Loan payment.
Insurance.
Taxes.
Repairs.
Even with optimistic cattle prices, she would lose money.
A lot.
Claire leaned back.
Outside, thunder rolled.
No rain followed.
She laughed once.
Bitterly.
Then went looking for whiskey.
She found her father’s notebook instead.
It sat inside the bottom drawer of the old kitchen desk.
Claire recognized the cover immediately.
Brown canvas.
Grease stain near the corner.
Samuel carried it for years.
She had seen him write in it while sitting on tractors, leaning against fences, waiting in veterinarian offices.
Claire opened it.
The first pages contained ordinary things.
Fuel records.
Seed varieties.
Calving dates.
Fence measurements.
Then she reached a page titled:
Cheap Feed Ideas That People Will Laugh At Until They Work
Claire stopped.
That sounded exactly like him.
Underneath:
Pumpkin waste.
Bakery waste.
Beet pulp.
Cull potatoes.
Apple pomace.
Watermelons?
Claire smiled.
Her father had added three question marks.
She kept reading.
A note from eleven years earlier mentioned a livestock conference.
Another page listed moisture percentages.
Dry matter.
Fiber.
Sugar.
Warnings about spoilage.
Claire frowned.
She knew enough cattle nutrition to understand the general idea.
Not enough to trust handwritten numbers.
But one line caught her attention.
Packing plant south of Mercer throws out tons in melon season. Ask if still paying disposal.
Claire knew the plant.
Everybody did.
Hawthorne Produce Cooperative.
Forty miles away.
They washed, graded, packed, and shipped melons from farms across three counties.
Perfect fruit went to grocery chains.
Damaged fruit did not.
Bruised.
Misshapen.
Sunburned.
Too small.
Too large.
Split.
Some became juice.
Most became waste.
Claire closed the notebook.
The next morning she drove to Hawthorne.
The manager looked at her like she had requested permission to take home a pile of broken refrigerators.
“You want our melon rejects?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
Claire looked toward the waste yard.
Mountains of watermelons and cantaloupes sat inside concrete bays.
“Eventually?”
She smiled.
“As much as you can give me.”
The manager laughed.
Claire did not.
He stopped.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with them?”
“Feed trial.”
“Cattle?”
“Yes.”
The manager scratched his chin.
“We pay to haul most of that away.”
“I know.”