Dawnbreak. Amidst the screeching of the first seagulls, a truck ferry moored in Beach Cove harbor. Whining and moaning, the gate lowered, until with a reverberating clang it landed on the dock. The sound of diesel engines and heavy gas engines starting up rang out as trucks and vans began to slowly disembark one by one.
Among the trucks and large vans, a bit out of place, a 1969 Chevrolet Impala four-door sedan in a somewhat faded chestnut brown color drove off the ferry and maneuvered its way among the trucks and vans to a parking space. Boxes were piled up in the backseat up to the roof, the decklid resting on a large trunk sticking out of the car's trunk and held with bright orange rope, another large trunk, a birchwood dresser and a slightly threadbare orange lounge chair tied to the roof rack sitting on the car's roof. Behind the wheel was a plush, agouti-colored Somali cat with forest green eyes and thick, wavy chestnut brown hair coming down to the small of her back. Judging by everything piled into and onto her car, she was moving.
With a yawn, she stretched as good and as bad as it went in the driver's seat before pulling a thick envelope from behind the sunvisor, taking out a few folded papers. She unfolded them and leafed through them, weary eyes darting over the text and her head giving a slow, short nod. Folding the papers back up and putting them in the envelope, then putting that back behind the sunvisor, the feline looked around her and nodded shortly again upon noticing a small diner at one end of the parking lot which appeared to already be open. Getting out of the car, the cat stepped up to the small diner and tried the door. It was indeed open, so she stepped inside and looked around again, heading over to a small counter behind which a black and white cat was drying cups and glasses. Upon noticing the Somali cat, the black and white cat looked up and gave a friendly smile.
"Ah, mornin' there, can I help you?"
"Coffee please, black, two sugars," the Somali cat said, sounding even wearier than she looked. "And I would like some directions if you could?"
"Sure, I'll do my best," the black and white cat nodded while pouring a cup of coffee and setting it on the counter. "What do you need to know?"
The Somali cat stirred two sugars through the coffee and took a sip, drawing a deep breath as the caffeine spread through her body.
"Ahh, that's better. I need to know how to get to a place called Fangle Valley, could you perhaps tell me where to find that?"
"Oh yeah, it ain't that hard to find. Here, hang on a minute..." The black and white cat disappeared through a door behind the bar, returning a few moments later with a map he unfolded on the bar. "Look, you follow Harbor Road out of here towards Main. Take a left onto Main, and keep goin' all the way through town. Just outside of town, Main turns into the 12A, you follow that until you get to the overpass with the 1A freeway. Turn left onto the 1A and follow that all the way west towards South Plains. In South Plains, it turns into West First, you keep goin' on that all the way down. About halfway into town, their Main Street intersects and West First turns into SouthEast First. You still keep goin' straight ahead on SouthEast First out of town, it turns into the 1A again, and you just keep on followin' that along, straight to, and through the Fangle Mountain Tunnel. Just outside of the tunnel, there's a right turn off the 1A, which turns into a single road that goes straight into Fangle Valley."
"Right, looks simple enough," the Somali cat nodded, taking more sips of the coffee while looking at the lines on the map. "Two lefts, straight straight straight, tunnel, right. Do you know where I can get a map like this? Just to be sure?"
"Take this one," the black and white cat said, folding the map back up. "And if you don't mind me askin', but what do you need to get to Fangle Valley for?"
"Aw, thanks, that's nice of you," the Somali cat smiled. "As for my business in Fangle Valley; I'm moving there."
The cat behind the counter blinked once or twice upon hearing that information.
"Movin' there? What would you ever wanna move to that little backwater town for?"
"It's a long story, that I won't bore you with," the agouti feline said with a weary gesture of a paw. Her eye fell upon a small sign behind the bar advertising specials. "I see you sell sandwiches too?"
"Fair enough, ain't none of my business really," the black and white cat nodded. "And yeah, we sell sandwiches. Freshly made every mornin'. In fact, my wife is preparin' them right now. Would you like one?"
