Part Nine: Planting
We planted the last week of April.
Jeff borrowed a garden tiller from a buddy at the dealership. He and Caleb worked up the half acre on a Saturday in March, turning over ten years of grass and thatch. They spread lime and composted manure from a neighbor’s dairy barn. They tilled it again.
By April, the soil was dark and loose and smelled like spring.
Caleb did the research.
He went to the library in New Bremen and checked out four books on growing sweet corn. He read them all. He took notes in a spiral notebook. He drew a map of the half acre on graph paper, with every row marked and labeled.
He calculated how many seeds they’d need. How far apart to plant them. How many ears they could expect from a half acre if everything went right.
“Maybe three hundred dozen,” he said. “If we get rain.”
They bought their own seed.
Caleb and Hannah went with Jeff to Hartley Feed and Seed in New Bremen. The same feed store whose pink receipt had been sitting on Dean’s kitchen counter.
Old Mr. Hartley was behind the counter. He’s eighty-one. He’s run that store since 1968. He knows every farmer in four counties.
He looked at the kids. At the coffee can Hannah was carrying.
“What are you two buying?” he asked.
“Sweet corn seed,” Caleb said. “Peaches and Cream. And Silver Queen for late season.”
Mr. Hartley looked at the coffee can. He looked at Jeff.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
Then he went into the back room and came out with two bags of seed.
“That’ll be sixty-two dollars,” he said.
Hannah counted it out of the coffee can. Carefully. A twenty, two twenties, two ones.
Mr. Hartley wrote out a receipt. Pink. Carbon copy.
He handed it to Hannah.
Hartley Feed and Seed. Customer: Caleb & Hannah Lund. Paid in full. $62.00.
“Your grandma’s been buying her seed here for forty years,” Mr. Hartley said quietly.
Hannah looked up at him.
“I know,” she said. “This is ours.”
We planted on a Saturday.
The last week of April. Cool and bright. The four of us on our knees down the rows.
Jeff marked the rows with string and stakes, thirty inches apart, just like Caleb’s map. Caleb dug the furrows with a hoe. Hannah dropped the seeds, two at a time, eight inches apart. I came behind and covered them, patting the soil down with my hands.
It took all day.
By late afternoon, my knees were black with dirt. Hannah had mud on her face. Caleb had blisters on both palms from the hoe.
We stood at the end of the half acre and looked at it. Twenty-four rows of bare brown dirt. Nothing to see yet.
“Now what?” Hannah asked.
“Now we wait,” Jeff said.
Part Ten: The Sign
The corn came up in nine days.
Little green spears poking through the dirt in perfect rows. Hannah ran out every morning before school to count them.
They hoed weeds in May. They side-dressed with nitrogen in June. When July came in hot and dry, they dragged garden hoses from the house and watered by hand, row by row, in the evenings.
By the middle of July, the corn was taller than Jeff.
Jeff would not buy a sign.
I offered. There’s a sign shop in Celina that makes vinyl banners. Fifty dollars for a big one, bright colors, professional.
“No,” Jeff said. “I’ll make it.”
He lettered one himself on cardboard.
He took a big flat box from the appliance store in Minster. The box a refrigerator came in. He cut out one side, four feet wide and three feet tall. He painted it white with leftover house paint from the garage.
Then he sat at the kitchen table one night with a can of green paint and a brush and lettered it by hand.
It took him three hours.
SWEET CORN
The letters were a foot tall. Green. A little crooked. The R leaned to the right.
And under it, in smaller letters, he painted their names.
Grown by Caleb & Hannah Lund.
When he was done, he held it up for the kids to see.
Hannah clapped. Caleb just looked at it for a long time.
“Your names go on it,” Jeff said quietly. “Nobody else’s. Ever.”
Jeff didn’t want to sell on the county blacktop.
That’s where Dean’s stand was. Two miles south. People drove past it on their way to the lake. It would have looked like we were competing with her. Trying to steal her customers.
“Not the blacktop,” Jeff said. “Somewhere else.”
He thought about it for a week.
Then he called Chief Barnes.
Part Eleven: The Firehouse
The New Bremen Volunteer Fire Department sits right at the one four-way stop in town. Corner of Main and Monroe. Everybody in town drives past it at least once a day.
It’s a red brick building with two big bay doors. An engine, a tanker, and an old brush truck. A flagpole out front. A sign that says PANCAKE BREAKFAST 2ND SAT. ALL YOU CAN EAT $8.
Chief Dave Barnes has run the department for nineteen years. He’s sixty-two, a retired lineman from the electric co-op, with a gray buzz cut and forearms like Christmas hams.
He’s also Jeff’s old Little League coach.
Jeff called him on a Sunday night.
“Dave,” he said. “My kids grew sweet corn this summer. They need somewhere to sell it. Could they set up on your apron on Saturdays? Out of the truck?”
Chief Barnes was quiet on the phone for a moment.
“Your kids grew it?” he asked.
“Every ear,” Jeff said.
“Your mom’s still got her stand out on Kuether Road?”
Jeff paused.
“She does,” he said.
Another long pause.
“I heard something,” Chief Barnes said slowly. “Last fall. At the co-op. About the money from your mom’s stand. About the kids.”
Jeff didn’t say anything.
“Bring ’em Saturday,” Chief Barnes said. “Seven o’clock. Park right on the apron. I’ll move the brush truck.”
Part Twelve: Saturday Morning
We picked Friday night and Saturday morning at five, in the cool.
Caleb and Hannah, in their headlamps, out in the half acre with five-gallon buckets. Squeezing ears. Checking silks. Pulling down and twisting, the way their grandmother taught them.
They stacked them in baker’s dozens in old apple crates Jeff found at a farm sale. Thirteen to a bundle. Just like Dean always did.
By six-thirty, we had sixty dozen in the bed of the pickup.
We pulled onto the apron at a quarter to seven.
The big red bay door was standing open. Engine 1 sat inside, shining, freshly washed. The firefighters had come early for some reason. I counted five cars in the lot.
Jeff backed the truck onto the apron. He dropped the tailgate. He leaned the cardboard sign against the back bumper.
SWEET CORN. Grown by Caleb & Hannah Lund.
Hannah set up her bucket. The same overturned pickle bucket she’d stood on all last summer at Grandma’s stand. She’d brought it from home.
She climbed up on it. She set the Folgers coffee can on the tailgate beside her. The one with the stickers. She’d made a change box out of an old tackle box from the garage.
Caleb stood beside the crates with his arms crossed. Ready to haul.
Chief Barnes came out of the station with his coffee.
He was wearing his blue department T-shirt and a ball cap. He walked slowly across the apron toward the truck.
He looked at the crates of corn.
He looked at the leaning cardboard sign with its crooked R.
He looked at Hannah standing on her bucket.
“Look at this operation,” he said.
He reached into his shirt pocket.
He pulled out a five-dollar bill.
He held it out.
Not to Jeff. Not to me.
To Hannah.
“First bag’s mine,” he said.
