Chapter 45: Farm Upgrade (2)

TL: Hanguk

A few days later, a luxury sedan arrived at Redwood Winery. Coming out were Frederick and Chloe, and oddly enough, Brandon was with them too.

“Watch closely. It’s a farm run by my friend who’s way better at farming than you.”

“Okay.”

Brandon looked like he didn’t like it, but he still looked over the farm atmosphere without grumbling. The contempt he’d had at first seemed to be gone, and now there was curiosity in his eyes. It was a change that had come after tasting Cherry wine.

Frederick pointed along the rows of vineyard vines to where a small vineyard tractor puttered along, chug-chugging as it moved.

“Look, it’s winter but the tractor’s still going around instead of just resting. Are you keeping things going like that on your farm?”

“I was going to start soon.”

“Other crops, maybe, but the Walnut farm you’re in charge of has to plant cover crops. I told you the reason too, didn’t I?”

“Yes. When it rains, the soil gets muddy and the ground erodes. Cover crops hold the ground in place, so we have to do it...”

"That's right. You remember."

Proud that his son, though always grumbling, still remembered what mattered, Frederick gave his shoulder a squeeze and headed up to the winery.

“Welcome.”

"Good to see you."

Now that they’d grown fairly close, Dad and Frederick greeted each other with a hug. He shook hands with me and sat down, while Chloe and Brandon stood behind. At the table, Dad and Frederick sat facing each other.

“You heard the story, right?”

"Yes, it seems my child went to your place and charmed you."

“Hahaha, seems so. I ended up properly charmed. The contract is here, so let’s review it.”

On the contract title, in bold print, it read: [Redwood–Harris Strategic Partnership Agreement (2004–2034)].

"A strategic partnership agreement between Redwood and Harris... That sounds impressive?"

“I feel the same. ‘Grow Harris Farm and make wine from it'. Isn’t that a real win-win? For the profit baseline, we used the average of the last five years. I figured you’d be curious about how much the related costs run, so I had an accountant attach annual sales and cost analyses.”

It wasn’t 30% of revenue but 30% of profit, so they’d brought detailed breakdowns of the costs. Labor, packaging and refrigeration, shipping, pesticides, all kinds of fertilizers, insurance, even loans, all written out meticulously.

Looking at this, I could see why wineries that own vineyards in California make overwhelmingly more money.

Other farms can’t easily process their primary produce themselves, but vineyard farms alone produce value directly through a winery as wine. And since it’s alcohol, practically a luxury good, the unit price is high too.

Cherry wine sells for 18 dollars a bottle, but even a simple Pinot Noir goes for 20 to 40 dollars per bottle, so it isn’t comparable. Especially Napa Cabernet Sauvignon runs from 40 dollars up to even 100 dollars, and cult-level ones go far beyond that.

No matter how many times you grow grapes and sell them, if you make one wine well, hundreds of millions come in, that’s the California wine market.

“Can you do this well?”

Before stamping the contract, Dad turned to me and asked with a very serious expression. Once the stamp went on, it couldn’t be taken back, and more than that, this was something with another family’s life on the line. He’d been asking since yesterday whether I could bear that tremendous weight, but my answer stayed the same.

“Of course. Trust me.”

Seeing me nod calmly, Dad wrote his signature without hesitation.

“Let’s do well.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Just like that, the two families finished signing the deal. As the contract title said, a strategic partnership agreement between the two families was formed.

“When do we start?”

Frederick asked that first thing.

“I’ll go to the farm tomorrow.”

“What do I need to prepare?”

"Hmm... There's quite a lot... You'll need to write it down."

Frederick tilted his head, wondering what it was that supposedly needed to be written down, and at that moment Chloe, who had worked with me a few times, pulled out a notebook right away, as if she’d been ready.

“Tell me.”

“First, 500 tons of wood chips.”

“What?”

“Not 500 kilograms, tons?”

Right from the start, everyone froze in disbelief.

“Yes, 500 tons. You don’t have to prepare it all at once. You’ll need about fifteen days to a month to get it ready, so you just have to gather it all within that time. You’ll need a very large empty lot, too. And you’ll need 250 tons of fully rotted compost. Livestock manure is fine, and food-waste compost is okay too. Even rotted green manure crops work.”

