I laughed.
Ron smiled.
“Ten.”
“No.”
“You paid five dollars.”
“I paid the taxes too.”
“Fine. Fifteen thousand.”
“No.”
He studied me.
“You don’t even have road access.”
“I have an easement.”
“You’ve been reading deeds.”
“My grandfather believed in entertainment.”
Ron laughed.
Then his voice became more serious.
“Twenty-five.”
I had never had twenty-five thousand dollars in my bank account.
For perhaps three seconds, I imagined taking it.
Pay the farm note.
Repair the barn roof.
Buy a used disc mower.
Sleep.
Then I remembered Granddad’s line.
Leave it. She’ll need it.
He had not spent forty years creating something so I could panic-sell it for a check large enough to make one difficult year easier.
“No.”
Ron pushed off the truck.
“You know ginseng disappears.”
“I know.”
“Poachers.”
“I know.”
“Disease.”
“I know.”
“Market crashes.”
“I know.”
“You could take guaranteed money.”
I looked at him.
“So could you.”
He smiled.
“Fair point.”
Then he drove away.
Two nights later, a trail camera captured a man walking onto the parcel with a digging tool.
He wore a hood and kept his face turned away.
I called a conservation officer rather than confronting him.
The trespasser returned three nights later.
This time officers were waiting nearby.
He was not Ron.
He was a twenty-seven-year-old man from another county who had heard rumors through a hunting forum.
He had already dug four plants before being stopped.
Two were immature.
I was furious enough to shake.
The conservation officer, Nathan Hayes, handed me the recovered roots.
“Replant them if you can.”
“I want him charged.”
“He will be cited and the case will proceed.”
“He stole from me.”
“Yes.”
“He killed plants Granddad spent decades—”
Nathan interrupted gently.
“I know.”
I stopped.
He looked toward the dark hollow.
“If you have a significant ginseng population, this will not be the last person who thinks a shovel makes it theirs.”
After that, I stopped thinking only like a grower.
We installed better cameras.
I varied my visits.
Amos convinced me not to tell anyone the plant count.
Rachel helped me map the stand without marking plants visibly enough for trespassers to follow.
When the berries turned red in late summer, I finally understood Granddad’s patience.
A mature ginseng plant can spend years becoming valuable underground, but its future is hanging above the soil in a cluster of red berries small enough to fit in a child’s palm.
Granddad’s journal repeatedly said:
Berries before roots.
When legal harvest season arrived, we did not begin by digging.
We began with inventory.
Rachel laid out permanent monitoring plots.
Amos helped grade plants by apparent maturity.
We harvested only a fraction of the oldest suitable plants, leaving strong mature individuals throughout every bed as seed producers.
Every red berry from every harvested plant went back into the same general area, planted at appropriate depth and spacing.
I hated how slow the work was.
That was probably why Granddad would have approved.
The first root I legally harvested belonged to a four-prong plant growing near the upper map zone.
I dug around it with a narrow tool and my fingers.
The root came out intact, wrinkled and forked, with a long neck showing decades of growth.
Amos examined it.
“Good.”
“How good?”
“Stop asking that.”
“How much?”
He sighed.
“You are exhausting.”
We harvested for days in small groups, never cleaning a patch, never taking the younger plants.
By the time we stopped, a person unfamiliar with the property would barely know anything had been removed.
Then came washing and drying.
Not scrubbing.
Not peeling.
Gentle cleaning.
Slow drying on screened racks with good airflow.
I checked them obsessively.
Amos finally told me, “If you stare at roots any harder, you’re going to cook them with your eyes.”
The legal sale took place in October.
I had imagined something dramatic.
A table covered in cash.
A dealer gasping.
It was mostly paperwork.
Weights.
Grades.
Licensing records.
Inspection.
Price discussion.
Amos separated several unusually old roots from the rest because their shape and age characteristics placed them in a better grade.
Then he gave me the total.
I stared at the number.
“Say it again.”
He did.
The first selective harvest grossed a little over fourteen thousand dollars.
Not a million.
Not one magical root worth enough to buy a truck.
Fourteen thousand dollars.
After expenses and money I set aside for taxes, it was enough to make the farm payment that had kept me awake since winter.
I drove directly to the bank.
Our loan officer, Mr. Ellis, looked at the cashier’s check.
Then at me.
“Ginseng?”
“Yes.”
“Your grandfather’s?”
I nodded.
He sat back.
“I knew Samuel had strange projects.”
“You’re all very judgmental after benefiting from them.”
Mr. Ellis smiled.
“This does not make the farm suddenly profitable.”
“I know.”
“You still need an operating plan.”
“I know.”
“You need to stop saying I know before I finish.”
“Sorry.”
He slid the payment receipt across the desk.
“But it does improve your position.”