“Ok.” Her mom replied with a chuckle. “Just stay safe and don’t overthink things too much.”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks mom.” Sarah replied.
“No problem. Bye.” Her mom replied.
“Bye mom.” Sarah replied before she hung up the phone. She looked back at herself in mirror. It was just her and her thoughts. She remembered that, for some reason, she had decided to just throw her arms around Chase and that simple act was enough to get him to return the hug and even lay down with her.
She smiled in spite of herself. All this time she had been nervous to do anything, and yet that simple thing was enough to work. Better yet, even knowing that she was still not likely to make many moves on her own. But at least something had evidently gotten through to him.
She felt her nerves starting to act up again. She definitely wanted to go back out and snuggle up with him again, but she also still felt bad about hurting his shoulder and didn’t want to hurt him again.
“Sarah,” she thought to herself, “just throwing yourself at him had already worked once.” She decided that if she went back out there and he was still laying down, she would lay down again. And not hurt him this time.
She left and headed back out to find Chase laying down and doing something on his phone.
“Who are you texting?” She asked.
He put his phone face down on his chest as looked up at her. “Hmm?” He asked.
“Who are you texting?” She asked again.
“Oh.” He replied. “No one.”
She just eyed him a bit and after a second or so he picked the blanket up off of him. “Do you want to lay back down?” He asked.
She was still curious about what he had been doing, and she had to admit to herself that she was jealous and afraid that he might be texting another girl. Regardless, she was the one in his house with him and she’d never seen any other vehicles pull into his driveway, not that she’d been looking though.
She proceeded to wordlessly lay back down on top of him and settle in before he proceeded to wrap the blanket around the two of them. As she rested her head on his chest, a rush of both relaxation and excitement coursed through her. She inexplicably felt incredibly safe, and yet nervous at the same time. The fact that he had just asked her to lay down had her excited, as did simply being that close to him. At the same time, thoughts of the raging blizzard outside seemed like a distant memory.
She closed her eyes and took a few moments to collect herself and then her primal brain kicked in again and made her want to remove the layers of fabric that were keeping their bodies apart.
She imagined being tangled up with him, passion running through both of them, driving their actions as they removed layers from each other until the two of them were intertwined with nothing to separate them. Her imagination ran wild thinking of exploring his body with her hands. She thought about what his body would feel like as she ran her hands over him.
Her fantasizing was interrupted again by the sound of Chase typing on his phone. She opened her eyes again and saw that he was holding his phone behind her head.
“What are you doing?” She asked, still having thoughts that maybe he was texting someone else.
“I’m crunching some numbers.” Was his response.
She gave him a perplexed look. “What?” She asked.
“I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do with my land yet.” He explained.
“So, what exactly are you trying to figure out?” She asked.
“Well, I’ve got ninety acres that isn’t pastured right now, and I need to figure out what I want my crop rotation to be and how much feed I’ll be able to make with that. Plus, I need to get half a clue how much feed I can store and how many cattle I can feed with that.” He explained.
“How do you even figure all of that out?” She asked.
“Well, it’s pretty far from an exact science, but there are pretty good estimates out there for a lot of this stuff and using those I can get half a clue of what I can expect to be working with.” He said.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“Well,” Chase began, “crop yields inevitably vary from acre to acre and year to year because of about a million factors. But, data from that has been tracked for long enough that we can get a rough idea of what a given acre will do with a given inputs of fertilizer, seed, chemicals, those types of things. For instance, our BMR corn that we use for silage back home usually yields us about 18 tons to the acre the way we raise it. Now that number can change, but 18 is usually a pretty safe estimate.”
“Huh, neat.” Sarh replied, she never realized just how much actually went into something that seemed as simple as growing food.
“Yeah, well I know I want to feed some kind of hay because it’ll be a little tougher feed for cows while they’re not pregnant. I’ll also probably make some of that into haylage for something a little more palatable. I might make some corn silage but I’m not sure if I’ll have the silo space for that or how exactly I’m gonna get that volume low enough.” He added.
Sarah remained silent trying to process everything she’d just heard. Most of which she didn’t understand, but she wasn’t even sure what questions she needed to ask. Luckily for her, Chase started thinking out loud as he typed on his phone.
“I mean if I do a corn, soybean, and wheat rotation while rotating hay fields every few years, that would give me 22.5 acres for each crop. But, if I put out two hay fields so I don’t have to rotate them both at once, that gives 18 acres in a field and 36 acres of hay. And 36 acres of hay will give about 75 tons of dry matter, which means I should be good as long as I can fit at least one cutting in the silo. Since I’m feeding beef cattle, I’ll probably stick with only making three cuttings of hay per year, it’ll give the stand better longevity and be less work. The big silo I have out there is 16×60 so it should take at least 100 tons of dry matter if I don’t let the haylage dry out too much, probably closer to 120 tons. Now I’m debating whether or not I should do corn silage in the other silo for the winter, the problem is, that silo is only 14×55 and I’m not sure how to get 18 acres of corn silage to fit into there. That silo will only really hold about 50 tons of dry matter and corn silage tends to yield about twice that off of 18 acres.”
Sarah just laid there wide eyed, she was a little overwhelmed by how much knowledge he had just bombarded her with.
“Are you still awake down there?” He asked.
“Yeah.” She replied, still lost but not wanting to bombard him with questions at the moment.
“Ok” He replied with a chuckle. “I thought maybe I’d put you to sleep.”
She smiled, knowing that he could barely see her face. “Nope I’m still listening,” she admitted, “just not understanding much.”
“Understandable.” Chase agreed. “I can keep my mouth shut if it bugs you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Talk away.” She told him. For a while she laid there listening to him ramble on about topics she barely understood, ranging from animal nutrition to cover crops to soil health to different types of equipment and what they were used for.