The more it went on, the more it became a mountain of a task, and Frederick and Brandon gaped. Brandon, in particular, looked so scared that he might be ordered to do it himself.

“And you’ll need things like molasses (a sticky syrup from sugarcane residue) or liquid fertilizer made from fish byproducts. About 400 to 500 liters. I’ll prepare a few additional things we’ll need.”

“We can prepare it.”

Chloe spoke as if she could handle it, but I waved my hand.

“I have to get those.”

“Ah...”

Things like mycorrhizal fungi (fungi that live symbiotically with plant roots), Bacillus (soil bacteria), and Trichoderma (fungus) are at the core of what I know. Even if I show them how to make biochar, there’s no reason to show the real core.

“So, gather 500 tons of wood chips over fifteen days to a month?”

When Frederick asked, I nodded.

“Yes. It doesn’t matter if you buy them or pick them up. What matters is you have to dry them and reduce the moisture. Obviously, it’d be a disaster if they got rained on, right?”

Where would they even pick up 500 tons of wood chips? Most of it would have to be bought.

“Th...that’s true.”

“You’ll need to set up a temporary canopy on site, and you should crush the big branches into smaller pieces.”

“What on earth are you trying to do?”

“We’re going to make charcoal. Charcoal that’s very good for crops. Now you see why we need a big empty lot, right?”

"You're going to build a makeshift kiln there?"

“That’s right. This is all because Mr. Frederick’s land is unbelievably vast. It’s 200 acres, so the scale gets this big.”

The biochar compound fertilizer to spread on a 15-acre farm had taken Dad and me an incredible amount of hard work to make, but even then, the land was small, so it stopped at that scale. Back then, the wood chips Dad and I worked through were over 30 tons, so the hardship was beyond words.

But thinking about it, back then it didn’t feel quite so hard, probably because I thought I was building my own farm with my own hands.

"Then the cost must be enormous?"

"Think of this level as an investment. Still, I kept the amount low by planning for partial application. It should be resolved for roughly $40,000 to $60,000."

“Haha, well...”

He’d already signed the contract, so there was nothing to do, and Frederick gave an awkward smile.

"It's difficult now and you might not understand why, but when you see the harvest next year, you'll think it was worth doing."

“Alright. There must be a reason. And just looking at the compost types you’re listing one by one, most of them are materials that help farming, so I feel at ease. It really feels like we're doing something for the soil.”

Frederick seemed a bit flustered at first, but as time passed and he sorted out his thoughts, he accepted it rather calmly. Even this showed that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about farming in his everyday life.

"I'll come see it tomorrow, so please prepare slowly. But don't be too leisurely either, or January will pass. Stay calm in mind but act quickly."

Frederick looked back at his son, and Brandon, who wasn’t completely clueless, repeated my words.

"Stay calm in mind but act quickly."

“Good.”

Lastly, I looked at Chloe.

“Check the prepared materials yourself. With your own eyes.”

“Got it.”

Even though I was telling her to check all those mountain-like piles of wood and compost that would probably smell awful, she didn’t hesitate at all, which made it clear Chloe really had changed compared to before.

“I’ll come tomorrow at around 3 p.m.”

“Then see you then.”

Watching Chloe’s family fade into the distance, Dad asked,

"You seem to have started something big... Aren't you scared at all?"

“Of course I’m scared. But how great is it that there’s something to make money from?”

"That aside, should we just leave our newly acquired farm as it is?"

Right now, what mattered most to Dad was that the Cherry wine sell out quickly, and second was that Silver Oak Farm, which he’d ended up acquiring after it burned down, be rebuilt to be even better than it originally was. Buying that expensive land and leaving it idle would be unthinkable.

“Dad, when I told Chloe’s side to make biochar, I left juuuust a tiny bit of extra room.”

“Huh? You did?”

“Yes. After January passes and spring starts, we’re going to turn over all the soil, lay down gravel, and then spread the biochar Chloe’s side has left over. But if there isn’t any leeway, then we’ll just make it then.”

"Alright, Dad trusts you."

“Dad, I’m your son.”

