Chapter 16
Finley Ackerman adjusted the thermostat in the conference room at the IFA, grateful the heater would kick on before anyone arrived.
Outside, the January wind howled against the windows, but at least the first major snowstorm of the season had finally passed through.
He’d spent the better part of the last week checking on cattle at his family’s much larger ranch, reinforcing his own fallen fences, and making sure every animal on his small hobby farm had shelter, food, and water.
Now, as he arranged chairs around the long table, the familiar anticipation that came with these monthly meetings ran rampant through him.
The third Thursday had become sacred to him, this time when the small ranch owners around town gathered to share their struggles, celebrate their victories, and support one another through the unpredictability of working the land, raising a family, and dealing with aging parents, Mother Nature, and each other.
The door opened, and Alex pressed it all the way against the wall, toeing the doorstop into place with one boot. “Morning,” he said. “I don’t think people will have a problem getting in.”
“No?” Finn set the last chair in place. “The plows have been out?”
“Yep. Salt and sand everywhere.” Alex didn’t sound too happy about that, but they both drove four-wheel-drive trucks, as they had to dig themselves off their farms when the snow came.
“We still might have a smaller crowd today.” Finn gestured toward the coffee station. “But there’s always coffee, and Link did text that he was still planning on bringing lunch.”
He just wanted Jake Ahlstrom to come, and if the roads were bad, he might not make the drive from Three Rivers Ranch. Finn had grown up out there, and it was forty-five minutes to town on the brightest, sunniest day.
On a day that had snow blowing across the road? One might choose to stay home instead of coming to the ranch owners’ meeting.
Jake had already been hesitant about it, because he didn’t own a ranch. But working as the new head veterinarian on a massive cattle ranch qualified him to come, as they often talked about livestock and other animal care needs.
Finn had told him all of that, but he hadn’t seemed convinced until Libby had said she’d love to see Jake at the meetings.
“I have a hard time managing everything,” Libby said.
“I’m going to ask our general controller to come too, and if you were there, we’d have all three corners of our operation in-the-know. ”
Jake still hadn’t committed to attending, but Finn had included him on the reminder text he’d sent to everyone for this morning’s meeting.
“Oh, good, the door is open,” someone said, and Finn looked up as Wilder started backing through the doorway. “We’ve got breakfast burritos for lunch.”
He carried a heavy-duty tin foil tray with gloved hands, and Link came stutter-stepping in after him, holding the other end of the tray. From what Finn could see, individually wrapped burritos had been stacked inside, each of them in shiny aluminum foil.
“What is happening here?” Alex asked. “Who made these on a Thursday morning?”
“My momma, Aunt Sammy, and my aunt Holly Ann,” Wilder said, sliding the end of the tray onto the conference room table. He grinned at them and then clapped his gloved hands together. “It’s Clover’s birthday, and we had a big thing at Shiloh Ridge.”
“Thus, we have a lot of leftovers from Shiloh Ridge.” Link grinned and picked up one of the burritos. “But these are amazing. The ones with an H on the outside are ham, and the B-ones are bacon. Otherwise, it’s just egg and cheese.”
“And those potato tots.” Wilder picked up a burrito too. “Shoot. I left the condiments in the truck. I’ll go grab them.” He tossed his burrito back into the tray and headed out again.
“Hey, where you goin’?” Henry asked as Wilder nearly mowed him down in the doorway.
“Hot sauce,” Wilder said by way of explanation, and Finn grinned at the answer. Then at his cousin’s face as Henry entered the room.
“Hot sauce?”
“For the breakfast burritos.” Finn indicated them with a gentle wave of his coffee cup.
“You Glovers always know how to feed people,” Henry said. “Angel isn’t coming today, but Trev’s out in the store, getting some tubing for his sprinkling system.”
“Great,” Finn said with a grin. “I’m so glad he comes, Henry.”
“Me too.” Henry moved toward the coffee station. “You should see him and Janey together. They’re the cutest.”
JJ entered the room, and he carried an infant carrier with him.
“I have Jade today,” he said. “But she’s asleep right now, so I’m just going to put her under the table.
” He moved the chair closest to the door, right near the end of the table, and set his daughter down, then pushed her further under with his foot.
He sighed and looked around the room, then at the tray of food. “What do we have here?”
“Breakfast burritos,” Link said.
“Why do you have Jade?”
“Ruby’s doing a consult today,” JJ said, reaching for a foil-wrapped bundle. “Trap’s not coming either. They’re out at the Hensen place today. I guess someone is thinking of buying it, but it needs a lot of work.”
