Chapter 36

The entire day was dry again, but the fields were still too soggy to work in. The women from below assisted Doroteo and his six helpers in working on vines in the big vineyard. The long fourth row of vines had been planted and was already looking promising. The ladies worked on adding the extra row in each of the other two vineyards. D had made enough small plants from cuttings to begin growing a hell of lot more grapes.

Benson called me in the morning and asked, "Can you come in and ride around with Steve and me to look at some land parcels? Steve said these parcels are all tax forfeitures and have not been bid on for over five years, so he can work deals on them."

"I'll be in within the hour. Set it up and I'll take a look."

The three of us rode around in Steve's county owned four-wheel drive Explorer to look at five locations that could be developed. The common issue about all the properties was how far away from county utilities for water and sewage they were. There would probably be an investment in expanding that facility. Steve told us that the county could easily supply water to a minimum of a thousand more homes, and if we were putting in utilities, we could pipe gas in as well.

Steve had picked out what he thought would be properties where homes could be built in rustic forested areas. None were straight up and down, but in a couple of the areas, the roads would have some steep sections, or they would have to be built with switchbacks.

On the way back into town, I suggested to Benson, "Why don't we have the trust buy the properties, and if they don't work out for housing development, we'll think of some other use for the land."

Benson was in agreement, "I think that can be done if Steve doesn't want an arm or a leg for the properties."

Steve protested, "I don't know what trust you guys represent, but if I can get those five properties on the tax rolls with the anticipation of some higher future taxes, I'll make the county darn near give you the plots. I'll work on some numbers and put them to the county council. I'm sure they will go along with it."

I asked the two men, "The next thing we'll need is an engineer to design roads and utilities to the areas, so who do you know that we can use or where should I go to find one?"

We were all stumped. There had to be a couple of engineers and architects in the area we could use. I thought about calling Maude to see if she knew anyone.

I called Maude on the way home. "Hey, Lady, I need your community and regional knowledge."

"What kind of gossip do you want to hear, Mike?"

I asked straight away, "Where can I find an engineer and land development architect? I'm involved with Benson and the trust to possibly build some housing developments to take advantage of the population growth everyone seems to be anticipating."

"Oh boy, Mike, I may know the right guy for you, but I need to ask him first. If this works out, you may be in for a big surprise. I'll call you after I talk to him."

I was pulling into the parking area at the house when my cell rang, "Hey, Mike, Maude. I have just the man for the job. Invite me out to one of your suppers and I'll bring him with me."

"Come out this evening. I'll tell Mom, and I'm sure she'll be excited that you're coming. Don't be surprised if she's invited others. She loves to have people for supper."

Mom was walking around the edges of the garden, checking the ground and looking at the asparagus and rhubarb stalks already growing. I told her about Maude and she said, "I haven't invited anyone for this evening, but I want D and his girls to eat with us. I'll walk around to the upper vineyard and ask them."

"Take an ATV, Mom. They might be all the way down to the lower vineyard by now."

She agreed and walked to the equipment cave to use one of the neat little go fast ATVs.

That afternoon, Consuela, Rosita, Anita, Carmen, and a half dozen men came to the house to take the goats down to their final housing. It was Jesus that told me, "I must not be a good Mexican, since I can't always eat the spicy foods. The milk of the goat often helps, so this is good for me. Thank you, Mike. You have made Consuela and my stomach happy."

D and the girls went home to clean up before supper, but were back to help Mom and Millie in the kitchen. I think Mom was giving some cooking instruction while visiting with the girls.

I went out to greet Maude when I heard the guineas. What I expected to be Maude was Gene in a cable company pickup instead, and then I saw that he had Maude with him. Gene got out of the truck and stuck his hand out, "Let me introduce myself, Mr. Grayson. My name is Gene Crammer and I'm a land and development engineer, as well as an environmental architect. An environmental architect designs developments to blend with the land it is being built on. Can we talk?"

Maude came around the truck and hooked her arm around Gene's elbow. "See, I told you I knew someone who might be perfect for the job."

We went inside where I asked them if they would like a beer or a glass of wine. Maude said, "We want wine. Can we have some of your new wine that I'm told is delicious?"

I poured her some of the latest batch and Maude took her glass of wine and joined the throng of women in the kitchen making supper, while Gene and I sat at the small table to chat. "Gene, you surprised me, but I'm not surprised the cable company has someone with your skills to run the operation here."

"I think my job here is going to end soon, Mike. I was in charge of getting the cable paths built and pushing the installation of the actual cable. I've done a good job, except for being able to move the cable installation crews as fast as they should be. I think they're dragging the job out to make sure they have work for a while."