"Please. Two actually, I think I'll need it for the drive, it seems like quite a way."
"Alright, can do. What kind would you like?"
"Any that are ready. I just need to get some breakfast into me."
"Right, just a moment please." The black and white cat stepped through the door behind the counter again, taking a little while longer before returning with a small white plastic box with a clear lid which he set on the counter. "Here you are, miss, two Swiss cheese and turkey breast sandwiches. Together with the coffee, that makes... seven and forty, please."
The Somali cat took a few folded banknotes from her purse and pulled out a ten dollar bill.
"Here you are, Keep the change, that's for the directions and the map."
"Thank you, miss. You have a nice day, and I hope you will find your way easy enough."
"Thanks, I hope so too."
Taking the box with the sandwiches and the map, the Somali cat waved and walked out of the small diner and back to her car, where she sat behind the wheel to quietly munch on one of the sandwiches while spreading out the map over the steering wheel and studying it again. It did indeed look like a very simple route - the road marked as 1A appeared as a major highway running from a place across the river towards and through another place, through the mountains, around an outcrop of the mountains on the other side, and past several large and small places before cutting through a forest and connecting with another highway. The place where she currently was, Beach Cove, was connected to that highway via the 12A on the west and the 12B on the east, and a smaller highway marked as 1C branched off the 1A shortly before the mountains towards the north-east. The little town marked Fangle Valley was nestled right between the main stretch of the Fangle Mountains and the narrow outcrop. Smack dab in the valley of the Fangle Mountains; it was clear how the place got its name.
After folding the map back up, the Somali cat took a bottle of water from a sixpack sitting on the passenger's seat and washed down the last of the sandwich with it. Better get a move-on - while the way to Fangle Valley seemed simple enough, it also looked like it was going to be quite a long drive.
The way out of Beach Cove was quite easily found, and from there on it was smooth sailing. Turning onto the 12A took the Somali cat straight to the overpass with the 1A freeway. It was just a four-lane - two lanes in either direction - but it was smooth and well-maintained. Fortunately, as it was still very early in the morning, it was also not very busy yet. Most of the traffic consisted of trucks - several being the same trucks the agouti feline had arrived on the ferry with. It was a rather monotonous drive, however, even if the views of wide open plains and the backdrop of forest-filled mountains was spectacular. But aside from that, it was just a straight stretch of road with nothing but mile markers, a few gas stations, and light poles spaced quite far apart to break the monotony.
About three hours into the drive, the Somali cat was treated to a magnificent spectacle. Just as she was about to reach the large city of South Plains, the sun breached the summit of the Fangle Mountains, showering the skyline ahead of the feline in cascades of golden light. It was all she could do not to pull over in astonishment and gaze out through her windshield. Already, it seemed like moving to this new land had been a very good decision.
Not too long after, the 1A freeway narrowed into a regular four-lane boulevard-like thoroughfare cutting straight through the center of South Plains. It had a rather California-like feel to it, with the center divider being a strip of ground holding a continuous row of foxtail palm trees interspersed every five or so yards with rather ornate double-arm light poles. There were three large main intersections where other four-lane roads crossed the main boulevard, the middle one being an large roundabout of which the circle in the middle had been raised and planted with Laura Bush petunias that covered the entire ground and bloomed with an abundance of deep purple flowers, surrounding a low basin that had three very long columns rising up from it in a sort of invertly arched hockey stick shape. The three columns were connected to each other by a ring at the apex of their curves, forming a sort of bowl in which rested an enormous ball - both that ball and the low basin were made out of marble that had a beautiful pattern resembling waves in a grey-ish green, while the columns were made out of copper that had weathered green with age. Water bubbled up out of the top of the ball and flowed down along every side of it, spattering down into the basin.
