![\"No](\"https:\/\/scontent-dfw6-2.xx.fbcdn.net\/v\/t39.30808-6\/887064739_122135429499249733_7897993725292994442_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_tt6&cstp=mx1086x1448&ctp=p526x296&_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=3kPS1Xcevo4Q7kNvwEE8gna&_nc_oc=AdpRQ3D1Vcmv5ljq3YARc6HFjwj6glPPiDkNT6ILvUupY00iYnxWtotjMDPleG76VLc&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw6-2.xx&_nc_gid=Zncrc6-HJqsrzF2bkidHYQ&_nc_ss=792a8&oh=00_AQRag7UhDXkKZk7onvq4Edt2JdIrNuWyoJhnQH0KYjAsUw&oe=6AF13D8D\")
<\/p>\nMy name is Mark Lindgren. I\u2019m thirty-eight years old, and I\u2019ve been farming the same six hundred acres in O\u2019Brien County, Iowa, since I was nineteen.Corn and beans, mostly. Some years a little oats for the cover crop. Black dirt so rich it looks like coffee grounds when you turn it over in spring. The kind of ground people\u2019s great-grandparents broke with horses and a walking plow. My great-grandfather was one of them. The home place sits four miles south of Primghar on a gravel road. White farmhouse with green trim. A red barn Dad repainted every seven years whether it needed it or not. A machine shed, two grain bins, and a windbreak of cottonwoods my grandmother planted in 1952.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From the kitchen window, you can see the whole north quarter. In October, the corn stands up like a gold wall and the beans turn the color of a lion\u2019s back. I grew up in that window. My mother died when I was eight. Breast cancer. She was thirty-four. After that, it was just Dad and me. Dale Lindgren. Six-foot-two, quiet, with hands like fence posts and a laugh that came out about twice a year. He\u2019d go days without saying more than a dozen words. But he\u2019d say them to me. He put me on a tractor when I was ten. He taught me to read a field by walking it. He taught me to grease the combine every morning before breakfast, every bearing, every zerk, because the one you skip is the one that fails.<\/p>\n
\u201cMachinery\u2019s honest, Mark,\u201d he used to say. \u201cIt tells you exactly what you didn\u2019t do.\u201d When I was nineteen, I came home from my first year at Iowa State. I\u2019d gone because Dad wanted me to. Agricultural business. I got good grades. I hated every minute of it. I sat in lecture halls in Ames looking out the window, thinking about the north quarter. That summer, I told him I wasn\u2019t going back. He was quiet for a long time. We were sitting on the tailgate of his pickup at the end of a bean row, drinking warm Pepsi. \u201cYou sure?\u201d he finally said. \u201cI\u2019m sure.\u201d He nodded once.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we\u2019ll farm it together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And we did. Side by side. For nineteen years.<\/p>\n
He paid me a wage. Not a big one. Fourteen dollars an hour at first, eventually twenty. He paid my health insurance. He let me live in the little house on the east eighty, the one my grandparents retired to.<\/p>\n
We never wrote anything down. There was never any paper about the land. Dad didn\u2019t believe in paper between family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll all be yours someday,\u201d he\u2019d say, whenever the subject came up. Which wasn\u2019t often. \u201cDon\u2019t worry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Dad married Elaine when I was twenty-four.<\/p>\n
She was a widow from Sheldon, twenty miles east. Her first husband had been a pharmacist who died of a heart attack at fifty-one. She had two sons, Brad and Kyle, who were in their late teens when Dad married her. They both moved to Phoenix after high school and never came back.<\/p>\n
Elaine was fifty when she married Dad. Small, neat, with short silver hair and reading glasses she wore on a beaded chain. She\u2019d taught home economics at Sheldon High School for twenty-six years.<\/p>\n
She was not a farm woman. She\u2019d never lived on a farm in her life.<\/p>\n
I want to be fair to her. I\u2019ve thought about this a lot.<\/p>\n
She tried. She learned to drive the grain truck the first fall, though she ground the gears so badly that Ron, our grain hauler, started calling it \u201cElaine\u2019s coffee grinder.\u201d She learned to make harvest meals for a crew of six and have them in the field by noon. She planted a vegetable garden and canned tomatoes and kept the farmhouse spotless.<\/p>\n
And she made Dad happy. I\u2019d never seen him happy since my mother died. With Elaine, he laughed more. He went to church potlucks. He took her to the Okoboji lakes for their anniversary every June.<\/p>\n
For that alone, I was grateful to her.<\/p>\n
But she and I never got close.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know whose fault that was. Probably both of ours. I was a grown man when she arrived, set in my ways, used to it being just Dad and me. She was a grown woman who\u2019d already raised her own boys and didn\u2019t need another one.<\/p>\n
We were polite. We were respectful. She\u2019d set a plate for me at supper, and I\u2019d thank her for it. I\u2019d fix her leaky faucets and shovel her walk.<\/p>\n
