Mama chuckles and leans in to kiss my cheek before nudging me to follow him. “Have a good day.”
“You too,” I say, and jog to catch up with Papa as he heads towards the farm.
“You looking at the planters today?” he asks when I reach him.
“Yeah,” I say, looking out over the field we’re walking along. “Hoping to have them done by the end of the day.”
“Good man.” He nods. “We’ll be ready to plant in about two weeks, I’d say, given the forecast.”
I eye him as we approach the garage. “We?”
We stop outside the garage, and he tilts his head as he looks at me with a sly smile. “You’d rather I go sit on my porch and watch you work the fields? Or do you want a hand?”
I roll my eyes again. “Why do you even say you’re retired if you’re not?”
He smiles. “Because I am.”
Papa claps a hand on my shoulder as I sigh, then I turn to push the garage door open as he heads for the office across the lot.
I’m the first one here so I flick on all the lights, and look over the planters I parked in here yesterday. I started going over them last night, making note of everything that needed maintenanceafter winter storage. One of them has a split in the vacuum tube, so I’ll start with that one, and hopefully I can get to everything and have them done by the end of the day.
I set my coffee and breakfast on the workbench, unwrap the sandwich, and take a bite before grabbing a screwdriver and heading to the planter with the split vacuum tube. I kneel beside it and start removing the panel, when I hear the side door open, followed by boots on the concrete. And I already know it’s Dad.
“Morning.”
I glance up from the open housing on the planter as Dad stops beside the workbench with his coffee in one hand and a folder tucked under his arm.
“Morning,” I say, pushing to my feet and letting my eyes fall to the folder, knowing exactly what that is.
“Got the report back on that field,” Dad says, holding it up.
“Yeah…” I say slowly, setting the screwdriver on the bench.
The field that gave us a crop full of hollow heart a few years ago has been giving us problems ever since. One season, we make changes and pull a decent crop, but the next year, it just slips right back into the same problem. I keep working at it, adjusting planting depth, irrigation, and more, and keep trying to understand what it wants. But we have no proof that any of this is working, because the results aren’t consistent. Dad ordered a Field Variability and Yield Risk Assessment since our yields from that field are all over the place, and the costs are high for what we’re getting back.
He passes the folder to me, and I flip it open.
My eyes scan the blocks of text, charts layered over other charts, and countless sections of shit that look like someone just scribbled a bunch of lines and called it work. Words blur together as it all becomes more complicated, talking about correlations, yields, costs, and other shit I can’t understand, with random numbers scattered everywhere.
The longer I stare at it, begging my brain to just fucking focus and try, the more frustrated I get. My hands start tingling, my muscles tighten, and my jaw clenches.
I snap the folder shut and throw it on the desk, then squeeze my eyes shut and rub a hand over my face.
Fuck.
“It’s ok,” Dad says gently, picking up the folder and tucking it back under his arm. “Want me to tell you?”
I nod and drop onto the stool, fixing my gaze on the planter in front of me with its cover off and hoses exposed. The kind of thing I can actually understand.
Dad sits on a stool next to me. “They pulled together everything we have from the past several seasons,” he says. “Soil samples, yield records, hollow heart reports, irrigation logs—everything. Then they compared this field to the rest of the farm.”
He pauses, and I nod for him to continue.
“Some years that field performs like the others,” he says. “And other years, that yield is significantly reduced due to hollow heart.”
I nod again. We already knew that.
“The problem is the pattern,” he continues. “Hollow heart isn’t showing up every year. They couldn’t pin it on fertilizer, nutrient deficiencies, water systems, or seed stock. Everything is within recommended ranges.”