Four streets branched off of the roundabout, and in each of the four corners was a restaurant with a large terrace facing the roundabout and its magnificent centerpiece, filled with tables surrounded by four chairs each and canopied by a round fold-up purple sunshade in the shape of an upside-down petunia flower. Evidently the roundabout centerpiece was a crowd pleaser and tourist attraction, and the city very much wanted it known. It certainly had the expected effect on the Somali cat. After having gasped in awe at the view when reaching the roundabout, she pulled off the street and into the parking lot of one of the restaurants where she found herself a table in full view of the roundabout so she could marvel at it while she ordered and ate a very tasty, if slightly early, lunch. Even after finishing the food, she remained seated to just stare at the roundabout for a while. It was quite strange, actually; as a statue, it was a very simple thing, just a low round basin with three curved poles holding a ball from which water flowed down. Yet it had a quality that just seemed to make it awe-inspiring; likely due to the rich carpet of purple flowers surrounding it, due to it being in the middle of a busy main city intersection, or perhaps just because it was an unexpected sight of beauty in the middle of the city.
Eventually, the agouti cat managed to tear herself away from the sight and walked back to her car. She still had a long way to go after all. It took the better part of two hours to get to the other side of South Plains, where the boulevard-like thoroughfare once again turned into a four-lane highway heading northwest towards the large mountain range. For more than three hours, the Somali cat just drove down the highway at a steady speed, humming along with the radio and taking in the few sights she could see of the landscape to keep herself from growing seriously road-weary. It sure was quite a wide-open landscape, and cities and towns were definitely few and far between, she noted to herself.
Finally, the looming mouth of a large tunnel broke the monotony of the highway drive. However, the monotony returned with full force, even worse than before, as the tunnel turned out to take almost fifteen minutes to drive through. The Somali cat let out a loud, deep sigh of relief when the other end of the tunnel brought her back into the daylight, taking a paw off the steering wheel to rub her eyes so she could get rid of the after-images of the tunnel lights. It almost made her miss the exit to Fangle Valley, which turned up surprisingly soon after exiting the tunnel.
It was a somewhat small, almost insignificant T-shaped exit ending in a sort of oblong-shaped oval roundabout with the on- and off-ramp of the east to west lanes connecting to the straight side and the longer, wide-curved elevated on- and off-ramp of the west to east lanes connecting to the curves on either side of the oval. From the opposite straight side, a simple two-lane road led into the small village of Fangle Valley, with the obligatory water tower on the left side of the road and a large sign on the right side of the road, reading 'Welcome to picturesque Fangle Valley, population 68' in faded lettering. The Somali cat couldn't help letting out a short, quiet guffaw at the population number as she realized her moving in would make it a perfect sixty-nine. Heh, sixty-nine...
The amused guffaw made way for a quirking of eyebrows as she made her way into the small town and took in the sight of the buildings and the traffic. Not even the word 'retro' was applicable, as the architecture was beyond that. Even her old 1969 Chevrolet seemed wildly modern among the pastel colors, chrome, fins and curvaceous sheetmetal of the town's 1950's-era cars.
"What the... did I hit eighty-eight miles per hour on that highway just now or something?" the Somali cat muttered to herself as she drove down Main Street. "Or did I fall asleep in that dreadfully boring tunnel and I'm dreaming now? Sheesh."
Clearly, the black and white cat in the Beach Cove harbor diner had not been kidding when he referred to Fangle Valley as a backwater town. The place seemed like time had forgotten all about it at some point in the 1950's and had left it as it was from that moment on. But even such small towns had a quite prominent town square and a decent courthouse even in the fifties, which proved no problem to find. Plenty of parking spaces as well.
Getting out of her car with the thick envelope from behind her sunvisor, the agouti feline crossed the parking lot and the small park in front of the courthouse, mounting the few steps and entering through a pair of very large double doors which were, slightly surprisingly, opened wide. She found herself in a sort of waiting room, with a few rows of chairs and a low table holding magazines and flyers to one side, and a counter right opposite the doors. A female canine was seated behind the counter, a blonde-furred one of the labrador variety, with blonde hair pulled into a ponytail that was held in place with a large purple bow.