But I always had the feeling I was a guest at her table. And I suspect she always had the feeling she was a guest on my farm.<\/p>\n
Dad died two years ago this past August.<\/p>\n
He was sixty-eight. He\u2019d been feeling tired for a few weeks, short of breath, but he wouldn\u2019t go to the doctor in the middle of the summer. Too much to do.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, he was spraying the north quarter. He didn\u2019t come in for supper.<\/p>\n
I found the sprayer stopped at the end of a row, engine still idling. He was slumped over the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
Heart attack. The doctor said it was massive. That he probably didn\u2019t feel much.<\/p>\n
I hope that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
Brad and Kyle flew in from Phoenix for the funeral. They stayed two nights at the Super 8 in Primghar. They wore sunglasses in the church. They checked their phones during the graveside service.<\/p>\n
At the luncheon in the church basement, Brad asked me what the land was worth per acre.<\/p>\n
I told him I didn\u2019t know. That wasn\u2019t true. I knew exactly. But it didn\u2019t seem like the right question to answer over ham sandwiches.<\/p>\n
They flew back to Phoenix the next morning. They haven\u2019t been back since.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s will was simple. One page. He\u2019d done it at the lawyer\u2019s office in Primghar right after he married Elaine, fourteen years earlier.<\/p>\n
Everything to his wife.<\/p>\n
That was it. No mention of me. No mention of the land. No mention of nineteen years.<\/p>\n
The lawyer, an old man named Harold Bauer, read it to us in his office. When he finished, he took off his glasses and looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark,\u201d he said. \u201cI asked your dad about this. When he signed it. I asked if he wanted to make provisions for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n
Harold sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said Elaine would do right by you,\u201d he said. \u201cHe said she\u2019d know what he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t fight it.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s will was Dad\u2019s will. The land was legally Elaine\u2019s now. Every acre. Every bin. Every piece of machinery, including the combine I\u2019d run for nineteen harvests.<\/p>\n
I kept farming on a handshake. Elaine kept paying me twenty dollars an hour. I kept living in the little house on the east eighty.<\/p>\n
We never talked about the future. I told myself there was time. I told myself she\u2019d do right by me, like Dad said.<\/p>\n
It was a Tuesday in October, at dusk.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d been running beans for nine days. The weather had been perfect. Dry, sunny, a little wind. We had four hundred and forty acres in the bin and a hundred and sixty acres left on the west side.<\/p>\n
Elaine made harvest supper the way she did every fall. Roast beef and mashed potatoes. Green beans with bacon. Dinner rolls from scratch. Apple crisp with ice cream.<\/p>\n
She set the long table in the farmhouse dining room. Seven places.<\/p>\n
Our crew was there. Ron Hessler, who\u2019s hauled our grain for eleven years. He\u2019s fifty-nine, with a gray beard and a Pioneer seed cap he never takes off. His wife, Patty, who drives the second grain truck. Deb Kruse, who runs the grain cart, a tough little woman in her forties who can back a semi into a bin faster than any man in the county.<\/p>\n
And Tom and Linda Visser, a retired couple from Paullina who help us every harvest because, Tom says, sitting at home makes him want to shoot the television.<\/p>\n
The combine sat right outside the dining room window.<\/p>\n
A green John Deere S670. Dad bought it used in 2017. I\u2019d run it every harvest since. It was parked in the yard with dust still on the cab, the header unhooked and sitting on its cart, ready for tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n
Through the window, I could see the last pink light on the cab glass.<\/p>\n
We were halfway through supper. Everybody was tired and happy. Ron was telling a story about a raccoon that got into his grain truck in 1998. Deb was laughing so hard she had to put down her fork.<\/p>\n
Elaine passed the gravy.<\/p>\n
She said it like she was talking about the weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cI signed a new will in Primghar today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ron stopped mid-sentence.<\/p>\n
Elaine handed the gravy boat to Linda. She picked up her own fork.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe land goes to Brad and Kyle,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Nobody chewed.<\/p>\n
Nobody moved.<\/p>\n
Out in the yard, a barn cat yowled at something. The kitchen clock ticked.<\/p>\n
I sat there with a forkful of roast beef halfway to my mouth.<\/p>\n
Brad and Kyle. In Phoenix. Who hadn\u2019t set foot on the place since Dad\u2019s funeral. Who\u2019d worn sunglasses in church and asked what the land was worth per acre over ham sandwiches.<\/p>\n
Every acre Dad and I farmed side by side for nineteen years.<\/p>\n
To them.<\/p>\n
I set my fork down.<\/p>\n
