Chapter 9 #2
Brandon looked thoughtful for a moment, then glanced down at his clipboard and out at the land again.
It held so much potential. And in that moment, Lenore felt it down in her soul. This land wanted to be doing more than it currently was. And Brandon could bring it to life.
Heck, he ignited something inside of her that had been brought to life. She couldn't wait to see what else he could do, and what other ideas he came up with.
“Maybe we can do a small storage shed,” he said.
“Or—this is a better idea: an open-air stable-type unit where you can house your four-wheelers and other equipment—wheelbarrows, lawn mowers, rakes. That would act as a wind blind and face the gardening area for easy access to your gardening tools. It would just be one side and a roof, with poles.” He looked at her, those hazel eyes intensely serious and oh-so-pretty because of it. “I can build that in a couple of days.”
She had no doubt that he could, so she simply nodded. He started down the other side of the house, glancing up at the roof and muttering to himself as Lenore trailed in his wake.
“I think if we can get your garden area bigger,” he said. “And your greenhouse moved to the right place, you can grow food—good food—all year long. Potatoes, carrots, green peppers, tomatoes, lettuce. Not just herbs and kale.”
“That sounds amazing,” Lenore said.
“We’ll get that chicken coop fixed up. Have you ever thought about having mobile mini coops?”
“Mobile mini coops?” Lenore repeated, the words not quite sounding right in her own voice.
“I can see you’ve got a lot of bugs here,” Brandon said.
“A neighbor of mine brought in guinea fowl to get rid of his termites and bugs. I don’t think we need to go that far.
I think we can build some little mini coops that you can move by hand, that can house six or seven chickens, and they can clean up all those bugs.
Then you move them to a new location the next day. ”
Mobile mini coops. Lenore had never heard of such a thing.
“Not only that,” he continued. “But chicken poop acts as a natural fertilizer, and that can help our soil become better for planting next spring.”
Planting, Lenore shouted in her mind. How in the world were they going to plant anything without water? She didn’t say anything, though, as Brandon had started toward the barn, and she had to jog a little to keep up.
“I’m also thinking of building a sheep tractor,” he said. “I think that’s down the road, though.”
“A sheep tractor?” Lenore had never felt like she didn’t understand the English words until today.
Brandon chuckled. “We move them around to mow down the fields and grasses that we don’t want. Instead of just cutting the grass, you have sheep. Again, they have feces that regenerate the land. You have a labor-free way of keeping your land mowed and cared for.”
“And we have sheep,” she said. She loved animals, and she’d love to have sheep on the homestead.
“Yep, you’ll have sheep,” he said. “We can also do it with goats, and then you can milk ’em.”
The thought of having milk and eggs and chickens and vegetables…Lenore honestly felt like she’d struck a gold mine.
“I don’t think food and livestock are going to be your problem.
” As he neared the barn, he got the broken door open and said, “I can fix this later tonight.” Then he entered the dimmer depths of the barn.
“I think we can definitely improve your gardening. We can make a couple of mobile mini coops that we can move each day by hand. Sheep tractor down the line.” He paused his musing and started writing on the clipboard.
Lenore honestly had no idea what to think of or what to do next.
They’d only been out talking for maybe a half-hour.
A complete sense of overwhelm pressed down on her, created by everything he’d said.
She needed another cup of coffee and a dark room to lie down in while she thought through things like “sheep tractor” and “move a whole building around a house.”
Brandon wrote, moving one page to the back and bringing forth a fresh one. Finally, he finished and looked at her.
“Chicken coop. More chickens in mobile mini groups. Improved gardening space. That’s livestock and food—both of which are essential to a functioning homestead.
Crops will come. I really believe we can do that.
We can add more enclosures and pastures and all the animals you want.
But what you can’t do with those animals and crops… .”
Lenore’s stomach flipped, and it felt like someone had poured popping candy into her blood.
“You can’t keep them alive unless you have water,” Brandon said, delivering the death blow. “Animals and crops require water. We have to get water on this homestead.”
“I don’t know how,” Lenore said.
“Are there any other homesteads around? Any other farms where we can run a line from their irrigation to your land? You could pay them a fee.”
“I don’t know,” Lenore said. “Do people do that?”
“I’m not sure either,” Brandon said. “There’s a ranch owners’ meeting on the third Thursday of every month. You should come to the next one, and we can ask all the questions we have. There are tons of knowledgeable people there, and they’ll know the answers.”
