Chapter 12 Eva
Eva
I have actual connectivity, which means I can do my job from my new conundrum property. That’s what I’ve been calling it while I try to decide what the hell I’m doing here.
I spend the morning driving around, asking people what they remembered of my aunt and uncle. At Lick Your Fork, Latonya talks me into eating pie while she rummages in the back for something. “Found it,” she hollers from behind the swinging door.
I have to remember this is not my sister’s bar, and I’m not supposed to just wander back there with her.
I focus on my pecan pie while she mutters and finally emerges, brandishing a white pitcher.
“We used to have Pierce Acres syrup here. Walter and June had these made for their wholesale customers. That was before my time.” She smiles at the ceramic piece of Fork Lick history. My history.
I feel pinched in the chest looking at it, this real relic of my lost family. LaTonya slides the pitcher into my hand and pats my arm. “You keep it, honey. Put some flowers in it. Think about us up here.”
Post pie, my emotions and I visit the post office so I can fill out forms to forward any mail that might come to Pierce Acres, but I can’t bring myself to drop off the paperwork.
I’m on the precipice of something I can’t yet name, so I take the pitcher and nestle it in the gravel, squatting to line up a photo with the little business district in the background.
When I get back home… to my property… I take the pitcher all around, snapping photos of it with the old equipment, arranged just so against weathered wood.
If I stayed here, I’d be on the brink of tapping those trees, filling this relic with syrup instead of flowers like LaTonya suggested.
I schedule some posts for peak times, cross-reference my hashtag strategy, and sit back to watch some engagement numbers roll in.
Except they don’t.
By evening, my carefully crafted content has gotten maybe forty likes. Mostly from my sisters, plus a handful of loyal followers who like everything I post. The comments are sparse and generic: Pretty! and Nice pics and Looks peaceful.
I check the analytics, and my heart sinks. Reach: minimal. Engagement: below average. New followers: zero.
I can’t blame the Wi-Fi anymore. Whatever cloud Asher is lending me is super fast. I scroll through the comments again, looking for something—anything—that suggests I’m connecting with people. But there’s nothing. I’m not even getting bots offering to help me with my marketing strategy.
Cute, but seems like every other farm account, one person wrote, and then apparently kept scrolling.
Any other farm account? I guess I didn’t elaborate on why this pitcher was making its way through all my content.
I close my laptop and stare at the ceiling.
This is supposed to be my thing. I’ve built my sisters’ brands, grown their audiences, created content strategies that work. Why isn’t it working here?
A bleating sound from outside interrupts my spiral. I look out the window to see Baabara trotting across my yard, having apparently escaped her palace again. She’s heading straight for the garden beds I spent all week clearing.
“Oh no, you don’t!”
I’m out the door before I think about it, still in my nice content-creation outfit—a flowy top and clean jeans. Baabara sees me coming and picks up speed.
I chase her through the cleared beds, getting mud on my boots. She doubles back toward the sugar shack, and I follow, slipping on wet leaves. She stops to investigate a pile of equipment, and when I lunge for her, she bolts again, and I step directly into a fresh pile of sheep droppings.
“Baabara, you woolly menace!”
Baabara looks back with what I swear is a smug expression. “You did that on purpose,” I tell her, hopping on one foot while trying to scrape the worst of it off my boot against a tree.
She bleats.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”
I corner her near the old collection tanks, and she lets me grab her collar like she was done running anyway. We walk toward Bedd Fellows Farm together, me limping slightly, my boots ruined, my nice outfit splattered with mud and worse.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Gran Ethel
Did you catch her? I saw her heading your way on the cameras.
I snap a photo without thinking—me, disheveled and annoyed, holding Baabara’s collar while she mugs for the camera. I manage to show the sheep poop still clinging to my boot. My hair is falling out of its clip. There’s a smear of mud across my cheek.
I send it to Gran with the caption: Got her and her revenge doody
Then, on impulse, I post it to my social media accounts. No filter, no editing, no strategy. Just a sweaty, annoyed, poop-covered woman holding a smug sheep.
When your neighbor’s woolly menace escapes AGAIN and poops at you on purpose. Farm life, baby.
I deliver Baabara to Gran, accept her offer of lemonade and sympathy, and don’t check my phone until I’m at Pierce Acres, showered, changed, and significantly less fragrant.
