Chapter 6

“Les, tell me about the five hundred acres you and Luther were talking about.”

“Before we even bid on the Sisemore place, I’d already told Luther that you, Tom and Juan Carlos wanted me to bid on it. He told me that he owned another five hundred acres next to Tom’s spread. I told him that first, I had to see if I could buy the Sisemore spread and then see how much money I had left before I spoke for another five hundred acres.

“After I won the bid, he told me that he’d sell that other parcel to me for the same price per acre as I paid for the Sisemore land. I still wasn’t sure about it, until we started planning every thing out, and then Tom found the tractors at such a good deal. I knew then, we were on our way and we’d be able to farm another five hundred acres with the same implements and a little more labor. Luther told me the land was close to being ready to plant and the last owner had canals and flume ditches on all of it to irrigate the crops.”

“I know where that land lies. The farmland has even richer soil than yours or ours, but the lower land is apt to flood some years late in the spring when the snow melts in the mountains.”

“I want you to go with me to look at it and help me decide. If we can plant yours and Juan Carlos’ farmland, then Tom’s farmland and mine too, we could surely, sometime during the year plant another five hundred acres.”

“You want me to help you decide?” she looked at me, then I saw her lips curl into a slow smile.

“Well, we are partners, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but it will be your land and you’ll still have to pay for it. I don’t have the money.”

“Luther is going to write it up as a rent contract. He will deed the land to me and I’ll pay him rent payments each year until it’s paid off, then I’ll file the deed. By then we will have made enough money, and no one will ever know that I owned it all along.”

“Les Savage, I hope you still let me be your partner and a good friend of yours when you become a millionaire. I have never known anyone who can think ahead and deal the way you can.”

“Lucia, one day you and I will sit down and finish that talk we started about that ugly brute coming into your life.”

“LES!”

“Lucia, don’t get excited, now. It’s not time yet for us to talk about that, and you know it. We have too much work in front of us to say anymore right now. Besides, you’ve only known me two days and you may not even like me a year from now, or even a month.”

“Les, just tell me ... are you really thinking about me ... I mean us ... I mean ... you know... ?”

“Lucia, let’s go buy some seed for our new produce company. I promise you, by the time you know for sure what you want, you’ll see how serious I can be when I set my mind to something.”

She laced the long slender fingers on her left hand through the fingers on my right hand as we walked into Martin’s Hardware Store. I looked at her and I couldn’t help but smile when she smiled at me. This woman is beautiful and sometimes I think maybe I am dreaming when she looks at me like this.

The man and woman behind the long counter waved when we walked in – they were waiting on three customers who stood at the counter with large pails of seed. Lucia pulled on my shirt sleeve and pointed toward the back of the store, at the other end of the long counter. There were large, open top, galvanized metal bins lined up. All of them filled with different seed. Above each bin was a sign with the name of seed it contained.

Some bins were larger than others and some seed were way larger than others. Lucia had her list with her and as she went down the line, she checked off the seed we needed – that they had in stock.

She was still checking seed off her list when the man came back to where we were.

She turned to greet him, “Good morning Mr. Martin ... I want you to meet my new business partner, Les Savage.

“Les, this is Mr. Fred Martin, the owner of Martin’s Hardware.”

After we shook hands, he turned to Lucia, “What type of business are you in, Señorita Santiago?”

“We are going to plant vegetables and melons on our combined lands. Les bought the Sisemore ranch at the auction yesterday.”

“Well of course – I heard there was a newcomer from back east who came to Yuma County and purchased that spread. Congratulations, Mr. Savage. Now what can I do for you this morning?”

I told him, “We’re here to purchase all the seed we can from you. We were told that you give a sizable discount on large quantities and we certainly intend to purchase a large quantity of seed.”

Just as I spoke, I heard his telephone ring. I watched as his wife walked down behind the wooden counter near where we were. I kept watching as she picked up the part of the telephone that was on the end of a cord.

Above the telephone, there was a sign posted. “Free use of telephone for our customers. Calls are limited to local calls only, without permission. Call times are limited to two minutes”

His wife hung the telephone back on the wall and I turned to him, “Mr. Martin, what would you charge us for a call to Tucson on your telephone?”

“What we normally do when a customer needs to make a long distance call, is have the operator call back with time and charges after the call has ended. Then the customer pays us for the charges that will appear on our monthly bill. Would you like to place a call?”

“No, but Lucia would,” I told him and Lucia looked at me with her eyes wide.

“Les, do you want me to call him now?”

“Yes, we need to know as soon as we can. The amount of seed we purchase depends on his answer, don’t you agree?”

“I agree, and I did bring his number just in case I had the nerve to call ... I’m so afraid that ... but we do need to know either way...

“... Mr. Martin, may I use your telephone. I promise I won’t be on the call any longer than necessary.”