"Oh! Good afternoon," she smiled pleasantly upon seeing the Somali cat. "I'm Cynthia, can I help you, yes?"
"I suppose so," the agouti feline said. "My name is Laura Forman, I'm here to see..." She checked one of the papers from the envelope. "A mister Charley Taylor."
"Oh, oh!" the blonde labrador said with some excitement. "You're the lady moving into Fangle Farmstead, aren't you? Have a seat, have a seat, I'll let the mayor know you're here right away, yes yes!"
"Mayor..?"
"Mister Taylor is our mayor, yes!" the blonde labrador nodded, picking up a phone and pressing a button on it while making a gesture with her free paw. "Do have a seat! Hello, mister mayor? She's here! The lady for Fangle Farmstead, yes yes!"
The Somali cat, evidently named Laura, just gave her head a short shake at that bit of trivia and moved over towards the row of seats. Before she even reached them, she turned back around as she was approached by another canine, this time a male black and white border collie in his mid-sixties, wearing a small pair of glasses and what apparently was an attempt at a smart suit.
"Good afternoon," he said just as pleasantly, offering a paw. "Miss Forman, is it? I'm Charley Taylor, mayor of Fangle Valley. I'm glad you have found your way here."
"It wasn't too hard once I got a map," Laura said, shaking paws with the canine. "I also did not expect to be greeted by the mayor in person. Is that usual around here?"
"Well, it is sort of a big deal when someone moves into our little community," mayor Taylor nodded. "We don't see that too much, almost every time it's one of the young people here moving out. I guess you can't really blame them, we are a bit behind the times here, so it's understandable the young folk would rather want to live in a more modern town."
"I noticed that, yes. No offense, but just how behind the time is this place? I felt like I was driving into the freaking back to the future movie when I came into this place. How is it even possible time stopped around the mid-50's here?"
The collie shrugged lightly.
"With being as outside of the beaten path as we are here, we've always been a bit behind, to be honest. And since we had everything we ever needed, we never really felt a need to adapt to any further modernization. Sure, we accepted certain things, like modern color televisions and radios and such, but for the main part, we've always been happy with what we have."
"I suppose there's something to say for that. But how do you get by without.. well, like, computers, the internet, all that?"
"Oh, but we do have that. There's a large cell phone and wifi tower on the Fangle Mountain outcrop that services Fandago, and we're right within its range so we get wifi and cell phone reception from that." The collie made a dismissive gesture with a paw. "But let's move on to more pressing matters. You're moving into Fangle Farmstead, right?"
"Well, theoretically, yes," Laura said. "But I first really want to make sure the whole thing is legit. I mean, I did just happen to find the deed to that place in a box full of old documents I purchased, so I wanna make sure I'm even allowed to call that place my property and all."
"Of course, that I can understand," mayor Taylor nodded. He made an inviting gesture this time. "If you would like, we can step into my office?"
"Please."
Laura followed the border collie man past the counter and through a short corridor, into a small but relatively luxurious office. She took a seat in the chair that was in front of a quite large mahogany desk while mayor Taylor seated himself behind it, leaning back and intertwining the fingers of both paws on his chest.
"Now then, I believe you already mentioned it over the phone, but could you perhaps tell me in more detail what exactly happened, miss Forman?"
"Yes. As I mentioned over the phone, several years ago I inherited a large trunk full of stuff from my grandmother, in which was a box full of old letters, all correspondence she used to have with her boyfriend who became her husband, her sons who went into the army, and other family members. It got me very interested in such old correspondence, the way people wrote letters to each other from the eighteen-hundreds up to the nineteen forties and fifties, so I started scouring flea markets and antique stores and even yard sales and such for such old letters. That is how I came upon a big box full of letters which dated up to the mid nineteen eighties, and they particularly caught my interest because they were from a town I had never heard of in a land I had never heard of, that being this town of Fangle Valley in this land of Minnaluna. One of the last letters included the original deed to a farm called Fangle Farmstead, and from the letters I could make up that the farm had been standing empty since sometime in the late nineteen seventies, and the deed was sent to the last remaining relative of the owner, who was the deceased lady whose belongings were sold off in a sale from which I bought the correspondence."