“That it does,” Ty said, and Finn switched his gaze to the dark-haired cowboy as he limped into the room. “I went and looked at it last week too.”
“You did?” The surprise in Alex’s voice matched that flowing through Finn. He’d even raised his eyebrows, same as Finn.
“Yeah.” Ty sighed as he sank into the chair opposite of where JJ had just stowed Jade. “Man, I’m tired.” He yawned and knocked his cowboy hat loose as he ran his hands through his hair.
“Yeah?” Henry teased. “Is your new girlfriend keeping you out too late?”
“I think it’s actually this guy at the boarding stable where I work,” Ty deadpanned. “Keeping me past my time to go home, because I’m so good with owners.”
Henry belted out a laugh, and Finn raised a hand of hello to Paul—another cousin—and Libby—his sister—as they entered the room.
Mitch and Lacy arrived, as did Brandon and Lenore, and the room got louder as multiple conversations broke out. Trevor slipped in, and he took the seat next to JJ. Finn noted they all left that seat on the very end, at the head of the table, for him.
He heard Colt tell Brandon that he had branches down everywhere at the orchard, and Brandon and Lenore say they’d had some damage to their windbreak.
Finn usually chose a topic before the meeting and texted it out, but he hadn’t done that this time.
Sometimes, he just needed to let the people here talk, and sometimes he didn’t know what they needed to discuss until they were all in the room together.
Tate said they hadn’t had any problems at the produce farm he and his wife ran for Wilde & Organic, and Finn was reminded that though they all lived in a small town, conditions weren’t always the same from north to south, east to west.
He ended his chat with Alex and Wilder, who had returned with hot sauce, ketchup, and salsa, and started to move down to the head of the table.
“You just go on in,” Conrad said, and Finn looked toward the door to find Jake Ahlstrom hovering there.
“Hey, hey,” he said, maybe a little louder than he needed to. “You made it.”
Jake nodded, looking slightly uncomfortable as he entered the room ahead of Conrad. “Yeah, I figured I’d give it a try.” He looked around, his eyes finally coming back to Finn. “I know a lot of these people.”
Finn chuckled and clapped Jake on the shoulder. “I knew you would. We’ll do intros too.” He took a couple more steps and whistled through his teeth. “Get your coffee and breakfast burritos, fellas. We’re going to start in three minutes.”
“Three minutes?” Dawson asked. “I swear I’m not that late.”
Finn grinned at him. “Not late at all. You have three minutes.” He did like to stick to a schedule, because they all had plenty to do, and no one liked meetings, even if they were with friends.
He looked around, doing a quick catalog of who’d come. Their crowd was not smaller today by any means, though he didn’t see Gun or Rock Glover, and of course, Trap Walker was gone too.
“Your cousins aren’t coming?” he asked Wilder as he sat down only a few paces away.
“They’re on the way,” he said. “You haven’t checked your texts.”
Finn automatically reached for his phone. Getting texts on the ranchers group string was his favorite thing. “No,” he said. “Not for a while.”
“We’ve got a mud problem at Shiloh Ridge,” Wilder said. “They left about twenty minutes ago.”
Finn nodded and left his phone in his pocket. “Okay, well, let’s get started then.”
Paul, Henry, Trevor, Libby, Jake, Alex, Brandon and Lenore, and himself made up the farmers and ranchers from the northern part of Three Rivers.
He mentally drove down the eastern highway, and he hit the apple orchards, the eastern edges of Seven Sons, and then Signs for Success.
That put Colt, Mitch and Lacy, and JJ in that category, and Finn included Ty there too, because he lived in an apartment on that side of town and didn’t have his own place. Yet.
Coming across the southern border, he could turn north and hit Conrad’s hobby farm as well as the produce farm, or go south and end up at Shiloh Ridge or the Rhinehart Ranch. That put Link, Wilder, Gun, Rock, Dawson, and Tate in the southern cowboy group.
“We’re waitin’ on you,” Alex said, and Finn realized the room had gone quiet.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s do intros quickly, since we have someone new joining us today. If you have announcements or prayer requests, include them in that.”
Finn touched his chest. “I’m Finley Ackerman.
I run a small ranch-slash-farm that borders Three Rivers Ranch on the south with my wife, Edith, and our three boys.
” He grinned around at his friends, his brothers.
“Edee has started talking like she might want another baby, and I’d love it if you could get the Lord to sway her differently. ”