After I Stopped Buying Their Corn, the Farmers Panicked Chapter 02
I tried to explain, but the moment I opened my mouth, I was drowned in abuse.
“Everyone, listen to me. It’s not what it—”
[This livestream has been suspended for possible policy violations.]
The screen went black.
I clenched my fists. My nails dug into my palms.
The next day, three county inspection teams—commerce, health, and environmental—came through together. I pulled out every license and every record and laid it out for them. They went through everything—equipment, staff, safety measures, hygiene. They inspected for three full days and found nothing wrong.
“Ms. Blake, your ranch is well-run.” The lead inspector clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t pay too much mind to what’s online. The facts will sort it out.”
After I saw the team off, I drove straight to the home of the co-op chairman.
The old chairman, Hank, was crouched by his door smoking. When he saw me coming, he didn’t even look up.
“Hank, you’ve got to do something about this Noah Reed business.”
“Do something? How?” He blew a smoke ring. “When you first came around, you only said you were buying corn to feed cattle and sheep. You didn’t say anything about doing it on livestream. Now this thing’s blown up so big that the county office has been hauling me in for chats.”
“Tell you what. Listen to me. Raise the purchase price to two dollars a pound, and I’ll get this whole thing settled down for you.”
I could hardly believe it. Two dollars? Nobody on earth could pay that price.
Only half a month ago, this same man had stood in front of my truck with the rest of the farmers, tears running down his face: “Ms. Blake, please save us. The corn’s going to rot in the fields!” Back then, my heart had softened. I’d not only bought the whole lot, I’d paid twenty cents more per pound than anyone else would have.
How had he flipped this fast?
I narrowed my eyes and studied him—and that was when I noticed a half-covered letter on the table. The handwriting was a sprawling, scratchy mess. It was Noah Reed’s.
He’d written that the county’s corn was top-grade, that they could be making real money selling it elsewhere, and that selling it to me was throwing money away.
I let out a cold laugh. So that was it.
Once money got into people’s eyes, even an old man could lose his head.
No wonder Noah had charged into my ranch and lost his mind that day. He wasn’t just having a tantrum. He was building the cover story for what came next—making me look unreasonable enough that they could justify walking away from the contract.
“In that case,” I said, my voice cooling, “I’m not buying any more corn from your co-op.”
The old chairman’s true face came right out.
“You can’t! The contract’s signed! You don’t get to just say no!”
“If you dare back out, I’ll sue you for breach of contract! And when that’s done, you can hand over the whole damn ranch to us!”
I looked at his ungrateful face and finally understood. There were some people you could never give enough to.
I pulled out the contract and tapped the clause.
“It says right here—if either party breaks the agreement, the other can terminate at any time. You’re the ones who refused to deliver the corn. You broke it first. I’m being generous by not coming after you for damages.”
His head snapped up. The veins in his neck stood out.
“I don’t care! You’re the one who came around offering to solve our unsold-corn problem. Now you say you won’t buy and that’s the end of it? If that truck of yours dares leave here empty today, I—”
“Hank! Don’t waste your breath on her!”
A familiar voice came from the doorway. Noah Reed had arrived with a whole crowd of farmers behind him. He clamped a hand on the old chairman’s shoulder and turned to sweep his bright, fevered eyes across the room.
“All of you! We can’t let middlemen like this run our lives forever!”
He pointed toward the city. “I’ve been asking around. Sweet corn in the city is selling for two dollars and fifty cents a pound! And she’s paying us seventy cents! She’s bleeding us dry!”
I listened to him work himself up, and the ridiculousness of it almost made me laugh out loud.
The high-end produce shops in the city had their premium sweet corn behind glass cases. Those were varieties bred over years by agricultural research stations and major farms—fat kernels, stable sweetness, beautiful packaging. Then there was the old variety in these fields, which even my cattle and sheep got picky about if they ate too much of it.
The gap in variety and brand value wasn’t something this hot-headed kid could even begin to imagine.
Noah Reed was getting more wound up by the second.
“I already checked. Opening a produce shop in the city costs three hundred thousand dollars. If you all chip in, you can let me open a store that sells only our own corn! Every family will get rich!”
The farmers lit up.
“Noah’s right! We’re not letting anyone push our prices down!”
“Open our own store! Make real money!”
“That Blake woman’s the crooked one! Telling us our corn was only fit for cattle—ha! She just wanted to lowball us!”
Three hundred thousand dollars. Split between households, that was more than half a year’s earnings—gone. But in the face of “getting rich,” the risk just vanished from their minds.
They looked at Noah Reed like he could really lead them to fortune. When they looked back at me, all I saw was anger and hatred.
“Crooked as they come! Treating us like fools!”
“Beat it out of her! Make her cough up what she stole from us!”