"So that is what made you decide to get in touch with us, I surmise?"
"Indeed. I have always had an interest in growing things, I've been doing some backyard farming for years, and being in the possession of a deed to a farm led me to believe that I might be in possession of the actual farm itself. But that does sound, well, a bit fantastical, so I want to make absolutely sure that me buying a box of letters which happen to include a deed to a farm actually does legally put me in possession of the property. I mean, there might be people around who hold more of a legal claim to the place than I do, since I merely by accident came upon the deed being in a box of old letters I bought at a yard sale."
"Right. Well, I can tell you that Fangle Farmstead has indeed been sitting empty and more or less abandoned since nineteen seventy-eight, when Lou Johnston, who owned and operated the farm, became too old to handle it. When he passed on a few years later, it became clear that he had sent the deed to his farm to his last remaining relative, his cousin who lived on the US mainland. This must be the lady whose belongings were sold after her passing away, from which you bought the correspondence including the deed. I am sure you have been doing a search to find out if there were more relatives who might stake a claim on the property, and so have we. From that search, it has become apparent to us that there are no people, either directly or indirectly related to Lou Johnston, who would have a legal claim to the property as next of kin."
"That is more or less what I found out as well, although of course my search has been limited more to the US as it was harder for me to find information about the Minnaluna land," Laura nodded. "So that would then lead to the conclusion that the owner of the deed, in this case me, is in fact the legal owner of the property?"
"That is correct, miss Forman," mayor Taylor confirmed.
"Then I have another question. Why is it, that if this farm has been sitting abandoned since nineteen seventy-eight, no one has undertaken any steps to put it back into business after it became clear the original deed to it had disappeared and there were no living relatives left to claim the property?"
"Respect, miss Forman. Fangle Farmstead has always been a very prominent farm in this community, it has been one of the first farms since Fangle Valley was established, and Lou Johnston has always been a highly respected and beloved person in our community. People here simply have never, by lack of a better term, taken possession of the property and the land to redevelop it out of respect for Lou Johnston."
"I suppose that makes sense in a way. So people have more or less just been letting it sit and waiting for someone to appear with the original deed to legally take possession of the place?"
"You could put it that way. And it does appear that just that has happened now. I take it you have the deed with you?"
"Of course. I figured you would want to check it for authenticity."
"I do believe you, but yes, it is better to follow proper procedure," mayor Taylor said, picking up a phone and pressing a button on it. "Regina? Could you come to my office, please?" He put the phone back down. "And could you perhaps bring out the deed, miss Forman?"
Laura nodded and very carefully pulled a folded-up paper that had yellowed with age from the thick envelope, even having turned brown along the creases where it had been folded. Even more carefully, she unfolded it on the desk, looking around when the door opened and a skunk lady with dark chocolate brown and white fur, dressed in an out of date but smart suit and a pair of half-moon glasses stepped into the office.
"Miss Felangi is our town attorney. Regina, this is miss Laura Forman, she has come into possession of the original deed to Fangle Farmstead," mayor Taylor introduced them to each other.
"Pleased to meet you," Laura smiled, shaking paws with the skunk lady.
"And very pleased to meet you," the skunk lady said in return. "I can tell you, it created quite a stir when the word went around that the deed to Fangle Farmstead had resurfaced. This is it, I assume?" She stepped over to the desk and leaned over to study the yellowed paper, even scrutinizing it with a magnifying glass. After a few moments, she rose back up and adjusted her glasses while nodding her head. "Oh yes, no doubt about it, that is the real thing."
"In that case," mayor Taylor said, offering a paw to Laura, "I suspect a welcome into our community is in order, farmer Forman."
Laura let out a short, light laugh.
"I suppose so. I still have more questions, though. One of the most important ones being, is the place even inhabitable if it has been sitting abandoned for several decades?"
