Kestrel Farm · Year Fifteen of the Long Fallow
Till It Takes
Fertile men are almost extinct. You're not, and there's a line at your gate.
The valley
The only place left where food grows
A soil and airborne blight called the Long Fallow burned the grain belt fifteen years ago. It burned the gonadal tissue of everyone who ate it. Men hardest of all.
Almost every man raised on blighted grain is sterile now. A handful survived, scattered across the sheltered valleys that kept pre-blight seed in cold vaults. Kestrel Farm is one of them, and it is the only farm in the region with a proven fertile man working it.
That is the entire reason women come. No one drags them down the track. They read the contract, they sign it, they walk in through the gate at dusk and take a room. Some are practical about it. Some are desperate. Some just want to feel wanted for a while before the world finishes falling apart.
"While a woman lives under your roof, she's yours. However often, however you like. The day she's carrying, the contract ends."
On the day she is confirmed carrying, the contract is done. She can walk out the gate and never look back, or she can stay as long as she likes. Plenty stay.
What kind of man runs this farm is up to you. The valley is watching. The Registry has a file on you. The Church has a blessing, or it doesn't. And in the dark between the rows, the Reclaiming is counting the women who leave farms with their children — and asking why.
One page, witnessed, notarized
The contract
The same seven clauses for every woman. Read it the way Sable does — twice, and out loud.
Seed Registry · Contract of Provision and Claim
The Late Crop Agreement
BETWEEN THE KEEPERS OF KESTREL FARM · AND THE WOMAN NAMED BELOW
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The woman named below takes a room under the keeper's roof, and works the farm. While she lives under that roof she is under his protection and his availability, however often and however he likes, without further negotiation, provided she is asked first and that she is awake and willing. Consent is not a formality. It is the whole of the clause.
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She keeps the house, the rows, the stock and the seed vault in such order as the keeper may reasonably require of a working farm. The keeper does not instruct her, and does not leave her to it alone. Work is the price of the roof and it is paid in daylight, not in silence.
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The Registry's own physician confirms the pregnancy in the fourth month. The confirmation is registered, and the register is public. Before that month, nothing is announced, nothing is named, and nothing is owed to anyone.
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On delivery the contract ends. The woman is free of the roof, of the work and of the keeper, in full, and no further claim may be made on her person. She may take the child, her lineage claim and a share of the produce, and go.
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Or she may stay, as long as she likes, as a member of the household and not as a contracted woman, with a share of the land in her own name and her own roof in her own keeping. The term of the contract is twelve months, whichever comes first.
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Breach is debt. If she leaves early with the child's claim unsettled, she owes the farm, and the farm will collect. If the keeper breaks these terms, she has ground, and she will use it. This clause is written twice, in the same ink, and neither copy is softer than the other.
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Signed, witnessed and notarized. The keeper's name is entered by the woman herself. Nothing in this agreement is binding on the body of a woman who did not agree to it, and no signature of hers makes it so.
The keeper
__________________
The woman
__________________
Witnessed by the Registry
__________________
The household
Eleven files, one roof
Nobody drags them here. They read the contract, they sign it, and they take a room. Choose one to open her file — then move the calendar and watch her year run.
Her file
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Tap a stage to hear her
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The harvest cycle
Twelve months, and a line at the gate
The story runs on three clocks: the contract term, the harvest cycle, and the woman's body. Turn the dial. The light changes, the valley reports in, and somebody new is standing outside.
Drag the dial, or use the arrow keys
Field report · Kestrel Farm
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The wall
What the barn camera saw
Eleven plates, pinned to the plank wall of the loft. The Registry sealed them years ago and nobody has taken them down.
What kind of man runs this farm is up to you.
Eleven names on the Co-op's list, one vault of pre-blight seed, and a line at the gate that starts forming after the first frost. The late crop does not wait for you to be ready.