Chapter 1

I got married at thirty-three, relatively late in life, after years of thinking I'd never meet that special woman. When she suddenly popped into my life I was astonished, and then delighted. Losing her was just as sudden, and the emotions involved in it were even stronger. I didn't even have the closure of being able to bury her because ... well ... there wasn't anything to put in the coffin. The counselor the airline supplied suggested I think of her as having been buried at sea. That didn't help.

I want you to know up front here that I'm not trying to get you to feel sorry for me. I took care of that, believe me. I just want you to understand the frame of mind I was in when things happened after that, or I made decisions; that's all.

I couldn't live in the house any more. I had a company auction off all the furniture and everything else we'd bought together. I sold the house too, because even seeing it from the outside made me want to fall down and cry. I didn't need a whole house any more anyway. I couldn't get up the interest to look for an apartment, and got a long term room in a fleabag hotel because it was quick and easy. The room had a television, though I didn't watch it much. I read a lot of books, though it took a really good one to keep my mind off my loss.

I kept my job as an accountant, because it was somewhere to go during the day, and I could dull the pain by letting the numbers distract me. Tax season was the best, because I was busy extra hours of the day. I turned management of my own financial affairs over to Phil, a friend of mine who didn't know what to say about Vicky being dead, but wanted to do something to help.

I found that if I went for a run that helped. I wasn't a physical kind of person before all this happened. I had never been a runner before this, but I'd heard that runners kind of zone out while they run and I desperately wanted to zone out, so I tried it. I didn't zone out, but there were lots of things to distract me, particularly if I ran during rush hour. That's when I started running to and from work, instead of driving my car. Rain or shine, cold or hot, it didn't matter to me. It was something to do that kept me from constantly thinking about my loss.

Three years later I was finally able to think about her without crying. I probably should have stayed in therapy a lot longer than I did. Maybe that would have limited my mourning time to a year. Basically, though, one day it finally occurred to me that I didn't have a life. I looked around and took stock. In the hotel room I had some clothes and three neatly organized accordion folders of my personal records. I had a few books. I swapped books at the local used book place, or got them from the library, so I didn't own that many. I still had a bunch of stuff in the self-storage place, but hadn't even been down there in over a year. I paid all my bills online from my computer at work, and didn't get paper bank statements. Whenever I paid a bill I saw a summary of account activity, and all I ever checked routinely was the balance in my checking account. They say mechanics drive broken down cars, and accountants never balance their checkbooks. It's true, I guess.

When I took the time to actually go talk to Phil and look at my own financial situation I was mildly astonished to find that the proceeds of the house, and my wife's life insurance, having been invested and rolled over a number of times, had made me a modestly wealthy man. Of course the Spartan lifestyle I lived had a lot to do with that too. I'd completely forgotten about the fact that I'd signed papers for Phil to have almost fifty percent of my salary diverted to an investment fund, and that I'd also elected to pay taxes on it up front. In short, if I wanted it, within six months I could have over two million dollars in liquid assets available to me.

When you have that much money it's easy to overcompensate for awakening from three years or so of lethargic non-involvement in the world. While before this I elected to do relatively nothing except feel sorry for myself, now I went a little crazy trying to change the feel of my life.

Things were slow one day, and I saw an ad in the paper about how the government auctions off land to settle tax debts. I'd seen it before, but had never paid any attention to it. This time I went to the web site that was listed. For some reason I got interested in a four hundred acre farm in South Dakota that had been seized by the government for back taxes. I had this stylized vision of being a gentleman farmer, which turned out to be a real hoot.

You can be an accountant anywhere. South Dakota needs them, just like everybody else. It turned out that four hundred acres in South Dakota is considered to be a garden plot by most ranchers. If it's not land that's contiguous with what you already own, it would be more of a pain in the ass to mess with than be of any benefit to a big rancher. In short, I got the farm for a song. I felt bad about that later, when I realized how the former owners must have felt about losing it, but at the time I thought it was great that I still had plenty of money in my investment accounts when I got the deed to the place.

It was after that that I found out farming is hard work, whether you think you can hire somebody else to do it or not. It's risky too. Two days of bad weather at the wrong time can ruin an entire year's crop. After the first two years I ended up renting most of the tillable land out for shares of the crop, and turned the rest into pasture for horses. I usually board five or six these days, which kind of breaks even on the expenses. When I'm not taking care of horses I spend my time working on the house, which is sixty or seventy years old, and on a garden that turned out to be probably ten times larger than I really needed. During harvest season I spend a lot of time at the farmers' market and still end up donating truckloads of food to the food bank. I brought my Spartan lifestyle with me. I wash dishes by hand. I heat as much as possible with a wood stove. I don't have cable or a cell phone. When I'm not working (which is unusual) I still read lots of books. Somehow being closer to nature made me feel closer to Vicky too, and I was able to talk to her out there in the sun, wind and rain, and nobody would hear me.