I looked at Elaine. She was cutting her roast beef into small, neat pieces. She didn\u2019t look up.<\/p>\n
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what I knew.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s will was Dad\u2019s will. The land was legally hers. She had every right in the world to leave it to whoever she wanted. Her sons. The church. The Humane Society.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to fight. There was no paper with my name on it. There was no handshake a court would recognize.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to fight but her mind.<\/p>\n
And nobody changes a mind over roast beef.<\/p>\n
So I didn\u2019t argue.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t raise my voice. I\u2019ve never been much for raising my voice. Dad wasn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n
I stood up.<\/p>\n
I pushed my chair back slowly. I took my work hat off the back of the chair, where I\u2019d hung it when I sat down. A faded green cap with a John Deere logo and a sweat stain around the band.<\/p>\n
I held it in my hand.<\/p>\n
Then I reached into the pocket of my canvas work coat.<\/p>\n
The keys were there, where they always were. The combine key on a ring with a little brass tag. The key to the machine shed. The key to the fuel tank. The key to the grain truck.<\/p>\n
I took them out.<\/p>\n
I walked around the end of the table.<\/p>\n
I set them down beside Elaine\u2019s plate. Right next to her roast beef.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are yours, Elaine,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
My voice came out calm. I don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo is the combine,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She looked at the keys like they might bite her.<\/p>\n
Then she looked up at me. Her face had gone pale under her reading glasses.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark,\u201d she said. \u201cSit down and finish your supper.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a hundred and sixty acres of beans left on the west side,\u201d I said. \u201cThey\u2019re ready. They need to come out this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put my hat on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll write the custom man\u2019s number by the phone,\u201d I said. \u201cGene Hartwig. Out of Sutherland. He\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I walked to the kitchen. I found a pen in the junk drawer and a sticky note on the refrigerator. I wrote Gene Hartwig, custom harvest<\/em>\u00a0and his phone number. I stuck it on the wall above the kitchen phone, the old yellow one Dad never would replace.<\/p>\n When I came back through the dining room, nobody had moved.<\/p>\n Ron Hessler set his fork down on his plate. Very carefully. He looked at Elaine. Then he looked at me.<\/p>\n \u201cDale would not have liked this,\u201d he said quietly.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t say it to either of us. He said it to the table.<\/p>\n I never knew which one of us he meant.<\/p>\n I walked out the front door. I walked across the yard past the combine, still sitting there with the last of the sunset on its windows.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t look at it.<\/p>\n I got in my pickup and drove to the little house on the east eighty. I sat in the driveway for a long time with the engine off.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t cry. I want to be honest about that. I wanted to. But I\u2019d spent nineteen years learning from a man who didn\u2019t cry, and I didn\u2019t know how to start.<\/p>\n The next morning, I drove one mile east.<\/p>\n Arlen Stuckey farms the eight hundred acres next to ours. Has his whole life. His family and mine have shared a fence line since 1911.<\/p>\n Arlen\u2019s sixty-eight now. His knees are shot. He had one replaced in March and he\u2019s waiting on the other one. He walks like a man crossing a creek on slippery rocks.<\/p>\n He and his wife, Marcy, never had children. Arlen\u2019s farmed alone for forty years, with help from hired men when he could find them.<\/p>\n He\u2019d asked me twice that year if I knew anybody looking for work. Once in April at the co-op. Once in September at the Sanborn sale barn.<\/p>\n \u201cSomebody who can run a combine,\u201d he\u2019d said. \u201cAnd won\u2019t get it stuck in the first wet spot.\u201d<\/p>\n He was already out in his machine shed when I pulled in. Six-thirty in the morning. Coffee in a thermos cup. He was looking at his combine, an older Case IH, like it had personally insulted him.<\/p>\n He saw my truck. He watched me get out.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t say anything for a minute. He\u2019d heard. Of course he\u2019d heard. In O\u2019Brien County, news travels faster than a prairie fire.<\/p>\n \u201cMark,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cArlen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou still looking for somebody?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n He looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-four an hour,\u201d he said. \u201cSame as I\u2019d pay anybody. Health insurance through the co-op plan. You start now if you want.