Eli stormed out.
“And there’s our answer,” Samuel called after him. “He knew how important it was to soak every trunk. He just didn’t want to do the work.”
Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. “I was depending on the cash from this year’s crops to do more than just offset the financial struggles on the dairy side.”
Samuel scoffed. “This affects all my plans.”
If they couldn’t find a way to halt the infestation, none of the apples in their brother’s ten acres would reach their full color and size—not this year or next. And when produce was affected year after year, the family bills and taxes were in danger of going unpaid. Poor harvests the last three years had already depleted their savings. If the orchard again yielded more cider apples than eating ones, they’d have to sell off a good portion of the land just to pay the property taxes, and selling off land to make ends meet could eventually force them to lose the orchard altogether.
Samuel grabbed his hat off the desk and flung it across the room. “The back tierce is a sea of spotty leaves and damaged fruit. What am I going to tell Catherine? ‘Sorry, honey, but my irresponsible brother wanted to make some extra money, so he agreed to more work than he was willing to do, and now we can’t even think of getting married for another decade’?”
“It’s not that bad,” Daed said.
“Ya, it is. We’re looking at ten acres of cider apples, and I can’t imagine any solution. Not one.”
Jacob leaned his chair back on two legs, probably already resigning himself to their future. “Somehow we have to find a way to make up the difference between the price of eating apples and cider apples for ten acres of trees.”
“That’s not possible. If it were, we’d have been doing that for years. And what’s Eli’s punishment going to be? Paying back some of the money he took for work he didn’t do?”
“Leave it alone, Samuel,” Daed said. “Watching us struggle to make ends meet or seeing us sell portions of land to pay the taxes will be punishment enough.”
“He won’t get it, not at eighteen.”
Daed pointed at Samuel. “Just avoid Eli for a few weeks. He can increase his work with me on the dairy side until you cool off.”
Samuel walked out, too furious to respond. He strode into the orchard, unable to see anything but red. His mind screamed and railed, and at least an hour passed before he returned to the office. Daed and Jacob were still there with the papers and ledgers pulled out, reviewing information from the dairy side, probably trying to figure out a new plan.
Sunlight streamed through the dusty windows as Samuel took a seat in one of the rickety ladder-backs. No one spoke. The smell of the blackberry jam on his father’s half-eaten sandwich caught his attention. The thought of shelves of freshly canned jams and jellies in a Morgansville cellar came to mind.
Samuel watched dust particles float through the air, stirred into a frenzy each time someone moved. “The spider mites are so bad it could take three or four years before the trees are healthy again.”
Daed slumped and put his head in his hands. “That’s thirty-five hundred bushels of cider apples per year from that section alone. We won’t be able to find buyers for that quantity. If we pick them, they’ll rot in the storage house.”
Samuel tried to focus his thoughts, and soon his mind churned with ideas. All of them useless. His thoughts moved to Rhoda Byler and her business again. He wondered if some of her crazy mulch additives might help restore the trees to health sooner than usual.
“I may have a new buyer for some of the cider apples.” Jacob raked a hand through his hair. “He won’t pay as much as the folks we already sell to. But he might be able to take some off our hands.”
“It’s better than nothing, I suppose.” Daed sounded defeated.
Eli eased into the room. “I … I have an idea.”
Samuel figured he’d been somewhere out of sight but within hearing range.
Daed motioned Eli in. “Let’s hear it.”
Eli stayed near the doorway. “Maybe we should try to find someone who can make things from the overabundance of cider apples—like pies. That’d be more profitable than selling the apples themselves, wouldn’t it?”
“We already sell apples to everyone around here who makes pies,” Daed said. “Besides, Samuel ran the numbers on that a few years ago. There’s too much overhead. We wouldn’t come out ahead.”
Samuel thought of the rows of labeled jars in Rhoda’s cellar. Maybe Eli was onto something. “I have an idea, but it’ll sound crazy.”
