Introduction to EVEN MORE brothers...

Chapter Twenty-Six: Help on the Horizon

We’d bitten off a big chew, and by now, it was clear we were gonna need help swallowing it.

The days blurred into one long cycle of watering, tilling, mending fences, tending stills, weeding gardens, feeding chickens, stirring mash, and trying not to trip over stray buckets or boys carrying things half their size. The sun never changed, but the fatigue sure did. My shoulders had a permanent kink in ‘em, and even Uno, usually the first to hop to, was starting to drag his tail by mid-morning.

Still, we were holding our own. Barely.

The barley shoots were coming in nice, but the newly planted hectares took more than twice the upkeep of the old plots. The root vegetables were fussy. The orchard needed pruning. The stillery needed more cleaning than usual thanks to a rogue swarm of ants that had taken a liking to the sticky mashroom floor. And the worst of it—Lu’s poor family garden had started getting wild with weeds.

I found her one afternoon crouched between two rows of snap peas, pulling at creeping vines with the kind of intensity that usually meant she was thinking hard.

"Everything alright?" I asked, kneeling down beside her.

She didn’t look up. "When’s the last time you slept?"

"Don’t ask questions you don’t wanna know the answer to."

She finally turned toward me, swiping her forehead with her wrist. "You ever think we might have overplanted?"

I chuckled. "Starting to, yeah. Not that I regret it."

"We’re doing too much with too few hands," she said, sighing. "You, me, and six boys with more enthusiasm than common sense… it’s a wonder we’re not buried in barley."

She pulled a particularly stubborn weed free and looked at me sideways. "What if… two more of my brothers came to help?"

I blinked. "You mean—bring in more help?"

She nodded slowly. "They’ve got experience. Back home, they worked the mountain plots, and they’re strong. Not afraid of dirt or hard hours. They’d listen to you. And they wouldn’t mind the pay, even if it’s just food, drink, and roof."

I leaned back on my heels, staring at the freshly turned rows in front of us. Two more bodies would change a lot. We could get ahead instead of staying barely afloat. Lu could spend more time on the garden. I could get the new fermenters set up without sacrificing sleep.

"You trust ‘em?"

"With my life."

"Then tell ‘em to come. If there’s room at the table, there’s room on the farm."

She smiled, the first real one I’d seen all day. "I’ll call ‘em tonight."

I helped her to her feet, and we walked back toward the barn. The boys were in the mashroom, their laughter echoing off the walls as they stirred a new batch. The air was thick with the smell of corn and hops, and a warm wind was picking up from the orchard side.

Sometimes you just need to admit when the load’s too heavy—and find folks willing to help carry it.

That night, Lu stood on the porch with the comms tablet in her hands, voice low but bright. I didn’t catch the words, but I caught the smile she wore when she hung up.

“Few days,” she said. “They’re coming.”

And just like that, the farm felt a little less heavy.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Brew Meisters and Big Sisters

The next morning started with a rumble on the ridge.

I stood out on the porch, cup of black coffee in hand, as the silhouette of two young fellas crested the far trail. One was stocky and wide in the chest, the other lean and lanky, but both had that same bounce in their walk I’d come to recognize from the rest of Lu’s clan. They didn’t wave—just nodded like they’d always been meant to be here.

Uno and Dos dropped their tools and ran to meet them halfway, voices rising in a tumble of brotherly chatter I couldn’t make heads or tails of. The four of them stood in a tight circle for a bit, arms swinging, tails flicking, laughing like they were pickin’ up on a story they hadn’t told in a while.

Lu came up beside me, brushing a curl out of her face. “That’s Nueve and Dies,” she said quietly. “Nine and Ten. Always stuck together. You won’t get one without the other.”

“Seems like they’re already part of the furniture,” I muttered.

She gave me a side glance and tucked the towel in her apron. “Wait till I set the rules. Then we’ll see.”

She stepped down the porch and marched over to the gathering like she’d done it a thousand times before. The boys snapped straight like soldiers. I didn’t hear everything she said, but I got the gist.

"You will work. You will not complain. Ron is the boss. You will not sneak mash unless you want to scrub out the barn with a toothbrush. We eat dinner together, and everyone pulls their weight. You got questions, you ask me. You got problems, you go to Ron. Got it?"

A chorus of “yes ma’am” followed. She turned on her heel and strode back up beside me like it was nothing. I handed her my coffee without a word, and she took a long sip.

“You should’ve been a sergeant,” I muttered.

“Don’t tempt me.”

Later that afternoon, I called Uno and Dos over while we checked the mashroom.

“Listen here,” I said, wiping my hands on a rag. “With the new crew in, we’re runnin’ leaner on man hours. So unless we get a tidal wave of batches to brew, this is your territory now. The two of you—Brew Meisters.”

Uno’s ears perked up so fast, they nearly flew off.

“Really?”

“Really,” I said, pointing to the fermenting room. “You handle the mash, the timing, the temps. You watch the bubbles and sniff for any rot. If it smells off, you dump it. You get a question, you come to me. But it’s your show.”

Dos puffed up like a rooster. “What about the honey pilsner?”

“That too. All the brew but the ethanol’s yours.”

Uno saluted. “Yessir. Brew Meisters Uno and Dos!”

They ran off whooping, already making plans to label bottles and invent a logo.

I shook my head and walked back toward the main field, where Lu was showing Nueve and Dies how to run the irrigation lines. Seis and Tres were re-stringing the bean supports, and Quattro was sweeping out the chicken coop.

It was a strange thing—watching something grow not just from the ground, but from the people around you. This land, this light, this never-ending day... it didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt like a place you could live.

Not just survive.

That evening, the house rang with noise—chairs scraping, bowls clinking, someone banging out a rhythm with a spoon on a water barrel. Lu passed the cider, and I sat back with my boots up, watching my ragtag crew fill the room.

I hadn’t planned for a family.

But somehow, I’d got one.