make her feel uncomfortable. Her mother, Nalani, had taught her long ago as a child to always tell the whole truth. Don’t fudge it, don’t manipulate it.
As she walked quietly across the living room, she saw him turn, as if either hearing or sensing her coming toward him, or both. She was still in shock that he wanted her to stay, to potentially hire her, providing she wanted the job. Well, she was going to find out because he hung up the phone, pulled his black Stetson off the wall peg and settled it on his head. She should feel nervous, but for whatever reason she did not. In her left hand she had a black baseball cap and a notebook.
“Ready?” he asked, opening the door for her.
“As ready as I can be,” she answered, walking past him and onto the porch.
* * *
“I think Mary and Theresa filled you in about the ranch?” he asked as he drove out of the oval gravel driveway in front of the ranch house.
“Yes. But hearing about it and actually seeing it are two different things.” She saw the large, flat rectangles of fields. “Tell me about that field,” she said as she pointed to it.
“One of our four clover fields,” he said, slowing the truck and making a turn to a low hill that had a dirt road running over it. “My family, over the generations, were very concerned about the soil and ensuring that all the nutrients were not leached out of it. This clover field comprises five thousand acres. We cut and bale it three times in a season, selling the bales to local and regional farmers and ranchers.”
“Do you use pesticides or herbicides on them?”
Chase chuckled. “My mother would skin me alive if I did. No. The family matriarchs, for the last hundred years, have used only old farm practices. They planted herbs that naturally deterred pests from ruining any crop we have on this ranch. Further, we rotate our crops to keep the soil rich. We have an area near the ranch that has forty compost bins. Annually, every fall, we distribute that enriched soil back into the fields.”
He parked the truck and got out. She joined him, notebook open, pen in hand. Pointing to the field, which was flourishing with pink-headed flowers everywhere, he said, “They plant marigolds along the edge, at least ten feet wide, all around it. Over the decades, even though they are annuals, they drop their seeds and reseed the next spring.”
“I can see them,” she said. “That’s wonderful. Are you using marigolds to keep rabbits out of it? Wouldn’t they love to eat the clover?”
“Right you are,” he praised, giving her a curious look. “Are you steeped in natural ways to keep pests out of a crop?”
“Very much so,” she said, writing down the information. “Since you’re going to have beehives, you need to stay far, far away from pesticides, herbicides, and no GMOs. You don’t have them here anywhere on the ranch, do you?”
“Hell no,” he growled. “Everyone in this valley has agreed to never use GMO seeds or anything that has been genetically altered or tampered with. My next-door neighbor, Logan Anderson, has had family in this valley longer than anyone. His ranch is a hundred thousand acres. Ours is forty thousand. They butt up against one another on one boundary. We had a talk about this at the ranchers and farmers meeting when GMOs first came out, and we all agreed never to use them. So far, that pact has held. Besides, my mother is an herbalist, among the many hats she wears.”
He pointed to the right, on the other side of the main ranch area. “Over there are a number of gardening plots, vegetables for Mary’s grocery store—Mama’s Store—in town. She will sell only organic produce with no fertilizers on them except natural ones, like our compost soil. The compost is put into the soil in late fall, after the vegetables have been picked. She uses marigolds, basil, and perennial lavender, around her plots.”
“The bees are going to love your clover and alfalfa fields,” she said, pleased with his explanation. “If you really want a good year of honey, usually from May to September, and sometimes later, if winter is mild, you need large areas of one type of plant. Then, the bees will go back to the hive and do a waggle dance and tell other bees where it’s located. They generally don’t like to travel more