Daed tossed his pencil onto the desk. “I’ll consider anything at this point.”
His brothers stared at him, their attention fully his.
“What if we found someone who’s already set up to do canning in large quantities? Someone who could make apple butter, jelly, jam, applesauce, maybe even pie filling.”
Jacob put the chair on all four legs. “So we get somebody to do the canning for us, then sell it as a Kings’ Orchard product. If we shipped some of it to the touristy places, I bet we could turn a decent profit, at least enough to keep our heads above water until we get back to having really good harvests again.”
Daed took a bite of his sandwich. “You got somebody in mind, Samuel?”
He shrugged. “It’s a long shot. And the person I’m thinking of isn’t from around here.”
“Amish, though, right?” Eli asked. “Because all our branding and reputation is built on being Amish and organic.”
Samuel didn’t want to answer Eli, didn’t even want him in the room, but he steadied himself and answered. “Ya, she’s Amish.”
His father choked. “Did you say she?”
“Ya. The owner of the canning business is a woman.” Samuel went to the far corner of the room and retrieved his hat. “But if she can help us out of this fix, I see no reason not to look into it.”
“You’ve at least met her husband and family?”
“She’s single.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”
Daed’s tone bothered Samuel. He seemed ready to discount Rhoda’s worth based solely on her gender and marital status.
“Do you want a man, Daed? Because if that’s the answer, this room is full of answers, and you can see where that’s gotten us.”
Shock removed all other emotion from Daed’s face. “Go on.”
“You should see her setup. She’s got a little more than an acre in Morgansville, and she cans all kinds of berry products in her cellar. As far as business goes, it left an impression, and I found myself looking for her goods in a few stores while running errands this week. The ones I went into carried Rhode Side Stands products. I even saw an ad in that magazine for Amish women, and it said her products are sold at stores in Ohio and Indiana. But none of it is made from apples.”
“Morgansville, you say?” Daed picked up the pencil and put it behind his ear. “Is this the woman Leah worked for a couple of Saturdays ago?”
“Ya.”
Daed took a sip of water. “You think this woman would make a good business partner?”
“I think it’s a possibility that we have no choice but to investigate. Who knows if it’d be a good partnership, but it’s all we’ve got right now. Jacob, she makes fifty percent profit from every jar. Can we make the offer worth her consideration?”
Jacob stared into the distance, thinking, and then he popped his knuckles. “It’d be safe to offer her twenty-five percent profit per jar, and that’s a better deal than it sounds at first.”
Eli scratched his head. “But a bushel of fruit is a bushel of fruit, right? So why would she be willing to take twenty-five percent less per jar of goods?”
Jacob interlaced his fingers and cupped the back of his neck. “The actual weight difference between a bushel of apples and a bushel of blueberries isn’t all that different—not that blueberries are sold by the bushel. The real difference is found in other areas: how long it takes to fill a bushelba
sket with blueberries compared to apples, and how many bushels one acre of apple trees can produce compared to one acre of berry bushes.”
“So she’d make more money overall?” Eli asked.
Jacob tilted back his chair again. “It’s possible, but we can’t be sure right now. We don’t know what the overhead would be or her productivity per day, but we know she wouldn’t have to spend any time in the field tending to the crops, and we could keep her in as much produce as she could process for months at a time.”
Samuel was now armed with plenty of information to take to Rhoda. “Gut. That’s what I’ll present to her.” He made a sweeping gesture at all three of them. “Listen, let’s keep the orchard situation within the family for now. I’d rather have a solution in hand before I have to explain about the back tierce to Catherine.”
Everyone nodded as the dinner bell rang out.
Daed tossed his sandwich crusts into the trash. “I can’t think of anyone else to consider, but tomorrow I’ll do some digging to see if I can find other options.” He put his hand on Samuel’s back. “In the meantime you should go see this woman to find out if she’s interested. Go alone. If she runs her own business, she’s not going to respond well if she feels intimidated or thinks we’re trying to drive her rig, so to speak.”