"Well, the grounds are very much overgrown, of course. As for the farmhouse and the other buildings... I think we might better have a look to see for ourselves, and make any decisions from there on." The mayor buzzed his intercom this time. "Miss Healey, can you contact the Woodhouse brothers and tell them to go out to Fangle Farmstead to meet us there?"
"I'm on it, yes yes!"
"Thank you." The collie turned back to the two women in is office. "Well then, thank you for your assistance, miss Felangi. Miss Forman, shall we? I assume you drove here?"
"That I did, indeed."
"Marvelous, then you can simply follow me."
They walked out of the mayor's office and out of the courthouse, crossing the small park to get to the parking lots. While Laura got back into her old Chevrolet, she looked at the collie to see which car he would get into so she could follow him. As it turned out, that would not be very difficult, as the mayor drove a 1952 Lincoln Cosmopolitan in deep blue with a black roof.
Laura calmly drove after him, through the small town and out of it at the north-western side. There was a small forest to the right, creeping up the side of the mountain range right in the crevice of the main range and the outcrop. Ahead of them, the dirt road crossed a small stream via a simple wood bridge and continued on towards, and through the gate of, the remnants of an evenly simple wood pole-and-plank fence - or at least what was still visible of it between the bushes, trees and tall grass and weeds.
Beyond what was left of the fence the dirt road turned into a rutted trail, still partially covered with rough gravel and completely overgrown to such an extend both mayor Taylor and Laura had to navigate around a tree here and there which had grown in the path of the trail. The grass and weeds were flattened though, proven someone had navigated the trail shortly before. Indeed, a 1952 Studebaker M35 three-axle truck, clearly converted army surplus, was parked to the side of a relatively large, but surprisingly low two-story structure which sort of resembled a farm house, but then one that had been compiled out of several boxes more or less randomly stuck to each other.
Two male beavers in green overalls were sitting on the lowered tailgate of the truck, one of them wearing a panama hat turned green with age, the other one wearing an old cowboy hat. They looked up at the two cars approaching and hopped off the tailgate of the truck, standing next to the vehicle to wait for the cars to stop. Both mayor Taylor and Laura got out of their cars, and the mayor introduced Laura to the two beavers.
"Miss Forman, these are Will and Edward Woodhouse. They are... well, in older days they would have been called the town's handimen, carpenters, but they are much more than that. They own and operate the town's contracting firm, which is huge, and provides for pretty much everything the town needs; groundworks, parks, landscaping, erecting and demolishing of buildings, everything. Boys, this is miss Laura Forman, she is the new owner of Fangle Farm."
Both beavers nodded a 'nice to meet you' at Laura. They all walked onto the giant porch of the mishmash farmhouse and went in through the front door, after one of the beavers opened it with a key and some help of a crowbar. It looked just as dilapidated on the inside as it had on the outside, and had quite a strange layout as well, with random corridors and doors in unusual places and the like.
"What do you think, boys?" mayor Taylor said after a while of looking around. "Is this house inhabitable as is?"
The answer was short and more than clear.
"Not in the least."
Laura drooped her ears, even though she had more or less expected an answer like that after seeing the state the place was in.
"What could be done to make the place inhabitable?" she ventured.
Edward, the brother wearing the panama hat, fished a corn cob pipe from a pocket of his overalls and started stuffing it slowly, keeping his attention with that while answering.
"Two things. Demolish an' rebuild from ground up, or redo the whole thing from the inside out."
"Is there... really no other way?"
"Nope," Will, the other brother, said. "Thing is, place started as single room house way back when. Over time, business an' family grew, rooms were added. Made walls that were on the outside be inside walls. Retained weathering an' moisture, place is rottin' from the inside out. Needs to be gutted an' redone, or demolished entirely an' rebuilt from ground up."
"I... don't really fancy that. I mean, like, it's like a historical building, I'd want it to stay here. So... I suppose gutting it and redoing it from the inside while retaining the outer shell is the best way to go."