Well almost nobody. I do have neighbors, though it took me years to get to know them. I first met Lynne the second day I'd lived there, when she brought over a casserole as a housewarming gift.

"Welcome to the neighborhood," she said calmly when I opened the door. She said more than that, of course. She introduced herself, and I somewhat belatedly invited her in. There were still boxes lying around, unopened, and I had no furniture. She told me about the local auction barn, which had a public sale every Friday night. I judged her to be twenty-two or so and thought maybe she was the neighbor's daughter or something. I figured out that was an error when she said she and Paul, her husband, had a seven-year-old daughter.

It turned out that the land I'd bought had originally been in their family. Their house was only a quarter mile away and had been built by her father. I was living in her grandfather's house.

That was about all I found out that day. I met the little girl, whose name was Jill, when I took the baking dish back. Jill was a bright, friendly talkative girl. Her mother was on the phone when I arrived, so Jill entertained me by asking at least three dozen questions about who I was and where I came from and why I had bought Great Grandpa Lucian's house and what was I going to grow and all manner of other things.

Once Lynne was off the phone she scolded Jill for being snoopy. The girl flashed me a smile and disappeared off somewhere. I ended up staying for dinner and met Paul when he came in from tending their cattle. I found out during supper that they'd wanted to get my land back, but hadn't had the money to compete. There was no rancor about it. Paul just suggested that if farming didn't work out for me, he'd appreciate if I let him know if I was going to sell or not.

Being from the city I was a bit stand offish. I was also somewhat shy, because my people skills weren't the best. I guess I took a page from Jill's book and asked a lot of questions so that they'd do all the talking instead of me. In the process I found out they'd met in the local chapter of Future Farmers of America, and that Lynne had inherited her farm, about three thousand acres, from her parents. Her grandfather's farm had already been sold to a man who turned out to be a speculator. When they got married Paul was able to start building a herd of cattle. Lynne spent most of her time working in the orchard her parents had planted a couple of years before she was born. About all I told them was that I was a widower who got tired of the city and wanted to give clean living a try.

That was pretty much it, at least for a few months. I went back home, with mixed feelings because while it had been good to be able to do something as simple as chat with some nice people, I didn't have the kind of social skills to feel comfortable talking to them. Paul was a strong young man who looked like the cowboy incarnate. Lynne was a pretty young woman who made me feel uncomfortable BECAUSE I thought of her as being so pretty. I was thirty-five and they were both ten years younger. And their seven-year-old daughter was even more removed from my normal social group.

Had I been so jaded as to think that Paul hoped I'd fail (so he could try to buy the land) I would have been disabused of that notion almost immediately. Within days he came over and said he'd like to help me get off to a good start.

The good equipment, or at least the newer equipment, had been sold before the farm was sold. What was left was what might have been called good equipment fifty years ago. Of course I didn't know the difference, and the fact that I had a tractor that ran, and plows and disks and harrows and all that kind of thing made me think it would be easy. After all, all you did was ride the tractor, right? Whatever the tractor was pulling did all the work, right?

Actually, as things turned out, the tools I had were about right for the three hundred acres of tillable land I now owned. It hadn't BEEN tilled for over three years, but Paul helped me hook up the old three bottom plow to the three-point hitch on the Massey Ferguson tractor and showed me how to turn the earth over so it could be chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces by succeeding implements. It took me three weeks to prepare those three hundred acres for planting and it was only then that I found out my options for a crop that would have time to mature before winter came were reduced to only one thing.

That's how I became a sunflower farmer.

After about two weeks, when he'd spared much more time than he could afford to get me started, Paul went back to taking care of his cows and I didn't see much of him after that.

Other than at community social events, I saw Lynne about once a month when she brought over a pie. She made the most delicious homemade pies. What kind of pie she brought depended on what was in season. If there was no fruit ripe, she'd make lemon meringue, or chocolate, or banana cream or some such thing. Her rhubarb pie was one of my favorites. I kept telling her she didn't have to do that, and that I had nothing I could repay her with. When I tried to pay her money one time she went three months before I got another pie. She was just like that. She kind of kept an eye on me, I think.

Actually, I saw more of Jill than I did her parents, at least for the first three years. As I labored to become a farmer I often saw Jill sitting on a horse, watching me. She'd smile and wave and, more often than I like remembering, ride over to tell me what I was doing wrong. She was a skinny thing, with those coltish legs that make a girl look so awkward, though she wasn't really awkward at all. She knew ten times as much about farming as I did.