“I’ll go tomorrow.”
FOURTEEN
Rhoda’s knees ached. She’d been on them for hours, slowly making her way from one blackberry bush to another. Reaching deep into the thick of the plant, past several first- and second-year shoots with their awful thorns—“sharp teeth,” as Emma used to call them—Rhoda plucked four more blackberries from the bush.
The gloves and her father’s long-sleeved shirt, which she wore over her dress, helped protect her from the sharp prickles, but nothing stopped her from getting poked and scratched. “Ouch.” She jerked her hand back, noticing a dot of blood on the end of her finger where the gloves’ fingertips had been cut off.
“Are you giving blood, sweat, and tears, Rhoda?” Her little sister’s innocent voice washed over her, and the familiar ache inside stirred again.
Emma. Sweet, sweet Emma.
“Will you marry one day?” Emma had once asked. “Will I? You can see so many things that are going to happen. Surely you can see this too.”
Emma had always believed that Rhoda’s ability—her gift, as Emma called it—was from God. Rhoda believed that too. How disappointed was God that she never handled the gift in the right way and always made situations worse?
Emma’s question about marrying rang inside her.
“Of course we’ll marry.” At sixteen Rhoda had imagined only a smooth path ahead. “All Amish women marry, at least the good ones. We’ll follow in their footsteps.”
“Will we share a home, Rhoda? Your husband and mine could be great friends, maybe even brothers.”
Rhoda remembered closing her eyes, trying to know what the future held, but all she’d seen was a black hole, like a starless night surrounding her.
Now two years later, Rhoda knew what she hadn’t known back then. For all her so-called ability to see what would happen, she understood very little.
If a scene did come to her, it was nothing more than a snapshot image. And truth to tell, that’s all life was. Pieces. Images. Hints at a whole that had yet to happen. She had no way to alter that future, even if she visualized it, any more than she could change the day Emma was killed.
If Rhoda had put gardening aside and gone to the store that morning when Emma asked, her sister would still be alive. There were so many ways Rhoda could’ve handled her day so that Emma would be here.
She stayed on her knees, whispering the lyrics to Emma’s favorite song while moving from one bush to the next.
“Hallo.” A man’s voice startled her.
She let out a yelp, losing her balance and knocking over the bushelbasket. She peeled herself off the side of the overturned basket and stood, peering through the raspberry vines hanging on the trellis. Samuel King stood outside the gate, looking in.
Suddenly feeling undone, she raised her gloved hand above the trellises and motioned for him to come in. “Over here.”
“Ah, I thought you’d be out here, but I couldn’t see you. Still can’t.”
She brushed dirt off her palms and straightened her odd outfit while doing so.
“Wie bischt du Heit?” he called out while coming toward her, asking how she was today. He rounded the last bush, carrying a pot of healthy lavender. When he caught a full view of her, his eyes grew wide.
“Oh, I forgot.” She jerked her Daed’s straw hat off her head. The thought of peeling off her work shirt ran through her mind, but that’d be more improper than wearing it in the first place, and she was fairly sure Samuel wasn’t a fan of anything improper.
He righted the basket she’d knocked over, set the pot beside him, and knelt as he began picking up dirt-covered berries and putting them back in the basket. “No worries. I suppose it’s normal for some women to need a warning, and you weren’t expecting company.”
Did this man hear himself? She put her Daed’s hat on her head again. “Some women? As in those of us who don’t make ourselves look all Amish all the time?”
He gazed up at her, clearly caught off guard by her question. “I … I don’t know.” He picked up the pot of lavender and held it out to her. “But I came to apologize for last time, not to add blunders to it.”
The earnestness in his eyes soothed her a bit. “It’s gorgeous.” She took the pot from him. “Lavender is in the mint family, but it’s a great antiseptic and can soothe insect bites, burns, and headaches.”
“I thought it was a flower.”
