Bet The Farm - Staci Hart Page 0,28

I’ll take you up on that offer to help me make sense of them.”

“Deal,” he said as he stood to see me out.

We said our goodbyes, and I wandered away from our offices—built in one of the old converted barns—toward the farmhouse with the papers he’d given me under my arm.

Papers that showed us several hundred thousand dollars in debt.

It made sense—equipment alone was a massive expense, and with the market constantly falling, dairy farmers all over the country were losing their farms. We weren’t alone. It was so hard to turn a profit, we operated hand to mouth. A couple hundred thousand seemed like nothing in comparison to the value of the farm itself, but with our profit in a constant freefall, there was no way to get caught up. We just kept falling further behind, hemorrhaging money every quarter.

And it was my job to stop the bleeding.

On that thought, I popped into the house, depositing the papers in Pop’s messy office before grabbing my things to head out to the pastures for a little photo shoot with the calves.

The day was warm and humid enough after last night’s rain to draw a trickle of sweat as soon as I was out of the shade. The sun kissed my bare shoulders and cheeks, and I wondered how long it’d been since I’d had so much vitamin D. I probably should have worn a hat and some heftier sunscreen than the SPF fifteen I put on daily as a rule. But I had an aesthetic in mind, and it didn’t involve hats. Plus, I wouldn’t be out long enough to burn. Hopefully.

I trucked across the farm in my pink rain boots and overall shorts, with a white tank underneath and a bubblegum bandana tied around my crazy bun. I passed the newborn yards where each calf was separated from the others. Without knowing the reasoning, people sometimes thought it was cruel or that the separation and confinement was to sell the calves for veal. But the truth was that calves were as germy as babies, and just like babies, they put everything in their mouths and had brand-new immune systems. So for a couple of months, they lived in small pens, socializing with their neighbors through the grid fence. This way, if a calf got sick, it was easy to contain and sterilize. If we kept them together, we’d lose calves en masse when even one got sick.

In an open space between the calves and the barns, larger pens held small groups of older calves where we socialized them, learned their personalities, got them used to each other before they ended up in the teenager herd, which caused as much trouble as the human variety. But I was headed for the pens where the calves were still smallish and less likely to prank me.

“Hey, girls,” I cooed as I approached a pen and worked on attaching my tripod to the metal fence.

The three calves hurried over and fitted their noses through the fence squares.

“I’d be flattered if I didn’t know you were just looking for food.”

The albino calf licked her nose, her lashes batting.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get all the treats once we get the money shot.”

I checked the screen to make sure I had a good view of the pen and scenery. The oak trees rose in the distance behind us, the land between us and them green and lush. The craggy, mountainous hills that created our valley cut into the sky, the view comforting, familiar, as beautiful as it ever was.

I had no real plan other than to muck the stall and brush the calves. It was usually done in the afternoon with a separate shift for the refilling of hay, feed, and water, and I timed it so I wouldn’t interrupt anyone’s work.

Or so I’d thought.

I wasn’t far into my task—boots planted in the mud and shovel in my hands—when I heard an ATV in the distance. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun, squinting at the figure on the four-wheeler, just in case my eyes deceived me.

They hadn’t.

Jake motored straight for me, towing a trailer of hay and feed.

Shirtless.

He was tanned and strapping, his posture more relaxed than I’d seen since coming home. There was something elemental about him, as if he were made from the earth itself, and in its presence, he was at ease, at home. This was his domain, and his authority was absolute, particularly when held up next to my knock-kneed