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He nodded once. Then he handed me his coffee cup.<\/p>\n \u201cHeader\u2019s loose on the left side,\u201d he said. \u201cBeen rattling since Monday. You want to take a look at it before we go?\u201d<\/p>\n I fixed the header. Two loose bolts and a worn bushing. It took twenty minutes.<\/p>\n Arlen watched me the whole time from a five-gallon bucket he\u2019d turned upside down to sit on. When I was done, he climbed slowly to his feet.<\/p>\n \u201cDale always said you were the best mechanic in the county,\u201d he said. \u201cBetter than him.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know Dad said that. He never said it to me.<\/p>\n We ran corn that whole day.<\/p>\n Arlen\u2019s corn was good. Two-twenty an acre on the yield monitor. I ran the combine. Arlen ran the grain cart, slowly, carefully, his bad knee propped on a pillow he\u2019d duct-taped to the floor of the tractor cab.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t talk much. We didn\u2019t need to. Farming with somebody is like dancing with somebody. You learn their rhythm, and after that, words just get in the way.<\/p>\n That first night, Marcy set a plate for me at their harvest table.<\/p>\n Their kitchen was small and warm, with yellow curtains and a cuckoo clock that didn\u2019t cuckoo anymore. The table was round. Four chairs. Marcy set three places.<\/p>\n Pork chops, fried in a cast-iron skillet. Sweet corn she\u2019d cut off the cob and frozen in August. Mashed potatoes with real butter. And a pan of scotcheroos, those peanut butter and chocolate bars every church lady in Iowa knows how to make.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t ask me a single question.<\/p>\n Not about Elaine. Not about the will. Not about Brad and Kyle in Phoenix.<\/p>\n She just pointed to one of the chairs.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll want the chair by the window,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I sat down in it. I looked out the window.<\/p>\n From that chair, you could see across Arlen\u2019s stubble field, past the fence line, past the shelterbelt, to Dad\u2019s beans a mile west. A hundred and sixty acres, golden brown in the last light. Ready. Waiting.<\/p>\n I looked at them for a long time.<\/p>\n Marcy put a pork chop on my plate.<\/p>\n \u201cEat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I ate.<\/p>\n Then it rained.<\/p>\n It started Thursday afternoon. A cold, gray rain blowing in from the northwest. The weatherman on KTIV said it would clear by Friday.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t clear by Friday. It rained all day Friday. And all day Saturday.<\/p>\n By Sunday morning, the rain gauge on Arlen\u2019s porch post said almost two inches.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you need to understand about soybeans.<\/p>\n When beans are ready, the pods are dry and brittle. The beans inside rattle when you shake the plant. That\u2019s when you harvest them. That\u2019s when they\u2019re at their best.<\/p>\n But if dry beans get wet, the pods soften. Then they dry again. Then they get wet again. Every time that happens, the pods get weaker. Eventually, they split open on their own. The beans fall on the ground.<\/p>\n Farmers call it shatter. Once a bean hits the dirt, it\u2019s gone. You can\u2019t pick it up. You can\u2019t get it back.<\/p>\n Every morning, I drove past Dad\u2019s beans on my way to Arlen\u2019s.<\/p>\n I\u2019d slow down at the edge of the field. I\u2019d look out the window. I could see the plants going down. Lodged over from the wind and the wet. The pods starting to gape.<\/p>\n Every one of those beans had my hands in them.<\/p>\n I\u2019d planted them in May. I\u2019d sprayed them in June. I\u2019d walked those rows in July looking for aphids. I\u2019d scouted them for white mold in August. I\u2019d watched them turn gold in September, like I had every year since I was nineteen.<\/p>\n Deb Kruse called me on Monday night.<\/p>\n \u201cMark,\u201d she said. \u201cI thought you should know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKnow what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cElaine called Phoenix,\u201d Deb said. \u201cTuesday after you left. She called Brad first.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBrad said he couldn\u2019t get off work,\u201d Deb said. \u201cHe said she should hire somebody. He said that\u2019s what money\u2019s for.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Kyle?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cKyle never called back,\u201d Deb said. \u201cShe left three messages.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n \u201cShe called Gene Hartwig too,\u201d Deb said. \u201cThe custom guy. He\u2019s booked solid until the second week of November. Some big operation over by Spencer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNovember,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cNovember,\u201d Deb said. \u201cThose beans won\u2019t last until November, Mark. You know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the crew?