After a sip of wine, "You're kind of over-qualified for cable path jobs, aren't you?"

"Probably, Mike, but it's a job. The company I worked for didn't survive the housing shutdown, so I was out of a job and the cable company was offering a fair wage. I jumped on it. Now that the need for my services is coming to an end, I could be out of a job, or possibly transferred to Kansas or Idaho. I'm not hot about moving away from here. I've begun to put roots down." He looked over at Maude before adding, "If you know what I mean."

Wow, this was fast. I figured Benson and I would be looking for a long while to come up with someone to do the designs we were going to need for the raw development. "How soon will you have to know, Gene?"

"This job could last for probably another year unless they feel it can be handled remotely," Gene said, as he explained. "I can stay on this job until it goes away if you're concerned about how fast you need to hire me. I want you to hire me, but I know a project like you must be talking about takes a while to organize before the land is even purchased."

It was my turn to grin, "I think we made a deal on the land today. Your input would have been good, but the price is right, and it looks like the areas can be developed and linked to the other county utilities. If the land isn't suitable for housing, I'll turn it into a tree farm. I'll figure out how to make it pay off some other way."

"But just so you know, Gene. If you get laid off or you're asked to move or leave, I'm prepared to hire you immediately if you are the person for the job. Now I have to find out how to evaluate a person for the job."

Gene laughed, "That is classic. I will bring you a bunch of the past plans and work I did for the other company. I'm good at what I do, and I'm sure I can help you do what you're looking to do. I can help you get some model homes together that would be good with the environment such as you have here. I'm sure I can help you be successful."

Mom called us all to supper and this gave me a chance to introduce Gene to D. When D found out Gene's background, he went into his ideas about what he thought would appeal to potential city people who would commute to work.

I could have taken a walk as the two were totally into what D's ideas were and what Gene knew of the area. The more I listened to D, the more I thought he might be one of the people to run the project. He probably had some experience with development in Mexico and the trust could use his knowledge from there for here.

At the end of the evening, it was agreed that Gene would come to work for our yet un-named project and would start working with us while he still worked with the cable company. He would resign that position when we needed to have him full time. D was equally happy to know I had taken him seriously and was going forward with his idea.

As they left, Maude gave me a hug and whispered, "You might have missed your chance at some of my good lovin'. This guy might be the one. We'll have to just fantasize how it could have been, but thanks for helping to keep him around."

Before bed, Mom sat with me and told me, "Are we doing too much with too many people? How are we going to operate a farm while you do roads, run a tree cutting company, and now want to build a development or three? How are you going to do it all?"

My answer flowed from me easier than it probably was going to happen. "Pedro and Jesus are both capable of running crews for the cable paths and any land clearing that we need to do. If Ezra can't work, we are still going to have two crews that only need support and more work."

I had to take a breath. "The road commissioner job is really for the men who are doing it. They could have one of them step up, run for the office, and easily win. I might encourage that either this election or next, but they only needed me for the investment and cash flow. The group is now keeping the equipment up; paying all of the wages, which includes the new raises I gave them, plus all of the operating expenses, and still has a reserve. That company has a decent value in the equipment, plus the housing it owns. I'm really not needed for that group except for moral support. As those guys begin getting together with wives, partners, or girlfriends, they will move from the housing, although a couple may not want to get married and remain in the trailers."

Another breath and I continued. "The farm is the demanding part. We made money on the place last year, but we had a lot of wage expenses."

Mom interrupted me, "Some of those expenses you counted had nothing to do with the actual operation of the farm. You spent a bunch on the house. The outbuildings are part of the farm, but the house isn't."

"I'm not arguing about it, Mom; what I'm saying is that this place is more than a little one horse farm. We are farming a lot of tillable land with the widow's place, and Teddy is getting up there. We could be in trouble without his small equipment to harvest some of our crops. The new big equipment just won't fit in the fields. Hell, they can't even get to the fields.

"D has the vineyard looking good, and I didn't have to be the one putting chicken shit around each of the plants this year. Now we have to rake the gravel away from the stalks, break up the ground, put fertilizer down, and rake the gravel back over the area. It's not an easy job.

"The orchards are in good shape and we trimmed them up last fall. We'll go through them again now, but we will have another bumper crop of apples and pears. The new trees we planted last year won't produce for a couple of more years, but the orchards are filling in nicely."

Mom asked, "Are you forgetting about the smoke houses?"

"No, Mom, but I needed to comment on the garden. I'll bet we have one of the biggest produce growing operations in the north part of Kentucky. You're now looking at almost seven acres of garden. That's a hell of a big truck farm. I haven't researched it, but I'll bet we're doing a garden this size with the minimum of labor. One of the reasons is because of the way we can cultivate. Another is because we have labor who shares in the fruits of the garden."