“Go right ahead. When the operator answers, give her the number you wish to call, then tell her that you’d like a call back, for time and charges and she’ll make your call for you.”

Lucia went behind the counter and placed her handbag, her tablet and pencil on the counter as she made her call to Professor Forbes. I knew there was hardly even a chance of her being able to talk to him like this ... especially this early in the morning. But in no time, she was talking and I heard her say his name. She was writing on her tablet really fast as she talked ... then nodded as she smiled and listened. She must have been on the telephone at least thirty minutes before I heard her say goodbye.

She looked at me from across the counter and she had tears in her eyes. She wasn’t crying, she was trying to smile as she hurried around the counter. She grabbed my hand and pulled me down toward the other end of the counter as she began to tell me what she had found out, as fast as she could talk...

“Les, Professor Forbes told me that he tried to call me at home yesterday and the day before, but there was no answer! WE HAVE IT, LES. WE HAVE IT ALL!”

“We have it all? All of what?“

“YES ... Oh I’m shaking so, I can hardly talk. He has secured our grants and he was calling to tell me that we need to start planting vegetable seed as soon as we can. He’s going to send some of his agricultural students over to help us plan where to plant each vegetable and make sure we get our first crop planted in time to harvest, then plant another crop for fall harvest. Oh Les, I am so excited.”

The telephone rang again and I saw Mr. Martin writing on the tablet under the telephone.

“Lucia, we need to make a deal with Mr. Martin to buy his seed in quantities until we can find out if there’s a way to purchase seed on the wholesale market. He orders his seed from a wholesaler and one day, we will buy more than he does.”

“You run the company, Les. Pay the man for the telephone call and make the deal with him. I’m still trying to calm down so I can think straight. Oh Les, I can hardly wait to tell Grandfather the news. He has been so worried. We really are going to make it, aren’t we, Les?”

“Yes, we’re going to make it, one way or the other. You keep checking your seed list while I talk to Mr. Martin,” I told her and walked over to talk to him.

“Mr. Martin, I need to speak with you in private, if you have the time.”

By the time we walked out of Martin’s Hardware Store, we had made a deal for all the seed we would need for this first crop. Cabbage sets, lettuce sets and onion bulbs included. Tom will have to drive his wagon and team back to town tomorrow, just to haul all the seed we’ll need over the first week or so of planting. While we listened, Mr. Martin placed a telephone order for five thousand each of fresh cabbage sets and fresh lettuce sets – with twenty thousand more onion bulbs. As soon as he was off the telephone, he told us they’d be here by rail in four days.

We wouldn’t know exactly how much of each seed we’d need until we saw the new land and knew the total acreage of all the fields we’d plant. I was counting on the University of Arizona students to show us what we’d need when they get here. Lucia told me they would arrive by automobile some time tomorrow.

I hope Luther was right about the Luck of the Irish – and it keeps smiling down on us.

Before we left Yuma, Lucia told me where the two blacksmith shops were located, then she went with me to talk to the men. The first one we stopped at, Mack Connor and Son, had some mule and horse implements lined up in front of the building. The first thing I noticed about them was, none of them had the long wooden tongue attached.

When we walked into the shop, the younger of the two men looked up and slapped the older man’s arm. They both put down what they were doing to came over and talk.

“Good morning folks. I’m Mack Connor and this is my son John, what can we do for you?” The older man asked.

“Les Savage here, and this is Lucia Santiago. We’re forming a vegetable farming corporation and we need to talk to you about these farm implements you have here,” I told him, pointing to the two plows they were working on.

“We heard your name called a few times yesterday. You’re the one from St. Louis who bought the Sisemore land and paid cash for it.”

“Yes, Sir. That’s me.”

“You got a really good piece of Yuma County there, Mister. Do you need some work done on your plows out there?”

“What I wanted to talk to you about was – have you ever reworked the hitches on any mule and horse implements so they could be pulled by a tractor?”

“WELL NOW... By golly, I thought I had heard it all... That’s a new one on me. Don’t see why it wouldn’t work though. Tell me what implements you have in mind to be reworked like that.”

“All of them ... All of them that we’ll be using that is.”

“You mean like middle-busters, breaking plows, planters, disks, cultivators and such?”

“Those and fertilizer distributors too. Do you think you and your son could make it work?”

“If it can be done – we can do it. We’d first have to know how the implements would hitch up to your tractor and how much turning room you’d need at the ends of the rows.”

My next question made him laugh, “If we bring a tractor over here and leave it a few days, could you tell more about it and how much it would cost to change each implement over?”

“You mean to tell me, you just now bought a spread and you already own a tractor?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. If you’re not sure you can get to our work right away, tell me and I’ll check with the other blacksmith to see if he can get do it.”

