Hops actually contained some of the same chemicals as cannabinoids, Erik went on enthusiastically. It had a lot of the same hands-on crop management needs and harvesting procedures as his prior crop of choice. His former partners were making good money selling it to the emerging artisanal beer-brewing industry in California and Oregon. In prison, with plenty of time on his hands, Erik had done market research and figured he could get in on the ground floor of the “as yet immature, but primed” East Coast artisanal brewing trend.
This was a lot of information to absorb. Brassard, the authority only moments before, pondered and, as he did so, faded thoughtfully back into the grieving, run-aground man he had been since Diz died.
Erik had come east with about twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of hops crowns in his van and was looking for a place to set up raising them. He’d planned to head to Vermont even before he knew I was here, because he had identified several start-up Vermont breweries and figured that with Vermont’s “brand” there’d be a huge market for superior aromatic hops, especially if they were organically grown. It was, as he said, serendipitous that I had gotten in with a farm. He let that comment hang.
Will put it all together first: “If you’re thinking of growing anything organic here, we’ve already considered it. We don’t have any organic land. Dad and Grandad have used commercial fertilizers and herbicides and insecticides on these fields since basically forever.”
Brassard nodded, still lost in thoughts or terrors of loss and loneliness.
“How about those scrub strips below Annie’s land?”
Did everything Erik say induce a stunned silence? That day, yes.
Brassard roused. “Never used em,” he muttered. “Couldn’t put a crop on em because they’re full of rocks so we couldn’t drag a tiller or combine over em. Didn’t need the extra headache of cleanin em out. Brush-hogged em every few years, that’s why they’re not just woods now.”
“I kept up with it the last few years,” Earnest said. “Just because … I don’t know. Brassard tradition?”
“My dad grazed over there sometimes,” Brassard put in. “Thought it would be smart to keep it open in case we ever needed.”
“How many acres?”
Another silence as Will, Brassard, and Earnest did some mental calculations.
“Well,” Brassard said, “we got about six hundred feet above Ann’s right-of-way, another, oh, eight hundred feet to the south end. Width varies, but I’d say maybe six acres total.”
Erik: “That never got sprayed or—”
Earnest, smiling: “That got logged off a hundred fifty years ago and never got used. The first farmers here cut the timber, probably grazed over there back when, but it’s never been crop fields. So no—no pesticides and whatnot.”
“So it won’t be hard to certify as organic,” Erik said. “What do you think, Mr. Brassard? Think I could plant hops there?”
Brassard explained that the farm was hard-tasked right now, any extra hassle would break the camel’s back and he wasn’t even sure we’d be able to hold on to the place anyway, financial problems. It pained him to admit this to Erik.
“I mean, can I lease it? I’d pay you a thousand an acre for a year. And whatever you need for letting me use a tractor once in a while, some manure if you can spare it, make it ten thousand? I can pay you in advance.”
“Man who’s just out of the penitentiary,” Brassard said darkly, “isn’t goin to have any money. Unless it’s from before he went in, and I don’t know as I want anything to do with that brand of money. Come back to bite me.”
Erik laughed and for a moment looked like he did when he was a kid and his heart was light. “No, nothing like that! I get out of Elk Ridge and my friends tell me there’s this lawyer been trying to find me. They didn’t know what it was about, maybe some other trouble, so they didn’t tell him where I was. But then I contact him and discover that my old aunt Theresa had died and left me a pretty good pile. Annie, you must have gotten some too, right?”
I smacked my hand against my forehead. Of course. Right. Of course. When the lawyer notified me of the inheritance, he had asked me where Erik was. I told him I didn’t know, hadn’t heard from him in seven years, but he must have kept sleuthing.
Brassard still looked skeptical. “Thousand an acre is pretty high,” he said. “Worth that much to you?”
Brassard’s dark mood intimidated me, but Erik faced him straight on, clearly the look of an honest entreaty. “Where I’m at? Where I’ve been? I’ve kinda got only one shot here, and that shot’s worth a good deal, whether it’s on this farm or another one. The crowns have to be planted in fall if they’re going to bear anything next year. They won’t survive till spring out of the ground. So I’ve got a rush on.”
I will not pretend that my heart didn’t soar at the prospect of some money being pumped into the farm’s finances. It could make all the difference. Earnest and Will were almost goggle-eyed at the rapid pace and unexpected turns of this discussion, but I could see that in each of them a little sprout of hope had suddenly uncurled.
Brassard looked overwhelmed. He knew
