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He turned to her, his eyebrows lifted. “Do I look like a fucking hippie to you?”
“It’s a very popular crop,” she said, keeping her tone measured. “I’m not suggesting that you grow THC. In fact, that’s oversaturated at this point. When it was legalized, the emerald gold rush was...”
“You know I live here, right? I saw it all happen the same as you.”
She realized then she was paraphrasing a class she’d taken, and she felt slightly embarrassed. “I like to talk about this stuff. Sorry. Sometimes it turns into a monologue. I’m not suggesting you grow plants with THC. I’m suggesting hemp because worldwide there’s a demand for items made from hemp fiber. There is high value in it.”
“No. Thank you.”
“What, like on principle?” she asked.
She hadn’t taken him for being like that, but maybe she should have. He was stubborn and unteachable. His opinions on marijuana as a crop were firmly set in stereotypes and not in the modern era.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
And she knew there were some battles she could wage and win, but she had to start from a better vantage point than this.
She held back a sigh. It hurt her to admit to herself that it actually did matter whether or not he was on board with what he was growing. He had to care or it wouldn’t be sustainable. And genuinely it wouldn’t do her or her sisters any favors if he was grudgingly offering them the use of the road, because it could cause issues later. “It is important that it make sense to you. It is your land, after all.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that we can agree on,” he said.
“I’m actually not here to be an antagonist, Levi, whatever you seem to think.”
“I don’t think anything about your behavior, Miss Sullivan. You asked to be up here today, and while you’re here, you’re giving your opinions. You might recollect I didn’t ask for them.”
“Maybe not, but you told your sister I was consulting. So you might not want my opinions, but you kind of want me.”
Silence bottomed out the conversation and she shifted, trying to ease her discomfort. She cleared her throat. “You’re treating me like I’m trying to hurt you in some way, or like I’m a villain, and I’m not. I just want to come up with something that works for both of us.”
He crossed his arms. “Come up with another suggestion for me, then.”
“Well, I would approach this from a few different ways. I think because of the diet you have the cows on, you can use the manure as fertilizer. If you have excess, you can sell it. There’s value there. Additionally to that, which is sustainable, you can plant... Christmas trees are an option. They are a very popular export in the state. Hazelnuts are one of the things that we grow at Sullivan’s, but we don’t have a plot as large as this field.”
“That will take time,” he said.
She nodded. “It will. But if you have time to invest, I would try something like that. They’re easy crops. They are very agreeable to the region. Or you get llamas. Llamas also fare really well here.”
“I don’t want fucking llamas.”
She looked at him, and she did not kick him. She felt like that was a win.
“Then Christmas trees,” she said. “How about Christmas trees?”
“That sounds like some made-for-TV movie bullshit.”
He just wasn’t going to make this easy. And maybe she had no right to expect him to. Just maybe. But she wasn’t an enemy and he was acting like she was. She really did just want to help. Or she wanted something mutually beneficial, and what she couldn’t figure out was why he was being such a jerk about it.
He’d done that deal with her dad and that huge factory farm for all the fields and he couldn’t do this with her? She knew it had soured a bit—her dad leaving had messed a lot of things up—but she wanted a road, not every inch of his land.
She was local. And she wouldn’t be leaving. She’d be accountable.
“There are big companies that you can pay to have come harvest them,” she said.
“I’m skeptical of making agreements with anything corporate.”
“You can hire your own laborers, then. You can export them across the state, and even the country. You have to get a cycle going. Different sizes, different years, and yes, it is going to take time, but it’s renewable, and an investment. In the future of the land.”
He paused for a moment. “I like the idea of growing something native.”