“God’s design is remarkable, isn’t it? Attractive blossoms that are good for us in many ways. Many plants, the really fascinating ones, are beautiful, fragrant, flavorful, and medicine for the body.” She closed her eyes and took a deep whiff, feeling almost intoxicated by it. “And good for the soul.” When she opened her eyes, Samuel looked totally bewildered.
She couldn’t help but laugh even as her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Denki. Apology accepted.” She wished she’d found Mammi Byler’s apple recipes to show him. That might have melted some of the awkwardness between them. “Lavender happens to be a favorite of mine, among many others.”
“You should plant some, then.”
“Ya, I should.” But she wouldn’t. She pulled off her gloves.
“Neat gloves. Protective, while letting your fingers be nimble.”
“They’re the best solution I’ve found yet.”
“Better for the hands than horse urine is for compost?”
“I didn’t say they were that good.”
He grinned. “You’re a bit overzealous about plants, aren’t you, Miss Byler?”
“It seems so, Mr. King, despite my best efforts to temper myself.” She tucked the pot between the crook of her arm and her body. “But is that what you came for, to point out the obvious while bringing me an apology gift?”
“Actually, I had another reason. You see, we’re having a problem with our orchard.”
She bent to grab the basket, but he picked it up first. “What sort of problem?”
“A third of our trees are infested with spider mites, and we’re an organic grower, so we can’t use chemicals.”
Pondering what little she knew about killing spider mites, she headed for the gate. If she had that problem in her garden, the solution wouldn’t be too difficult. With the short plants on her small plot of ground, she could easily attach an oil-based mixture to the hose and douse the plants as needed. That would hardly work for an orchard of tall trees, however.
She opened the gate for him and led the way across the driveway and down the cellar steps. “Put the basket beside the sink, please.”
He did so and then stepped away. She put a stopper in the sink and added a huge strainer before filling it with water and slowly pouring in the berries. “I’ve heard some people e
xtract oils from neem trees.”
When she glanced behind her, Samuel was walking around the small room, studying it thoroughly.
“I’m not familiar with that.”
“From what I’ve read, it’s supposed to be a good insecticide. Since it comes from a tree, it’s organic. But it’s very expensive, even for a garden my size. I can’t imagine what it’d cost for an orchard.”
“Even if it worked, that wouldn’t help us this year. The damage is already done. Still, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the topic for next year.” He stopped reading the labels on her canned goods and turned to face her. “You should be finished harvesting your garden, or close to it, by the time apples are harvested.”
“You’re interested in talking to me about canning apple products for you.”
He blinked a few times. “Your mind moves fast, but, ya, we’re pondering the possibility.”
An unfamiliar sensation ran through her, and she took a moment to enjoy it. So this was what it felt like for someone outside her family to respect her. But it wouldn’t end well. It couldn’t. She’d do something weird. He’d hear about it and pull away, be sorry he ever got involved with her. “Look, I appreciate that you’d consider me, but I can’t.”
“You haven’t even heard our ideas yet. Come see the orchard, talk to my Daed and brothers, and share a meal with us. Then I’ll accept your answer, whatever it is.”
“Then?” All feeling of being flattered faded, and she wrestled with offense. He should have accepted her refusal and thanked her for her time. She swallowed, unwavering in her desire to decline politely but firmly. “Look, Samuel, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need to think about it. I’m sorry you came all this way and brought me a plant only to receive a disappointing answer, but I won’t change my—”
“Rhoda?” Daed called, interrupting her as he came down the steps. “Lydia said—” His eyes landed on Samuel, and he stopped in midsentence.
“Daed, this is Samuel King. He’s the older brother of the young woman I met while you and the family were gone.”
“Hmm, Samuel King,” Daed repeated, looking thoughtful. “I’m Karl.” He knew communities of Amish in every state and learned about a lot of families he’d never met through the two main Amish newspapers, The Budget and Die Botschaft. “Where are you from?”
A Season for Tending: Book One in the Amish Vines and Orchards Series Page 12
