Excerpt from This Blessed Earth by Ted Genoways, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In the last light of the day, Kyle stretched the tape measure from one wall of the bin to the other, marked the spot on the next floor piece with a nub of blue chalk. Then he was back at the torch. He struck the igniter, and the nozzle burst again into flame, sparks skittering and bounding across the concrete as he made another cut. By the time he finally stopped work for the day and walked back to the house, it was full dark. Meghan was already in the kitchen, back from nightly chores—feeding the goats and horses, checking on cattle, closing up the laying hens until morning. She had four chicken breasts cooking in the fry pan. Kyle kicked off his boots in the mudroom and padded quietly around the kitchen. Worry was heavy in the air. With harvest now two weeks late, Meghan was on edge too. The smallest provocation could turn her fiery eyes, usually wide with emphasis, to a cold stare. She was the first to admit that growing up on the farm with a twin sister and two other siblings had made her quick-tempered and sharp-tongued, but those years had armed her with a winning sense of humor. She could punch you in the arm hard enough to convey honest frustration and simultaneously, somehow, forgiveness.

This tension was different. It wasn't nervy but nervous. Meghan and Kyle both knew that the later in the season the harvest begins, the deeper in the year you go toward winter— and the chance of yield-loss due to ice or snow. If you suffer crop losses when prices are down, there's no chance of catching a market rebound. Then you become the sucker whose losses faraway farmers cheer. You take what the insurance adjustor gives you and try to make it through the next year. Flipping the chicken breasts with a fork, Meghan let out an exasperated moan, then launched a sardonic recitation of the wisdom she'd heard a thousand times. "Two things with farming," she said, putting on her dad's voice, "you can't control the weather, and you can't control the markets."

Meghan loves to joke about Rick's penchant for teachable moments, but she knew that if her dad was going to step back and eventually retire, then she and Kyle not only had to work hard. They had learn to make the smart decisions that give them the tiny edge that is often the difference between the kind of success that allows you to add equipment and acres and the kind of loss that eventually leads to a farm sale. With so much riding on the next year, Meghan said she would feel a lot better if they could just get out in the fields.

"You're putting inputs all year, with money and hard work and lots of effort," she said. "And one bad storm could wipe it all out." She moved from the stovetop to the sink, filling water glasses and staring out the window, as if she could see the brittle rows of ready soybeans and the browning corn- stalks beyond the edge of their yard—though it was now so dark that the glass was a mirror, reflecting her face by the kitchen light.

"It's your payday," Meghan said, "the one time of year that we're actually making money, instead of shelling out." She took a deep breath. "It's a field of dollar bills out there."

Kyle cracked a wry smile. "And they could just blow away."

Excerpted from This Blessed Earth by Ted Genoways. Copyright © 2017 by Ted Genoways. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.