"What I was trying to say, Mom, is that most all of the things that I think I'm responsible for can run on their own. Even the farm can darn near run on its own. Sure, I stoke the smokers a couple of times a day, but the ladies can also check them to make sure the fires are going. And I think I'm close to completing an automatic stoker for all of the rooms. This is a working farm. A real, live, genuine we can live off of it, working farm. Not only can we live off it, but we can support the folks from below, and my siblings and their kids as well. Mom, we are a producing, self-sufficient farm. Dad taught us how and we're doing it. Not necessarily with the same products, but we're making our farm profitable without any of the money we've been given."

Mom sipped her wine, "Speaking of which, Mike, we need to get all of that gold out of my closet. Think about how to do that and let's get it done. Ask your coin dealer friends how to dump that much so we can put it in the trust for all of the things you want to do."

"That is what takes a lot of the time, Mom. Benson is working hard to get the money up for the hospital, the church, and the schools, and now I've begun the scholarship program. I don't know how the guy has time for his clients."

"That's what he does, Mike. The man is good at what he does just like you're good at what you do. Come on, Farmer Mike, let's go to bed."

I slipped into bed next to Millie and she gave me a soft kiss that put me to sleep.

Dad was smiling at me. Ben gave me a wink as he scratched his whiskered chin. Eliza sat up and gave me a nod like Dad always does. The others were there, but it was as if we were gathered to talk or discuss something. Nothing was said, but I think a lot was relayed. They faded away to a mental picture of me with Millie, Mom, and two little kids. We were watching a young girl playing in the mountain flowers. She happily picked some and put one in her hair before skipping around the side of the mountain.

I heard Eliza say, "We're here for you, Mike."

The rest of the week was busy getting the land ready to plant again and making sure the outer fields were ready for the corn seed.

We planted four long rows of corn seed to begin the garden. We ran the empty corn planter up and down the field to give us a plowed out place to put our vegetable seeds. Kroger had given us a lot of seed, but it looked like it wasn't going to be enough for the entire garden. The ladies made up a list of veggies that would be good to grow some extra of and sent me to buy the seed. They mostly wanted tomato, green bean, and cucumber seeds so they could pick various sizes throughout the season for different types of pickles. I was fine with that, but I knew that we were going to have enough pickles for all of Kentucky with the way they were planting them. We had added two long rows of various hot peppers this year. My mouth watered thinking of the fresh jalapenos and serranos that would be grown. I'd also been introduced to something called "Sweet Fire Pickles", with thin sliced bread & butter pickles mixed with sliced jalapenos that gave you sweet, sour, hot, and mild flavors at the same time, with just enough crunch to be really satisfying.

The city folks came down the next weekend and helped with the hand planting of small seeds and onions. The sweet potatoes were planted, and we were ready when St. Patrick's Day came to plant all of the rest of the potatoes.

We were into the last of April when Benson wanted me to come to town early one morning. I cleaned up and wore khakis and a nice shirt for a look different than fatigues or BDUs. Denise wasn't in the office, so Benson looked out and said, "Come in here and talk to me, Mike."

Benson scrambled around and poured me a cup of old coffee, but it was hot so wasn't totally undrinkable. "Mike, you need to think about this fall and the coming election for Road Commissioner. It is an elected position, so you have to do some campaigning to go with it. Everyone in the county knows you've done the job, but some voters might listen to someone else who is campaigning for the position in one of the townships, and you could lose a piece of your action. I'm telling you, Mike, you can't let that happen. The county roads are in the best shape they have ever been, and it's because of you. Your men fix a problem before anyone can complain about it. They are out there running the roads, constantly making sure there are no huge potholes, washes, or erosion that threaten the roadways. This past winter, we were able to drive around town anywhere we wanted because the roads were all cleared. I think you need to consider doing some campaigning. Maybe just handbills and cards to pass out and a few signs will work. Most everyone knows that you are taking care of the roads now, so let's remind them."

"Benson, did you call me in for just this? The Doc has already been on my case over the coming election. I've heard from a lot of people out at the market. They are telling me the same thing, so someone must want the job back."

The man let out a big sigh. "One of the men who lost his township to you is planning on blitzing his area to attempt to get his position back. He didn't sell his equipment, and I suppose he now knows that he has to perform to keep his job. The problem is, he won't have to do anything to the roads for a year except some minor snow clearing because you have the roads in shape. By the time he decides to work on the roads, they are going to be back the way you found them. It could be a vicious cycle. You fix them up and another guy lets them slide. They are not going to spend the money. They are going to keep it for themselves."