"And corn?"
She would smile.
"Always corn."
Our farmhouse was built in the 1920s. The porch sagged slightly, the floors creaked, and the kitchen cabinets had been repaired more times than I could remember.
But it was home.
Then Pines Ridge Estates arrived.
Forty-seven enormous houses appeared on the eastern slope, each with stone entrances, manicured lawns, and garages bigger than my first house.
The developers advertised "authentic rural living."
Apparently, authentic rural living meant looking at farms without experiencing them.
The first complaint came when Sarah was undergoing chemotherapy.
I started the combine at six in the morning.
Fifteen minutes later, Vivian Thornridge appeared at my property line wearing high heels.
"That machinery is disturbing the community," she said.
I looked at her.
"This is a farm."
She glanced toward the cornfield.
"Surely agricultural work can be scheduled at more civilized hours."
"Corn doesn't care about your sleep schedule."
Her expression changed.
From that moment forward, the complaints never stopped.
Noise.
Dust.
Fertilizer.
Tractor traffic.
"Unsafe agricultural practices."
"Visual pollution."
"Environmental concerns."
County inspectors began arriving so frequently that I started joking with them.
"Want coffee?"
Some laughed.
Others looked uncomfortable.
Because they knew the truth.
I had been farming legally for decades.
The old families understood.
Marcus Bell, who owned the auto shop, told me, "They want the country life without anything country about it."
Silas Harper, an elderly neighbor who kept chickens, put it more simply.
"They bought the view and discovered the view comes with farmers."
Sarah laughed when I told her that.
It was one of the last times I heard her laugh.
After she died, the valley became painfully quiet.
Then Vivian filed her lawsuit.
Two days after Sarah's funeral, a certified envelope arrived.
Inside was a formal complaint accusing me of operating a dangerous commercial agricultural facility.
I sat alone at the kitchen table.
Sarah's chair was empty.
The legal papers were spread across the table where she used to spread seed catalogs.
I stared at them for a long time.
Then my phone rang.
It was Delores Martinez, Marcus's aunt.
"Ezra," she said, "you need to come down to the county records office."
"Why?"
Her voice dropped.
"Because somebody has been moving your property lines."
The Lines on the Map
The county records basement smelled like mildew, dust, and old paper.
Delores had worked there for thirty-seven years. She knew every filing cabinet and every mistake ever buried inside one.
She spread three maps across a metal table.
"Look."
I leaned forward.