Gettiin' new crops, and a message from home...

CHAPTER 48 – Planting the Specialty Crops

It felt good to be diggin’ again.

Don’t get me wrong—I was proud of the still, the storefront, the fancy labels with little wheat stalks and gold script. But after all the buildin’, bottlin’, and schmoozin’ with inspectors, it felt right to get my hands back in the dirt. That’s how you know you’re still you. You kneel, press your palm into soil, and if it gives just enough—not too wet, not too dry—you know everything’s still okay.

We’d carved out a new field near the western slope, just past the bee hives and Lu’s herb spiral. Once and Doce had helped grade the land, hauling away old roots and rocks. Dies painted the marker stakes different colors “so the plants don’t get bored,” and Lu just shook her head and let him.

This wasn’t regular corn and squash. This was the good stuff. The niche crops. The kind you plant not for survival, but for flavor, value, and braggin’ rights.

We were talkin’ rare hops. Berry hybrids that came from the co-op’s gene seed vault. A twist of citrus mint that Lu swore would make the best infusion base on the planet. And then, of course, the star of the whole show—pecans.

Seis, covered in mulch and already smellin’ like rosemary and sweat, tugged off his gloves and said, “What’s the weird one again?”

“Roasted pecan brandy,” I said. “It’s your brother’s idea.”

Lu looked up from her planting chart. “Seis, you got somethin’ to show me?”

He grinned and jogged to the shed. Came back a minute later with a small sealed jar of roasted nuts soaked in a trial mash. He popped the lid, and a warm, nutty aroma with a sweet edge hit the air like a song.

Lu blinked. “That’s... actually amazing.”

“Thought it might taste like feet,” Seis said.

“It doesn’t,” I added, sniffin’ again. “Tastes like money.”

We made him a proper test barrel on the spot—small-batch, low-temp, just enough to gauge the finish. Meanwhile, the rest of us kept diggin’ and plantin’.

Lu and I worked in tandem, settin’ out rows of berry cuttings and trainin’ vines on recycled lattice. She had this knack for depth and spacing that came from her mama, and I had a feel for slope and shadow that came from decades under Earth’s sun.

We didn’t talk much. Just worked in rhythm, shoulder to shoulder, boots pressing into tilled rows, sun peekin’ between clouds like it was curious how this all would turn out.

By mid-afternoon, Nueve ran over with two lemonades and said, “Dies just fell asleep in the seed bin again. Should I bury him halfway or full?”

“Just draw on his face,” Lu replied without lookin’ up.

“Already did.”

The boy sprinted back, proud of himself.

By the time we packed up the tools, half the specialty field was planted. The rest we’d finish tomorrow, after the morning check on the still. Gus was due to visit soon, and Lu said we’d need to get samples of each new crop logged in the co-op database for future proof-of-yield paperwork.

I groaned at the word paperwork, and Lu grinned like she enjoyed sayin’ it just to see me twitch.

After dinner, she sat down at the kitchen table with her charts and started color-coding the crop map. The boys were out back roughhousin’ near the orchard. Every so often, we heard someone yell “No fair, you got claws!” followed by laughter and maybe a small thud.

“Seis is growin’ up,” I said, glancin’ over her shoulder. “Didn’t expect that idea to come from him.”

“He’s not just the goofball anymore,” she replied, tappin’ her pen. “None of them are.”

That stuck with me. They weren’t just the wild, tail-flickin’ handfuls that showed up at my farm months ago. They were somethin’ else now—craftsmen, cooks, thinkers. Family.

Lu paused in her writing and said, “I think we should start considering long-term contracts.”

“Slow down,” I said. “We just planted today.”

“I know,” she smiled. “But if even half these specialty crops take off, we’ll have more than the market can handle.”

“And you want to be ready?”

“I’m always ready.”

Later, out on the porch, we watched the sun get to it’s lowest spot, which wasn’t really sayin’ anythin’.—soft and pale behind the trees. Lu leaned against me, her arm hooked around mine.

“You remember when we used to worry about not havin’ enough?” I asked.

“I do.”

“And now we’re thinkin’ about how to handle too much.”

She chuckled. “Funny how that works.”

There was a quiet hum from the direction of the stillhouse—Once and Doce runnin’ another condenser test. The new bunkhouse had its windows lit, and I could just make out Uno and Quattro sittin’ by the porch, polishin’ bottle labels like they were medals.

“We’re buildin’ somethin’ that’s gonna last,” I said.

Lu didn’t answer right away. She just squeezed my arm a little and whispered, “Yes. We are.

