He nodded.
“I’ll call another unit.”
Then he looked at the maze.
“You really harvesting this?”
I checked the moisture reading Tyler had texted me.
18.2 percent.
Close enough.
“Every stalk.”
At 5:09, the first row disappeared.
The combine header swallowed corn that somebody had marked as ENTRANCE.
Dry stalks snapped beneath the rollers.
Ears vanished into the machine.
Chaff blew behind us.
A decorative scarecrow toppled sideways before Tyler jumped down and moved it.
He laid it politely beside the temporary fence.
We weren’t vandals.
We were farmers.
There’s a difference.
By 5:30, half the outer maze was gone.
From the combine cab, I could see the full pattern someone had carved into my crop.
Spirals.
Dead ends.
A giant pumpkin shape.
Somebody had destroyed almost three acres of productive corn just designing the thing.
My yield monitor showed exactly how much money they had already cost me.
I photographed the readings.