“Don’t get too quick with me now, Mr. Savage. I’ve never worked on a tractor before, and there’s only a few of them around in this whole part of the country. Bring that tractor by and leave it just long enough for me and my boy to measure and figure some. We’ll tell you what it will cost to change your implements over from mules and horses to tractors. We bought these old implements here at the auction, for little to nothing, the other day and we’re aiming to put new tongues in the ones that need it and new plowshares on some. One or two had a busted wheel and we’re going to fix them up to sell. We’ll use these as a guide so we can get it right on yours when you bring your tractor.”

“When you do all of that, would you be able to come out to the old Sisemore spread and convert all of mine, then Tom Wancho’s and Juan Carlos’ implements too?”

“You give us all that work and we’ll be there with our work wagon, this week ... that is, as soon as we know what all it will take.”

“That’s good enough for me. Our tractors will be at the depot in the morning and we’ll bring one by and leave it while we get the rest of them home.”

“Mister, I hope you and Tom and Señorita Santiago will let us have all your farm repair business, now that you’ve got tractors in your operation.”

“We’ll deal on that part later ... I already have in my mind, a large plow. But one day when you come out, I’ll show you what I want to do with that plow and you can tell me how big of a plow you can build.”

Lucia and I were riding back toward the river, on our way home, when she asked me, “Les we sure are getting deep into this business before we plant a seed. It has already grown so big, it scares me. Are you positive we’ll make it until we have money coming in, with all these expenses up front?”

“Lucia, we need to be ready to get big in a hurry if we’re going to make it. Your professor friend told you the grants are already approved. He’s even sending some of his students out here to show us how to do it right. We have tractors coming and now we’re about to convert mule implements to tractor implements. All we’ll need now is enough labor with the know-how to plant seed the right way and set out the little plants sets like the Martin’s have back there. If I heard you, Tom and Juan Carlos right, we can grow vegetables year round out here. Back home, we had snow, ice, frost, and cold winds from late fall, all winter, and into early spring.”

“Les, you can think on a much larger scale than I’m used to. I like your ideas, but what I really like about you is, you have such a good head for business ... Plus you can think of an answer before I can fully describe the problem.”

I laughed at her and she laughed too, then I told her, “Lucia, all I know how to do is try to think of the next step we’re about to take. Then, I can start planning for it, before we trip over something we didn’t see in front of us.”

“I want to learn to do that the way you do.”

“You already do. You were the one who planned this whole idea out in the first place. Now that we have the bank money to work with, we’re just trying to take your idea and make it work on a big enough scale to pay all of us back for our labor, our money and our time spent when we sell the first vegetable crops.”

When we came to Tom’s place again, we rode back past his line of farm implements. From what I had seen of the implements at Connor’s Blacksmith Shop, the ones without the long wooden tongues in them – and what he had told me about them, I could already see it in my mind. These very farm implements will soon be pulled by a tractor ... Five tractors scattered across the farm at the same time, doing different jobs, if need be.

Back at my new farm and ranch, I was anxious to take a tour of my land.

Morena and Paulina had milked the two cows and they were pouring the milk from their milk pails into gallon glass jars through a cloth to strain the milk. They told me this would be more than enough fresh milk for all of us and what soured, they would churn to make butter, then use buttermilk to bake bread and biscuits.

Tom had gone with Juan Carlos over to his farm, to feed, since they’d left before daylight this morning.

With Joaquin and Alejandro, Lucia and I set out to take a tour of my land. Savage land now, not Sisemore land any longer.

I had never in my life seen anything as staggering to my mind as the first time we came to a plowed field with the long rows laid off perfectly straight from end to end. There wasn’t just one field, there were many, many fields, one after the other as we rode our horses between the fields on the narrow dirt roads – turn rows, they called them

Except for the two fenced pastures we passed by, and one field they pointed out to me with one hundred acres in it, this whole farm was plowed into rows.

“Les, come let us show you about this fine soil on your new farm,” Joaquin told me as he dismounted.

Kneeling at the end of a row, he scooped up a double handful of soil and let it sift through his fingers. He scooped up another handful and cupped his hands to make the moist soil into a ball that fell apart when he dropped it back on top of the row.

Lucia and Alejandro were squatting beside Joaquin and me as I knelt in the dirt beside him. Lucia began trying to teach me about soil and the difference in our soils and other soils across the county and the state.

“Les, this soil is enriched with all the minerals and nutrients needed to raise a garden. The many hundreds of years of flooding by the Colorado and Gila Rivers in the past, have left rich silt deposits of minerals along this wide valley here in Yuma County and across the river into California. These deposits, mixed with the natural loamy soils of the valley, combined with this climate, has created a perfect oasis for growing vegetables and fruit year round. We have abundant sunshine and we have warm weather all year, most every year.”