CHAPTER 49 – A Letter from Earth

It came by drone. One of those squat little postal flyers with more rust than regulation and a soft whine in its motor that told me it’d been patched up more times than a barn cat with a fightin’ habit. It hovered near the porch, beeped once, then dropped a single envelope into the box and zipped off like it had a date it didn’t want to keep.

I didn’t think much of it at first. We got the occasional notice—co-op updates, seed catalogs, once a weird invite to something called “FermentFest”—but this one was different.

It was plain. Just my name. Handwritten.

I stood there with it in my hand, thumb runnin’ along the flap. Paper like that didn’t travel cheap across star routes. It wasn’t from any agency, any service, any group.

It was personal.

Lu came up behind me, towel over her shoulder. “Something interesting?”

I held it out. “Don’t recognize the sender. Looks like Earth script, though.”

She studied it a second, then said gently, “Go on, open it. I’ll keep the pie from burnin’.”

I nodded, sat down on the porch step, and tore the flap.

Inside was a single page. No return address, no date. Just a letter, written in neat, careful handwriting.

Dear Mr. Hosen,

You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of your daughter.

She’s doing well. Really well. She talks about you sometimes—says she misses you, but she understands. Says she’s proud of you. She’s been working in the tech sector, of all things, helping engineer ag systems based on some of the designs you sent her years ago. I don’t know if you ever got her replies—she said the network on your end is unreliable—but I wanted to let you know that she’s okay.

And she’s not mad.

She still keeps that old picture of you and Peg on her desk. Thought you might want to know that.

Wishing you peace and good harvests,

–Ellie

I didn’t cry. Not right away. I just sat there, letter on my knee, eyes glued to the horizon like it was holdin’ back some kind of answer.

She was alive.

She remembered.

She wasn’t mad.

Lu came back out, wiped her hands on her apron, and crouched beside me.

“Well?” she asked, quiet.

“It’s... from a friend of my daughter’s,” I said, voice raspier than I liked. “Says she’s okay. Says she’s proud.”

Lu didn’t say nothin’. Just sat down beside me and waited.

I handed her the letter. She read it once, then folded it back slow, like it was something sacred.

“She kept the picture,” I said. “I gave her that picture before she left home. Thought maybe she’d have burned it.”

“She didn’t.”

We sat there a while, no sound but the wind shiftin’ the leaves. I kept thinkin’ about Peg’s laugh, about my daughter runnin’ through the fields back home in her overalls and one red boot. How much I’d missed. How far I’d come.

“Do you want to write her back?” Lu asked finally.

I shook my head at first. Then nodded. “Eventually. But not yet. I... I need to sit with this a while.”

She didn’t push.

Instead, she placed the letter in her recipe book—between pecan pie and sourberry custard—like it belonged there. Like it was somethin’ worth preservin’.

Later that afternoon, I wandered the fields. Not with a task. Just to be alone. The specialty crops were sproutin’. The sun was stretchin’ low. And the boys were laughin’ in the distance, probably playin’ tag with shovels again.

I ended up sittin’ beneath the big pecan tree out back. Peg’s favorite tree. The one we used to picnic under. It’d grown strong these last years. Roots deep. Branches wide.

I leaned back against the trunk and closed my eyes.

“Hey, hon,” I said out loud. “Got a letter today. She’s okay.”

The wind rustled like a whisper.

“She’s workin’ on somethin’ good. Said she remembers. Still keeps our picture.”

I felt my throat tighten.

“I guess... I guess that means I didn’t fail, after all.”

A pause. A breeze. A peace.

When I stood and dusted off my jeans, I felt different. Not fixed. Not finished. But rooted again. Like that letter had tapped into something I’d buried and forgotten.

Back at the house, Lu had the boys settin’ the table. Roasted squash, corn mash, and a surprise peach crisp that I suspect she made just to keep them from sneakin’ the last of the market pies.

I kissed her on the forehead as I passed. She smiled and gave my hand a squeeze.

After supper, we sat out by the fire pit. Once played a soft tune on the old fiddle he’d traded for last market. Seis roasted a marshmallow until it caught fire, then screamed like it’d betrayed him.

I laughed harder than I had in weeks.

Dies climbed into my lap without askin’ and handed me a doodle of the bunkhouses with everyone inside.

“You forgot me,” I teased.

He looked at the page. “You’re the porch.”

Lu burst out laughin’. “He’s not wrong.”

And maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was the porch now—holdin’ everything steady, creakin’ a little, but always there.

That night, before bed, I sat down with a pen and a scrap of paper.

Didn’t write a reply yet. Just wrote her name at the top.

Then I folded it up and slid it into the letter Ellie sent me.

One day. But not tonight.

Tonight, I slept light.

But I slept proud.