I sighed.
“With that debt, we may not have a choice.”
He pulled a pencil from his pocket.
“Butch told me he’d asked Dad twice about buying the east eighty.”
I nodded.
“He’s wanted it for years.”
“What would that land sell for?”
“About five thousand dollars an acre, especially to Butch.”
Phil began calculating.
Eighty acres multiplied by five thousand dollars.
$400,000.
Then he wrote down the farm debt.
$388,000.
He drew a line beneath the figures.
We both stared at the result.
Selling only the east eighty could potentially clear the entire bank debt.
Phil looked up.
“That means we could keep the home quarter and creek pasture.”
I nodded slowly.
“Free of the mortgage debt, assuming the sale works out.”
Dad had always refused to sell that land.
But now we were facing a choice he’d never believed he could make.
Phil continued.
“We could put the remaining property in both our names. Half each.”