When I scrunched my brows and shrugged, Dad patted my shoulder as if he was proud.

***

Starting the next day, I stopped by Brentwood, where Chloe’s Harris Farm was, once a day like I was clocking in. The route was also brutally hard, so if I even went to school, it felt like going from Gangnam to Pangyo and then to Ansan, bouncing between Sacramento, Brentwood, and Napa Valley.

In short, it was a continuous forced march.

The mountain-like piles of wood stacked in an open lot in Brentwood and the graves of foul compost that stung my nose were enough to make my head swim, but surprisingly, Chloe, Brandon, and I worked in sync and produced biochar.

At first, Mr. Frederick came out and watched closely while we made biochar, but after that, he helped so that the workers would follow my instructions well.

Chloe and Brandon, who at first had been wondering what we were even doing, got the hang of it after producing charcoal once, and from then on they started speeding up.

"You're doing well."

Of course, it wasn't just me and the Chloe siblings making this enormous amount of charcoal. More than thirty workers were involved, all moving according to my instructions.

Just because the workers learn how to make biochar doesn’t mean they can immediately use this method on other farms. Without the core knowledge about the various fungi and bacteria involved, the effect isn’t very great.

After we’d been making biochar in full swing, I took the two of them to a nearby cherry tree. Then, pointing with a shovel at the tree trunk and the branches in the air, I said,

“Both of you, listen carefully. You can’t put what we made under the trunk here. The effect drops here. The roots are most actively spread out in the ground under the ends of the branches. This is called the canopy drip line. Roughly 1 to 2 meters away from the trunk, you dig a circular furrow like a donut, like this...”

When I demonstrated first, the siblings watched closely and nodded.

“You put what we made into this furrow and cover it with soil. You can do it, right?”

Since it wasn’t difficult, both of them nodded.

“Good.”

As I said that, I handed the shovel to Brandon.

“Huh? What? You want me to do it?”

“You have to. I taught you. I’m not a worker, I’m a teacher. Okay?”

Brandon, who’d been pouting his lips, said,

“...... Mr. Raymond said this kind of thing won’t help at all.”

Now that I saw it, it seemed like he’d been forcing himself to endure because he didn’t want to do it.

"Really? Oh ho..."

“Do you even know how many trucks are coming and going to get wood chips right now? It costs a ton of money too. But he says this is all a waste of effort.”

“Sounds like Mr. Raymond has been helping a lot?”

As if asking something so obvious, Brandon nodded. And what was slightly surprising was that even Chloe beside him nodded too.

“Of course. He’s someone who worked on our farm for twenty years. He knows everything there is to know about cherry farming.”

“Then why did he mess up the fertilizer back then?”

In an instant, Brandon flinched and looked away. The reason seemed obvious, but I didn’t bother pointing it out in front of Chloe.

“Whatever Mr. Raymond says, I made a deal with your dad. And Mr. Frederick absolutely... absolutely asked me to make sure you learn perfectly so you can teach all the workers, that’s what he told me.”

“......”

“So stop talking back and do what I say.”

At that, Brandon snorted and puffed, his face flushing red, but soon he forced himself to press his anger down and started shoveling. At the sight, Chloe curled her lips into a smile as if it served him right.

“Chloe, try it at that tree.”

Naturally separating the two, I watched Brandon in the distance digging hard, then asked Chloe, who was about to start shoveling beside me.

“What kind of person is Mr. Raymond?”

“Huh? He’s the person who manages the farm.”

“From what I can tell, Brandon is a bit... lazy, but he doesn’t seem like a bad person.”

“Right, he’s just a little stupid.”

I secretly agreed with his sister’s cold evaluation, but I didn’t openly go along with it.

“That’s why it’s dangerous.”

“Huh? What is?”

“It seems like Brandon trusts this Mr. Raymond a lot. Maybe... your brother is being swayed.”

Solely focused on shoveling, Chloe lifted her head and blinked.

“Swayed?”

"Putting it nicely, he's being swayed, and to put it bluntly... he could be being used."

Chloe’s face slowly hardened.

*****

Author’s Note

I tried looking up a mini tractor that works while moving between the vineyards.