"Done," was the very short answer.
"How long would it take, though?"
Both brothers looked at each other, gazed around the interior of the house, at each other again. Every now and then one of them ran a paw over his muzzle in thought. Eventually the answer came.
"Month or two, ten weeks tops."
Again, Laura drooped her ears.
"But I brought all my stuff with me. Where would I stay for all that time, and where can keep my things?"
"We 'ave a trailer an' a storage van for yer things," Will said, followed up by Edward; "We'll get'em now."
Before Laura could even respond to that, both beaver brothers had already walked out of the house and got into the old army truck, starting it up and driving off. Stepping outside as well, the agouti cat looked after the receding truck with a bit of surprise.
"That's our Ed and Will for you," mayor Taylor said with a light chuckle, joining Laura on the porch. "Few words, direct actions."
"Yeah..." Laura said, still a bit bewildered. "I assume they really are super dependable though, aren't they?"
"Definitely," mayor Taylor nodded. "That estimation of ten weeks they gave? They'll have rebuilt the whole house in that time without a doubt, and in between they'll have helped you clearing the grounds as well."
"Yeah... I'm gonna be needing help with that, for sure," Laura said, scratching the back of her head while she let her gaze drift across the overgrown grounds.
"Just out of curiosity, do you have any kind of plan for bringing the farm back to life?" mayor Taylor inquired. "Do you know what you want to grow?"
"I do know what I would like to grow, yes," Laura nodded. "Fruits, berries mostly. I've always been big on fruits, ever since I was a kit I was always trying to plant the seeds of fruits my mother gave me to eat and cultivate them." She laughed lightly. "Most of the times it were miserable failures, but I did manage to grow grapevines and a couple of fruit trees from seed that way. So that's what I've been having in mind ever since I found the deed to this place; making a fruit farm. But as for how to do it..." She shrugged a bit helplessly. "No clue. I guess I'll just have to dig in and start clearing land and see how things turn out."
"That's usually the best way," mayor Taylor agreed. "And the ground here is very high in nutrients, so it's very suitable for growing all kinds of crops, even tropical ones. There's blueprints and land survey maps on archive in our City Hall you can borrow; if you'd make a copy of one of the survey maps, you could use it to draw out a plan for how you'd like the layout of the farm to be."
"That'll be very helpful, yes. Is there a nursery or shop in town where I could get seeds or saplings as well?"
"Unfortunately, no. Most farmers here buy in bulk from a wholesaler, and though the general store in town does carry a selection of seeds, it's not really very suitable for serious farming on a larger scale. I can recommend May's Flowers in Fandago though. She is a top-notch botanist, and though she specializes in flowers, she can also help you get underway with fruits."
"I'll definitely check that out, thank you."
They both looked around at the sound of the army truck returning on the overgrown trail, maneuvering around carefully. On the bed of it was a huge 1950 GMC box truck in white and yellow with a very faint lettering of Coca Cola in red on the sides, while hanging behind it was a very large trailer; an enormous dulled aluminum sausage on wheels that could be nothing else but an Airstream trailer - it was in fact a 22-foot long 1952 Airstream Cruiser. The cola truck's both right tires were flat, but for the rest it looked in pretty good shape. It was quickly loaded off the large army truck after the trailer had been parked, and quicker than anyone could say lollapalooza, the beaver brothers had hooked up a generator and a water supply to it, and just as quickly they started taking the furniture and boxes off of and out of Laura's car and stacking them into the old Coca Cola truck.
It was all Laura could do but stare with her mouth pretty much agape at the silent, and highly efficient manners of the two beavers. Only when Will took one of the suitcases from the backseat of her car, Laura got her wits back and stepped forwards, reaching out a paw to take the suitcase.
"Oh, uhm, thank you, but I should take that, my clothes and hygiene things are in there."
"Right."
