Faces roughly sunburned, people holding pieces of pump pipe and broken PVC pipe in their hands—it was obvious at a glance that they had not come with good intentions.
The man standing at the front of them spat out the gum he had been chewing and shouted.
“You bastards are the reason this broke!”
His voice cracked like a dry wind.
“Ever since you drilled that new well, all I get in my field is air, you hear me?”
Grasping what the situation was, I furrowed my brow. I realized we had run into a more complicated problem than I’d expected.
The Lodi area, where Chloe’s pear farm was located, sat atop the San Joaquin Subbasin in the northern San Joaquin Valley, and the farms in this region shared a groundwater aquifer. Because of that, most farms irrigated through groundwater wells, which meant that legally and physically, no one really knew who was pumping out how much.
From the look of it, they seemed to have come from several different farms, so it didn’t seem like they were lying. That made the situation even more troublesome.
“First, please calm down…”
When I stepped forward, the man in front roared.
“And who the hell are you? Are you the farm owner?”
“The farm owner is Chloe here, and I’m her guardian and business partner.”
“Business partner…?”
At the word partner, everyone flinched slightly. Partner was just the word, but in reality, it could mean investor, and many young investors entering agriculture were wealthy and had all sorts of legal means at their disposal, including lawyers and tax accountants. They knew they couldn’t just get angry recklessly.
It was obvious they had come charging in with such aggression before even trying to talk because they all knew the farm owner was a young woman.
“First, why don’t you explain the situation from the beginning? At exactly which location, how much water used to come out, and how little is coming out now? Ah, Mr. Liam, could you record the conversation we’re about to have?”
“Well… the camera is in the warehouse office.”
“Good. Then shall we go to our office and talk there?”
They looked at one another, then nodded.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
In the end, the group began walking toward the office. Perhaps she was frightened, because Chloe followed while holding onto my waist, then whispered.
“I think I should start carrying a handgun.”
“Do you even know how to shoot?”
“My dad taught me.”
“Haa…”
America, seriously… Of course, I wasn’t entirely against it either. In a land this vast, where even if you called the police, it could take more than thirty minutes for them to arrive unless you were in a city, if you didn’t have a gun, you had no way to protect yourself. I was simply worried an accident might happen.
Once we arrived at the office and everyone sat wherever they liked, on chairs or the sofa, I looked at the six or seven people who had come to the farm and said,
“First, let me introduce myself again. I’m Brian Choi, guardian and business partner of Chloe, the owner of this farm, and I operate a winery in Napa Valley.”
At the words that I operated a winery in Napa Valley, the farm owners who had come looked at one another in slight surprise. They had thought we were just young kids who didn’t know anything, only to learn that wasn’t the case. They also knew that a Napa Valley winery was on a scale and revenue level far beyond that of an ordinary farm owner.
“I want to handle this matter rationally and fairly, so let’s discuss it calmly.”
If it had been some other issue, I wouldn’t have lowered myself this much, but when you ran a pear farm and someone raised a water issue, you had no choice but to become vulnerable. Fundamentally, Niitaka pears required two to three times more water than grapes. Especially in summer, each tree required a considerable amount of water, around twenty to thirty liters a day.
That was why, when we converted this tomato field into a Niitaka pear orchard, we had drilled a new well… The problem was that even so, at most, the water level should have dropped by about one or two feet from normal, so I found it a little hard to understand why they had all come storming in like this.
“The bottom’s dropping. Like I said earlier, water isn’t coming out properly in my field. And mine isn’t the only land like that.”
“I understand. So you believe our pear farm is the problem, correct?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t like this when this place was a tomato farm.”
“Good. Then let’s do this. File a complaint with the Lodi Water District and request an investigation into well-to-well interference.”
For a moment, the faces of the farm owners, including the man, tightened slightly as they looked at one another. It was an extremely reasonable suggestion, but also one that couldn’t be made easily unless one was truly confident.
There was no one here who didn’t know that if the result showed that the decline in groundwater levels was due to the pear farm, we would have to compensate all the surrounding farms and suffer a major loss.
“You really want to do that?”
“Yes. If there’s a problem, we should confirm it quickly, and if something needs to be fixed, we should fix it. But if it turns out not to be our problem, wouldn’t that also clear up this injustice quickly?”
“Look, common sense says that ever since this pear farm showed up, the water level dropped and the other farms can’t pump up water. Either that, or you drilled the new well too deep.”
Groundwater differed by layer, but many farms generally shared the shallowest aquifer, the Shallow Alluvial Aquifer. At times like this, if a new well was drilled too deep—over two hundred feet—the pressure in the upper groundwater layer could change, causing nearby shallow wells to backflow or draw in air, preventing water from coming up at other farms.
If you used too much water, or drilled a well incorrectly like that, you could cause damage to other farms.
“The Lodi Water District will determine that as well.”
The farm owners frowned slightly at my calm answer. They probably didn’t have any firm certainty that the pear farm was using an enormous amount of water either. It had only been a year since we planted the saplings, so how much water could we possibly be using?
Since a water resource problem had arisen, they had apparently charged into the pear farm, thinking the young owner wouldn’t know much, intending to demand a settlement. When that didn’t work, they were flustered.
