extension Agent, and he spent a fair amount of time at the Willow Lake Café, talking with Roger Griswold and others about what worked for them, and what didn’t. He picked up any number of good ideas, but with them the impression that a good many of the more experienced farmers were relying on educated guesses themselves.

The computer printer was running on the evening he got home from his third long trip to Athens for more consultations with his old professor. "How’d it go?" Judy asked.

Ken smiled. "It’s going to take some work to come up with the numbers, but we can save a bunch of money next year," he reported.

"That’s wonderful, Ken," she said. "How?"

Ken began to peel off his coat, and poured himself a cup of coffee. "I don’t think Dad or Tom had the soil tested around this place for years," he said. "They just knew you had to put fertilizer on, and so they did. It turns out that if we’re real selective about what we put on, and where, we can cut our fertilizer bill way back. There’s fields out there that don’t need anything, even for corn, and there’s some others that don’t need much. There are some places we really need to spread some micronutrients around, though."

"That’s great," she said.

"How are you coming?" he asked. "You getting any answers?"

"Questions, mostly," she said. "But at least, I’m starting to get some ideas of what questions to ask."

While the printer ran, coughing out streams of charts and numbers that were almost incomprehensible to Ken, Judy started on supper. By now, Judy’s cooking had improved to the point where she didn’t always start at the can opener, and Ken was beginning to appreciate it.

"I wanted a break today," Judy said as they ate, "And I leafed through a couple of farm magazines. There’s something in there that bothers me."

"What?" Ken asked around a mouthful of potato.

"There’s a big article in one of them about protective clothing to use around pesticides and herbicides. Gloves, face masks, impermeable clothing, respirators, and like that."

"Yeah?" Ken said, wondering what she was driving at.

"I sprayed for two years out there," Judy said. "And I was pretty careful to not get too close to the stuff. But your dad never wore any of that kind of thing when he mixed the spray, and he did it for years and years."

"He always said it couldn’t really hurt you," Ken replied. "He said it was just for plants and insects."

"Yeah," Judy responded, "And his heart killed him before his cancer could."

Ken sat silent for a long time, pondering what Judy said.

"And another thing," Judy added finally, "There’s a baby food company that won’t let any of their contract farmers use any of a long list of chemicals. We sprayed some of those out here last year."

Ken shook his head. "I’ve often thought that maybe we were a little too careless with that stuff, and maybe we sprayed a little too much of it around here. But, we can’t get along without it."

"Maybe so," Judy said. "But I think you need to take as careful a look at it as you have with the fertilizer."

Later that evening, Ken looked over Judy’s shoulder as she ran the computer. "All right, that’s one thing for sure," Judy said. "We don’t want to get rid of the steers."

"I don’t see it," Ken replied, shaking his head. "Beef prices have been lousy for years."

"So’s everything else," Judy told him. "Here, let me show you." She fiddled with the keys for a minute or two, and then the printer began to cough out statistics. It only took a couple minutes; Ken ripped off the sheet and began to study it.

The sheet was headed "RETURN ON INVESTMENT" and included every facet of the farm production for the past ten years. "I see you included Candybar," Ken said. "She’s not production."

"Yeah," Judy replied, "But she eats a share of it that we don’t get paid for, so I had to figure her in."

"Well, you’re thorough, if nothing else," Ken told her, studying the figures. "I see what you mean," he said finally. "Over the past ten years, the return on investment on beef has been higher than on anything else, even with poor beef prices."

"With corn prices so low, we usually get more per bushel if the corn goes out of here on four legs, rather than four wheels," she smirked.

"Well, I suppose we can hit the auctions and pick up a few feeder calves, but that’s going to cost," Ken said. "With herd production what it is, we can’t really expect enough increase otherwise to help us much this year."

"Let’s see," Judy said. "What are feeder calves running?"

A few minutes later, the computer backed up Ken’s gut reaction. If the herd could be increased from calves born on the Sorensen farm, the numbers looked pretty good, but they didn’t look nearly as good if the calves had to be purchased. "Well, that’s one thing," Ken said. "We can pick up a couple thousand there, anyway. You got any more magic in that machine?"

"I’ll have to rework the figures, but if we’re not needing a lot of fertilizer, there might be an edge in soybeans . . . Ken, call my dad."

"Why?"

"I remember him saying something once about people paying a set price to farmers to custom-finish beef calves."

Two days after Christmas, the Sorensens pulled out all the stops when they visited Henry Daly at the Farmer’s and Merchant’s State Bank. All three of them were there; Ken thought Judy knew more about the magic she had used with the computer to pull off the pages and pages of projections and profit spreads for the upcoming year.

Ken hadn’t told his wife, but he thought the sight of her on crutches couldn’t hurt; maybe the banker would be a little less likely to pull the plug on them.

"Not bad," Daly said after paging through the printouts. "Your gross is going to be down a little, but your cut in expenses ought to more than make up for it, if prices don’t get too crazy."

"We’ve got agreements for some good contracts there," Ken said. "The beef is a little experimental, but our records show we can make a profit at that price."

"I can see you cut back a lot on the corn," Daly commented. "And, with that old picker, I can understand why. But how are you planning on harvesting all that other stuff?"

"I’ve budgeted money for that," Ken said. "There’s enough to get it done on a custom basis. But, I think I can beat that figure."

"Well, on the face of it, it looks good," Daly said. "But I’m still reluctant. Your probate problems aside, you’ve got a good plan. But, Ken, with your experience, how do I know you can carry it out?"

"Henry," Lydia bristled. "I’ve picked this plan apart with the kids every which way, and I’ve been around the farm long enough to learn a thing or two. Even if we lose the court case, if we can’t keep up the payments on this plan, you won’t need to go through foreclosure. We’ll just give you the keys."

"All right," Daly said. "I’ll give you this year to see if you can make it work."