Will handed Laura the suitcase, and also right away the keys to the trailer. Seeing as she had nothing to do anyway, Laura unlocked the trailer and stepped into it to look around at the inside. For an over-sixty year old trailer, it was still looking very good on the inside, the furnishing being, of course, old but still relatively luxurious. To the far left of the door, all the way in the back, was a fold-out double bed, with a small shower cabin in a walled-off section and even a toilet before it. On the right side, it had a small kitchen all the way at the front end, with a two-burner stovetop on a small model refrigerator, a small sink and even a built-in microwave which, while it was old, definitely was a whole lot younger than the trailer itself. Opposite the shower cabin were two closets, and in the middle was a fairly large seating area with two covered benches that in a pinch also could fold out into a bed, on either side of a flip-up table.
By the time the agouti feline stepped back out of the trailer, the two beavers had finished loading all of her belongings into the old truck and gave her the keys of that as well. They had even, since Laura had not brought all that many belongings with her, loaded up the truck so that there was a wide path in the middle with all the furniture and boxes on either sides, and everything was easily reachable.
With a promise they would meet up the next day and have a basic drawing ready for what they might do with the inside of the farmhouse, the Woodhouse brothers said their goodbyes. Not long after, mayor Taylor bid Laura goodbye as well, after they had walked up and down the path and around the farmhouse a bit and the border collie had shown Laura a bit more of the premises, among which a fairly large, half-collapsing barn at the side of the path towards the farm house in which was a collection of vehicles that were used on the farm.
Left alone, Laura slowly wandered back and forth by the farm house, looking at it from all sides, every now and then standing still and scratching one of her ears in thought while sweeping her gaze across the dilapidated house and the overgrown grounds. Despite the vegetation having gone wild over the past decades in which the farm had been abandoned, it was still visible there was a large area covered in gravel in front of the house, in the middle of which was a classic well. Across from the gravel path were leftovers of long fences, behind which evidently the crop fields had been. Though in the open area between the gravel and the fences right in front of the farm house, there must have been a garden, since there were still some clearly cultivated flowering plants among the wild vegetation. The path ran from the corner of the farmhouse straight down, alongside the former garden, with on the right side, opposite the former garden, a large patch of overgrown vegetation that most likely had been an orchard, as there were clearly older trees planted in neat lines between all the random trees and bushes that had grown there over the years. Behind that was a relatively wide creek that came out of the mountains, with crystal clear water through which the sandy bottom with pebbles and small rocks and fresh green water plants was clearly visible, and there were a lot of fish flitting around in it as well.
Laura smiled over that, looking at the creek for a while with her paws in her sides while she drew in deep breaths of the clear, fresh air, her ears flicking and swiveling to the sound of the water burbling and spattering by and the birds still chirping in the trees. Her thoughts ran freely, mulling over all the possibilities of what she could do with the farm, all the things she could do with what she might grow on the farm, how she was going to fit into the very small but clearly close-knit and friendly community of the tiny little town, new friends she might make, although one thought did prevail over all the other ones; it was going to take a very long time and a whole lot of very hard work to undo more than three decades of neglect and abandonment and turn the farm back into a profitable enterprise again. And it was most likely going to eat very much into her savings. She knew she would not be able to grow anything and make any money for at least the entire coming year, and possible wouldn't be able to grow very much and make very much money the next year either, so she would have to dip deep into her savings just to live trough the year. Most likely, she might even need to find some kind of job to financially support herself through the coming year. It would even not be a very bad idea to get at least a part-time job at one of the other farms of the town, so she could also gain experience of how exactly to run a farm of her own.
Yes, it was going to be hard, it was going to be an immensely amount of very hard work, and it was going to take a long time and take a lot of learning new things and adapting. But, all in all, just from looking around at the lovely surroundings, wild and overgrown as they were, Laura knew it was going to be more than worth it. She would be starting a whole new life for herself, and she was going to face a lot of new challenges, but she knew that her decision had been the right one, and it would work out for the better for her. New life, better be ready, Laura Forman was here to grab it with both paws and make it hers!