He glanced around the barn, and now that Lenore’s eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light, she could see the disarray and disrepair of it. Since she wasn’t the most organized person, the barn had ropes, bags, and tools thrown anywhere they’d land.
“I can text them all too,” Brandon said. “I bet I could find out if there’s a water line here or how to drill a well.”
Lenore sucked in a breath. “Brandon, there is no way I can afford to drill a well. Do you even know how much that is?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, I do,” Lenore snapped. “And it’s really expensive. We’re talking thousands of dollars. I don’t have it. It’s impossible.”
His eyes latched on to hers, his glare becoming as hard as her voice had been. She stared him down, because she had done this research. Because, when she faced the hard truth of things, she knew the homestead would not survive without water.
“The first thing you need to do,” he said. “Is get rid of the word impossible . You don’t know how you’re going to pay to drill a well. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
She sighed mightily, because she didn’t need this lecture.
Brandon didn’t continue his inspection of the barn. He simply walked through it, keeping his thoughts to himself. She let him go, irritation firing through her. He hadn’t offered a solution for her water problem or where he was going next.
In the end, she started after him, catching the barn door before it slammed closed after he had departed. He stood several paces away, facing the woods. “We can get all the lumber we need right here from these trees. This is your forest, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We can get the lumber we need for the gardening shed, the firewood pile, the chicken coop—all of it right here. In fact, some of these need to be cut down simply for fire safety.”
“Fire safety?” Lenore repeated, wondering how many times she would repeat something he’d said as a question.
“Look how close these trees are to the barn,” he said. “They catch on fire, then your barn’s gone—and your whole homestead’s ablaze.”
He looked over to his cabin. “They need to be thinned around my cabin as well. All of that is a safety issue, and then we can use the lumber in any project we want.”
Lenore’s throat closed up again. Her first instinct was to swallow the confession and never let him hear it. Several seconds of silence went by, and he looked over at her.
“What are you thinking?”
She hated that he knew she had something to say and hadn’t said it.
She barely knew this man, and yet the connection between them felt as strong as Lenore had experienced with anyone else in her life.
To ground herself, she reached out and took his hand in hers.
She drew in a deep breath and sighed it all out.
“I’ve never used a chainsaw, Brandon.”
Without missing a beat, he squeezed her hand and said, “Oh, that’s an easy one. I can show you.”
And his simple declaration became a promise. Brandon had just promised that he wasn’t going to leave tonight. He wasn’t going to abandon her because she had no business being a homesteader.
He was going to stay. He would teach her and show her, and together, they would revitalize this piece of land into something she could be proud of—and something that it wanted to be.
“All right,” Brandon finally said. “That’s food, shelter, and water.” He took a step forward and looked past her to their left. “The last thing we really need is power.”
Hope filled Lenore. She once again led Brandon by the hand over toward the solar panels and wheels her daddy had secured from a neighbor years ago.
“The cabins have outlets in them,” he said. “They must’ve had power at some point.”
“Kind of,” Lenore said. “My granddaddy built them on the promise from Three Rivers that they would run the electrical line out here. Then they stopped about three miles from here, maybe four.”
“Huh,” Brandon said. “I wonder if all we need to do is file something with the city.”
Once again, he’d said something that Lenore had literally never thought of, and would never have even considered.
“I can call them,” he said. “Do you know where the closest electrical line is?”
“Coyote Pass,” she said.
Brandon sucked in a breath and turned toward her, his eyes widening.
“What?” she asked. “It’s a ranch northwest of town. They’re pretty big—bigger than my place—and the forest is all that separates us.”
“You’re telling me that on the other side of these trees is Coyote Pass?” A smile grew and grew and grew on his face when she nodded. “One of my best friends owns and lives at Coyote Pass. Alex is hosting a Halloween party tonight, but I’m not going.”
Lenore simply couldn’t believe her luck. The moment she thought that, her mind switched gears. Her hand tightened in Brandon’s as she said, “The Lord really did bring you to me, didn’t He?”
Brandon edged closer to her, releasing her hand and sliding his around her waist, drawing her close and into his side. “Yes, sweetheart,” he whispered as his lips brushed against her temple, not quite a kiss, but something exciting and intimate all the same. “It sure seems He did.”