At four in the morning, I climbed onto my grandfather’s old tractor and began cutting a message into the forty-acre hayfield where my sister would marry that afternoon. My name is Laney Tidwell, and I had spent my entire life working the eighty acres my grandfather left me. He taught me everything about farming, from driving a tractor to knowing when hay was ready to bale. When he died, he left me the land because he knew I would keep it as farmland.
My sister, Megan, inherited his savings and the gold watch he had worn for sixty years. I never questioned his decision. I loved the land, and Megan had never seemed interested in farming. But when she asked to hold her wedding in the field behind our grandfather’s farmhouse, I happily agreed. I spent weeks preparing the property, mowing paths, clearing trees, and making room for two hundred guests.CONTINUE READING PART 2