“Let’s do that, then. Let’s go and report it right away.”
And so, the people who had come barging in so recklessly soon streamed back out again.
“Will it be all right?”
At Chloe’s worried expression, I shrugged.
“No matter how I think about it, this alone shouldn’t cause a problem with the water source. When we drilled the well, you remember how many times I asked them to keep the depth within the range I specified, right?”
“I know.”
“So I think there’s almost no chance the water source problem was caused by us. The Lodi Water District will confirm it.”
After saying that, I looked at Liam.
“The swelling around the graft union earlier is due to graft incompatibility. Niitaka pears have a large physiological difference between the rootstock, the pear rootstock tree, and the scion, the Niitaka cultivar, so if the soil acidity, or pH, and moisture conditions aren’t right, the graft union swells up like a collar.”
“Ah…”
“To fix it, you need to correct the soil acidity. If you apply about one hundred to two hundred pounds of elemental sulfur per acre and then deep plow, or mix in peat moss, acidic leaf mold, pine needle compost, and the like instead of ordinary compost, it should improve gradually.”
Liam looked deeply surprised as he said,
“I heard a lot about you from the young farm owner, but you really don’t seem to have anything you don’t know when it comes to farming.”
Chloe, looking proud beside me, chimed in.
“See? I told you, didn’t I?”
“You did. He really seems like a farming genius. I’ve never seen anyone give solutions on the spot in the field like this before.”
Suppressing my embarrassment with effort, I added to the solution.
“If that still doesn’t work, you can spray iron chelate—Fe-EDDHA, a highly efficient iron fertilizer used to prevent and treat iron deficiency in plants—or zinc chelate—Zn-EDTA, a compound fertilizer in which zinc ions are stabilized by being wrapped in organic molecules to improve zinc absorption efficiency—two or three times as foliar fertilizer.”
“Understood. We’ll try that.”
I turned my head back to Chloe.
“We sent them off for now, but just in case, install CCTV at the farm entrance and places like that so people can’t just barge in. And you too, just in case, really keep at least a gun on hand.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t mean she should truly prepare for a shootout, just that she should prepare for any possible situation. In Korea, if you ran into a lunatic, calling the police or avoiding them would get you out of most crises, but in America, the danger level of lunatics was far higher than in Korea, so it couldn’t be helped.
“For now, I’ll head back today, and I’ll come again when the Lodi Water District comes.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to thank me… It’s only natural.”
At my words that I would come and look after things on such an important day, she smiled bashfully.
---
Four days later, at the Conrad London St. James Hotel.
Two days had passed since thousands of bottles of wine had been evaluated, and now only one moment remained.
Best in Show.
The host’s British accent rang through the hall.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for waiting. After careful deliberation by our judges from many fields, we will now announce the Best in Show of the 2007 Decanter World Wine Awards.”
The lights slowly dimmed, and on the screen, wines from each region appeared one after another. Europe, South America, Africa, New Zealand… and the final category, the United States.
The single line they had been waiting and waiting for appeared.
Echelon 2005 – Redwood Winery, California.
Applause burst out, and camera flashes went off in succession. The host smiled and added,
“Redwood Winery has won Regional Platinum. Congratulations!”
Christopher smiled and waved, while Thomas clapped and shouted.
“We got it! It’s finally Platinum!”
But Christopher wore a bitter smile. It was certainly good, but… one sentence at the bottom of the screen made his stomach twist.
Sylphide 2005 – Gold Medal.
Because Sylphide, the wine he distributed, had stopped at Gold. Honestly, even that alone was an incredible result, but because Echelon had happened to win Regional Platinum, it had created an inevitable comparison.
Now, he felt even more regret over what he had missed when reviewing Echelon.
“It stopped at Gold.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Even so, with results like this, New York will evaluate Sylphide even more highly than it does now.”
There was no need to say how obsessed New York’s upper class was with authority. The San Francisco Chronicle award held in America had already had a considerable influence on the brand, but the DWWA held in Britain would undoubtedly grant it a different kind of prestige.
“That’s true. It will.”
After the awards ceremony ended and he left the hall, Christopher called Brian to inform him of the good news.
“Hello?”
“Brian! I have good news! Echelon won Regional Platinum!”
Christopher had naturally expected him to jump for joy, but,
“Really? Thank you. What about Sylphide?”
“What? Gold. Unfortunately, that’s how it turned out.”
“Gold is more than satisfying enough. You’ve worked hard. I’m a bit busy right now, so may I call you later?”
“Ah, of course.”
After the call ended, Christopher, feeling oddly deflated, looked at Thomas with a bitter expression.
“I’m hungry, so let’s go to a restaurant. I need to soothe this aching stomach of mine.”
“Haha, of course.”
While Christopher was riding in a taxi with a pitiful expression like that, I was facing a group of people at Chloe’s pear farm.
As expected, the same man from that day was chewing gum again and raising his voice.
“There’s definitely going to be a problem! You have to investigate properly!”
I shrugged toward the investigators from the Lodi Water District—or more precisely, the North San Joaquin Water Conservation District—who had come to conduct the inspection, and gestured that we would cooperate.
“Understood. Since you’ve agreed, we will begin the investigation.”
The investigation to resolve the dispute began.