I grew up believing the farm would always be my safe place. I just never imagined I’d have to fight to stay there the week we laid my grandfather to rest.

My grandfather raised me. When my parents died in a car crash on a wet October night, I was 12 years old.

I remember sitting on the hospital bench with a social worker who kept saying words like “placement” and “temporary housing,” and then I heard Grandpa’s voice cut through the hallway.

That was it.

Just his steady hand on my shoulder and the smell of hay and peppermint gum.

My grandpa and the farm became my whole world after that.

My new home wasn’t fancy.

The paint peeled off the barn in long strips, and the roof leaked every spring, but it was ours.

Grandpa taught me how to mend a fence and how to read the sky before a storm rolled in.

When I had nightmares, he would sit on the edge of my bed and say, “You’re safe here, Katie. Nothing touches you on this land.”

Years passed. I got married young, divorced even younger, and moved back in with Grandpa, with my three kids in tow.

I took them with me when my ex decided responsibility wasn’t for him.

Grandpa never once complained.

He just nodded and said, “More boots by the door means more life in the house.”

***

When his health started declining about 10 years ago, it happened slowly at first.

He’d forget where he put his hat, then forget whether he had fed the horses.

Eventually, he couldn’t climb the stairs without holding the railing with both hands.

So I stepped in.

I ran the harvest, handled the suppliers, and balanced the books at the kitchen table after the kids went to bed.

I drove him to every doctor appointment and changed his bandages when his circulation worsened.

I cut back on groceries so I could pay the bills for the same home he once built with his own hands.

When the last harvest failed because of an early frost, I took out a small loan and didn’t tell anyone except the banker.