Chapter 51

“Ed we have a real problem,” The professor said.

Of course I expected the worst case. “What kind of problem,” I asked not wanting to hear it.

“That ‘fund me’ web page isn’t behaving like I expected,” he said.

“Well Gerome told me that it has starting out slowly,” I said.

“It did, but after he sent the promo video to utube and some other sites it has been getting better. Now we have more money than we need to fund the non profit corporation for ten years and the money keeps coming,” the professor explained.

“I would think, you would be happy about that,” I said.

“But what am I going to do with the surplus money?” He asked.

“Take on some other project,” I suggested. “You could always take Mary Beth someplace nice to observe the Cranes when they move on again.”

“I couldn’t do that,” he said seriously.

“It was a joke, find another bird that needs saving,” I suggested.

“Mary Beth wants to buy your land first thing,” he said. “There is more than enough money for that now.”

Why don’t you wait to see if the cranes return. If they come back next year it’s yours, just pay for the work Tommy and I did to improve it,” I suggested.

“Mary Beth and I talked about it we think ten thousand is a fair price,” he said.

“Like I said professor, wait till next spring,” I demanded.

When he cleared the line I called Tommy. “Damn, Gerome did too good a job with that ‘fund me’ page video. People are sending buckets of money,” I said. “The professor wants to buy the land from me.”

“That is going to prove difficult,” Tommy said.

“Damn, you FBI types are really first rate at stating the obvious,” I said. “I put him off until next year, so we need to figure out something.”

“It may not be a problem, we haven’t exactly got people beating our door down to buy the stuff,” he said.

“We have only had it ready to sell for a week. Give it time,” I suggested.

Nobody knew that I had been selling to the medical community since the early summer. I sold what I had grown in pots, so it wasn’t as high in quality as Lucinda’s. Mine was targeted to the people we wanted as customers.

I still had some of the original pot to unload before I pushed the new batch. The others sold only the new batch, so it was slow going.

I convinced Lucinda to make two different types of weed mixes. She had a smooth batch for the four hundred dollars an ounce crowd, and a more harsh mixture of buds, leaves, and a small amount of ground up stems. It was what we decided to move to the customers who needed the ordinary medicinal pot for pain relief.

While I waited for the pot business to pick up, the holiday season came and went that year. The worm business had even been good during the summer. It was the first time I had a real profit in that company. I could put money into the business, but I couldn’t tap the storage locker for money. I really didn’t need to, but I liked to laundry the money and have it at my disposal just in case.