it was perfect. Of all the places she’d potentially chosen in four different states, this valley had the richest soil with the right mix of pH, consisting of alluvial silt from old rivers now disappeared, and loamy clay. It was just the right formula for growing vegetables and fruit trees.
Her mother, Cathy, had a green thumb that she’d passed on to Dana, and she had plans for a huge garden. Once more, Dana reminded herself that this was her dream home, no matter how dilapidated and barren-looking the cabin was, and the wintered land just starting to come alive in mid-April.
A new start. A new life.
Despite all these changes, she felt a void and emptiness within her heart that nothing, not even buying the Wildflower Ranch, could fill. This ranch had been established in 1900 by a German husband and wife. Gazing left to right, she could see the winter had tamped down anything that had been growing wild here for several decades. There was a creek out back, perfect as an irrigation source for her plans for that garden and small orchard she’d envisioned.
She’d made an appointment with Mary Bishop, owner of Mama’s Store, the most popular place in town to buy anything, and she’d filled out an employment form earlier in the week. Today, she’d find out if she had a job or not. Mary sold only organic, non-GMO fruits, vegetables, and meat. Although she had not met Mary in person, everyone spoke highly of her, and Dana had an appointment in less than an hour to speak with her. Her stomach clenched in anxiety. She had to have a job!
Dana knew she had to have income or she wouldn’t be able to make the payments on her ranch property and bring her dreams to reality. There was a lot of fear gnawing at her. Could she pull this off? Had she just wasted her deceased parents’ hard-earned money?
Feeling anything but happy, she walked slowly around the log cabin. Behind her, the main highway leading to Silver Creek was a quarter of a mile away. The dirt road into her property was deeply rutted and lacked grading, and would need a lot of care on a timely, ongoing basis. What was odd to her was that there had been a lot of vehicle traffic on it, and she could see where the flat land had a road of sorts plowed through it, heading to the slope of the mountain, disappearing into the thick, dark pines. Maybe it was locals who were hunting? She didn’t know, but now that she had bought it, the first thing she was going to erect was a stout gate to stop unwanted visitors.
Her dark green Toyota pickup, more than ten years old, had handled the rutted dirt road easily. Turning on the heel of her work boot, she stared at the two twenty-foot tall timbers standing upright at the entrance to the place. Over time, and with lack of maintenance, the carved wooden sign that had once rested across them to create a wonderful entrance, had toppled off those two stout timbers, thanks to the seasonal winds that scoured the valley during the winter. It lay in two broken five-foot pieces, near the entrance. Etched into the battered, weathered oak sign were the words: WILDFLOWER RANCH. Whoever had been commissioned to create it had been a wonderful wood-sculpture artist because the words were carved into it, as well. It had lost its varnish a long time ago, the wood roughened by the winters. Still, she wanted to do something with it, get it fixed and lifted back into place where it had been for the family who had loved this place.
Dana wondered if the German wife, Hilda, had been responsible for that sign, or one of her offspring had it created? She would never know because the family had died out in 2000, with no one else to pass the ranch on to in their family. Since then, the land had lain dormant, unused, the cabin’s upkeep gone, leaving it and the land to the ravages of time and weather. No one, the Realtor had told her a week ago, would buy the ranch because of the small family log cabin. It would have to be razed and a new home built on the property. From his point of view, the land was worth something, but the log cabin was a total loss. She almost said her life was a total loss, too,