Chapter 2 - One Dollar for a Flooded FieldEvelyn Bell listened to Maggie’s story without interrupting once.
That alone made Maggie trust her.
Mrs. Bell was seventy-one, widowed, sharp-eyed, and owned twenty acres bordering the Cole farm. Most of it was leased for hay, but one low corner remained unused because it flooded too easily to plant and dried too unpredictably to graze.
Maggie stood on her porch carrying one travel bag.
“I want to lease that quarter acre.”
“For fish.”
“Yes.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Enough to start if I do most of the work myself.”
“That means not enough.”
Maggie smiled weakly.
“Probably.”
Mrs. Bell looked toward the low field.
“You know anything about raising carp?”
“I’ve been studying.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Maggie hesitated.
“No.”
Mrs. Bell nodded.
“Better answer.”
She asked for the notebook.
Unlike Roy, she opened it.
For nearly fifteen minutes she read.
Maggie stood quietly.
At last Mrs. Bell closed the cover.
“One dollar.”
Maggie blinked.
“What?”
“One-year lease.”
“That’s too cheap.”
“That ground earns me zero dollars now. One is an improvement.”
Then Mrs. Bell pointed toward an old storage shed behind the barn.
“There’s a cot inside.”
Maggie’s expression changed.
“The roof leaks on the north side. Mice consider themselves owners.”
“I can stay there?”
“Until you figure something better out.”
Maggie swallowed.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until August.”
“Why August?”
“That’s when every good farm idea discovers whether it was actually good.”
The following morning, Maggie rode her bicycle fifteen miles to the county extension office.
A soil and water specialist named Denise Okafor agreed to speak with her.
Denise was calm, practical, and completely unimpressed by enthusiasm.
“You planning three feet deep?”
Maggie nodded.
“Too shallow.”
She immediately opened her notebook.
Denise explained summer water temperatures, dissolved oxygen, drainage, clay retention, stocking density, runoff, and overflow channels.
Maggie filled twelve pages.
Then Denise drove out to inspect the field.
She used a hand auger.
Heavy clay appeared below the topsoil.
“You’re lucky,” Denise said.
“So it’ll hold water?”
“Probably.”
Maggie smiled.
Denise immediately added:
“Never hear ‘probably’ as ‘yes.’”
They redesigned the pond.
Thirty feet across.
At least four feet deep.
Sloped banks.
A shallow working end.
An overflow route.
No square corners.
“A pond isn’t a hole you fill with fish,” Denise told her. “Every animal you add becomes something the water has to carry.”
Maggie underlined that sentence.
Hiring an excavator would destroy her budget.
So she made a deal with Lewis Grant, a farmer two miles away.
Several evenings cleaning his barn and two weekends stacking hay in exchange for using his mini excavator.
“You ever run one?”
“No.”
Lewis laughed.
“Then you’re practicing first. I’d rather lose diesel than find my machine upside down.”
Maggie learned slowly.
Her first bank was too steep.
Her first trench crooked.
She corrected both.
By Sunday evening, there was finally a pond-shaped basin in Mrs. Bell’s field.
They began filling it gradually.
Rain helped.
A hose from Mrs. Bell’s well did the rest.
Maggie marked the water level every morning.
Day three.
Held.
Day five.
Held.
Day eight.
Still held.
On day eleven, Maggie calculated the volume.
Then calculated it again.
Then a third time.
Roughly ninety cubic meters.
She read everything she could find about stocking density.
Lowered her original target twice.
Then called a hatchery.
“I’d like four thousand common carp fingerlings.”
The manager paused.
“You raised fish before?”
“No.”
“Four thousand is a serious first lesson.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Maggie looked toward the new pond.
“I’m trying to.”
The fish arrived three days later in oxygenated bags stacked inside coolers.
Thousands of tiny bodies flickered through the clear plastic.
Mrs. Bell stared.
“All your money looks awfully small.”
Maggie laughed nervously.
She floated every bag first to equalize the temperature.
Then opened the first one.
The tiny carp entered the water and disappeared.
Bag after bag followed.
Soon all four thousand were gone beneath the green surface.
Maggie stood at the bank.
Thousands of dollars had vanished in minutes.
Nothing remained except ripples.
Mrs. Bell looked at her.
“What happens now?”
May you like
Maggie hugged the notebook against her chest.
“Now I find out whether Roy was right.”
Related Stories