When I do check, I nearly drop my phone. The sheep poop post has 3,000 views and climbing. The comments are flooding in:
“woolly menace” is killing me
Revenge poop! LOL
ok but the sheep’s face?? she knows what she did
MORE BAABARA RITENAO
Something clicks in my brain. This messy, unplanned, genuinely ridiculous reality of my life is interesting to people.
Esther’s voice echoes in my head: “Playing farmer is fun for a visit.” Maybe I’m not playing. Maybe I’m being real for once.
I poke through my other Fork Lick posts I’ve been throwing up whenever I grab reception, almost as an afterthought.
There are a few videos of me and Baabara, as well as a photo series of the maple gear, rusted and beautiful against the spring sunshine. There’s a video of me trying to figure out what all the mysterious tapping tools are for. And they’re all going viral.
@sweettoothsally: I would watch an entire series about this woman learning to make maple syrup
@maplelover_vt: The sheep video has me CRYING.
@cottagecore_dreams: okay but the grumpy neighbor she keeps mentioning?? i need to see him
@homesteadhannah: This feels so real. Can I go to Fork Lick? Road trip!
I scroll through comment after comment, my hands shaking slightly. People are tagging their friends. Sharing the posts. Asking for more content about Fork Lick, about the maple grove, about the “cast of small-town characters.”
Someone even made a compilation of all my Fork Lick content, and it has fifty thousand views. People aren’t just liking these posts. They’re connecting with them. I tapped into something magical today.
I click on the analytics, expecting the same predictable results. But… These numbers are spectacular. The engagement is through the roof, and I have new followers pouring in—not bots. Real, actual people from all over… not just western PA.
I sit back in my chair, coffee forgotten, staring at my screen.
Until I got here, I was creating content for other people’s dreams. Eden’s bees. Esther’s bar. Eliza’s goat business. I am good at it because I love my sisters and I want them to succeed.
But this—Fork Lick, Pierce Acres, this accidental documentation of my chaotic inheritance—this is mine. And people want to hear it.
I did not expect that.
Today is like the confluence of June’s dreams, my work, and sheep magic. I’m still in a daze, responding to comments and checking DMs. There are partnership inquiries from two maple syrup brands and a boutique outdoor clothing company.
Someone knocks on my door.
I know it’s him before I even get up. There’s something about the knock itself, like even his knuckles are grumpy. I open the door, and there’s Asher, balanced on his crutches, looking deeply uncomfortable.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
We stare at each other for a moment. This is new territory. Yesterday we were barely speaking. Today we’re… what?
“I’m resetting my router,” he says. “Around four. There’ll be a service interruption. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted to warn you in case you were in the middle of something. Work stuff.”
“That’s… thoughtful. Thank you.”
More staring. God, this is painful. I’m a talker. A filler-of-awkward-silences. Eden calls it my “pathological need to make everyone comfortable,” which is rich coming from the sister who once made small talk with a telemarketer for twenty minutes because she didn’t want to be rude.
But with Asher, I don’t know what to say. Everything feels loaded. Also, why wouldn’t he call or text with this information? It must have taken him a half-hour to hobble all the way over here.
“Do you want to come in?” The words escape before I can stop them. “I got pecan pie from LaTonya.”
He hesitates. I watch him weigh the options—retreat to safety, or step through the door.
“Okay,” he says. “Sure.”
He crutches past me into the kitchen, and I try not to notice how he seems to fill up the space. The house felt fine before. Now it feels small.
“You can sit,” I say, gesturing at the kitchen table. “I’ll grab you a plate.”
He lowers into a chair, propping his crutches against the wall, and I busy myself with baked goods so I don’t have to look at him. When I turn around, pie in hand, I catch him staring at my laptop screen.
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I wasn’t… It was just open.”
“It’s fine.” I set the pie in front of him and take a seat across the table. “Actually, something kind of wild is happening.”
“Wild how?”
“My Fork Lick content is going viral.” Saying it out loud still feels surreal. “The videos I’ve been posting about the property were a bust, but then I posted about Baabara. People are really responding to it.”
Asher’s eyebrows rise. “Viral?”
I nod. “I’ve never had anything take off like this.”
“That’s…” He pauses, and I brace for something dismissive. But he says, “That’s really good, Eva. You deserve that.”