\u201d I asked. \u201cRon? Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n Deb was quiet for a second.<\/p>\n \u201cRon came over Saturday,\u201d she said. \u201cHe sat in the combine for twenty minutes. He couldn\u2019t figure out the monitor. He\u2019s never run it. None of us have. You always ran it. Dale always ran it before you.\u201d<\/p>\n She sighed.<\/p>\n \u201cElaine tried too,\u201d she said. \u201cSunday afternoon. I saw her climb up in the cab. She was up there almost an hour. She never started it.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be honest.<\/p>\n I wanted to go back every single morning.<\/p>\n Every morning when I drove past those beans, my hands wanted to turn the wheel. My foot wanted to hit the brake. I wanted to pull into that yard, climb up in that cab, and run until those hundred and sixty acres were in the bin.<\/p>\n It would have taken me two days. Maybe three, with the wet.<\/p>\n But I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Because going back would have told her something.<\/p>\n It would have told her that nineteen years could be given away at supper, over roast beef and gravy, to two men who\u2019d never once driven a grain truck. And I\u2019d still come running the minute the beans were in trouble.<\/p>\n It would have told her that I was just the hired man. That I\u2019d always be the hired man. That she could take everything and I\u2019d still show up to save it for somebody else.<\/p>\n So I ran Arlen\u2019s corn.<\/p>\n I kept my mouth shut. I fixed his grain cart when the hydraulic line blew. I helped him move his cattle from the summer pasture to the stalk field. I sat in the chair by the window every night and ate whatever Marcy put in front of me.<\/p>\n Marcy kept setting my plate by the window.<\/p>\n On the eighth night, I couldn\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n I sat there with a plate of meatloaf in front of me, looking out the window at Dad\u2019s beans. The sun had come out that afternoon. The field looked dark and soggy and flattened. You could see where whole sections had gone down.<\/p>\n Marcy sat across from me. Arlen had already gone to bed. His knee was bad that night.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to talk about it?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n It was the first question she\u2019d asked me in eight days.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, Marcy,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She nodded slowly.<\/p>\n \u201cDale\u2019s beans,\u201d she said. \u201cGoing down.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery one of them,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sitting here eating your meatloaf.\u201d<\/p>\n Marcy was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n \u201cCan I tell you something?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDale came over here one night,\u201d she said. \u201cAbout ten years ago. He sat in that same chair. He and Arlen drank a couple of beers on the porch. I was in the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n She looked out the window.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said something I\u2019ve never forgotten,\u201d she said. \u201cHe said,\u00a0Mark\u2019s the best thing I ever grew. Better than any crop. I just don\u2019t know how to tell him.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a quiet man,\u201d Marcy said. \u201cQuiet men don\u2019t say things. They assume you know.\u201d<\/p>\n She reached across the table and patted my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes the people who love us most,\u201d she said, \u201care the worst at making sure we know it.\u201d<\/p>\n On the tenth day, I was running corn on Arlen\u2019s south forty.<\/p>\n It was a cold, clear afternoon. The sky was that hard October blue. The yield monitor was reading two-thirty. Arlen was in the grain cart, running alongside me.<\/p>\n The radio crackled.<\/p>\n \u201cMark,\u201d Arlen\u2019s voice said. \u201cYour stepmother is standing at the end of the row.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked up.<\/p>\n My name is Mark Lindgren. I\u2019m thirty-eight years old, and I\u2019ve been farming the same six hundred acres in O\u2019Brien County, Iowa, since I was nineteen.Corn and beans, mostly. Some … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21,22,1,5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aita","category-daily-article","category-reddit-stories","category-story","category-story-daily","category-viral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8075,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8072\/revisions\/8075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Part Six: One Mile East<\/h3>\n
Part Seven: The Chair by the Window<\/h3>\n
Part Eight: Rain<\/h3>\n
Part Nine: The Hard Part<\/h3>\n
Part Ten: The End of the Row<\/h3>\n
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING THE NEXT \ud83d\udc49PART 2-After 19 Years of Working My Dad\u2019s Farm, My Stepmother Cut Me Out of the Inheritance, but I Had Other Plans …<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"