Harvesting Ashwood Minnesota 2037 by Cynthia Kraack

also employ roughly twenty community youth workers whom we feed two meals a day and educate in the estate’s school.” I turned on the room screens so data covered the walls—wages, meals per day served to child workers and adult laborers, educational costs analyzed by residence status of child, as well as incidental expenses like clothing, transportation, and medical care. “Andre, what is our average expense per residential worker compared to expenses of a day worker?” I asked as the data continued to build.
    “Residential workers run approximately three times the expenses of a full-time day worker regardless the age of the child.” His voice still carried a slight French accent from growing up in Cameroon. “We absorbed five new residential workers in the past eight months, so that pushed our housing capacity to its limit. Additional residential workers require capital investment in new dormitory spaces. We’re also required by the local government to keep the estate school open to our regular day laborers’ children or we’ll lose funding for a half-time teacher.” He waited for people to read through the data. “Jason can tell us more about the school.” Ignoring that some of his peers had not been involved, Andre opened a new topic. “At least the DOE grant kids would bring a teacher and their own housing.”
    Puzzled faces turned to me. “We used regular business information to respond to a DOE request to house a gifted student’s special school. They’ve bundled this program under a series of grants with handsome financials and a lot of spiffs. Because of timing, Jason, Andre, and I responded. Ashwood would have to accept up to ten students. There is lots of upside—the school is totally self-funding with positive public relations for Ashwood.” Heads nodded, returned to Andre’s data.
    “Have you worked up the financials on the costs of building dorm space and school changes for the urban initiative?” I asked Andre. A few lines of numbers caught my attention where something about cost per meal and vendor expenses contradicted my historical understanding. “Jeremiah, something about our food costs is off. If you remove the new residential workers, these numbers have increased almost thirty-five percent in the past five months after standard inflation. With use of the kitchen garden produce. The numbers should be lower. What’s going on?”
    “These numbers are different from those I circulated yesterday,” Andre interjected. “That can’t be. I approved the final reports this morning.”
    With less than two hours until the call with counsel, work stopped. “We don’t have time to isolate the problem, Andre.” He didn’t look up as I spoke. “Could we use your old projected financials and put someone onto looking at the problems in this report?”
    “I need ten minutes,” Andre said as he stood up. “A subset of these numbers have to be filed with our youth redeployment application, so we need to get to the bottom of the situation. Talk through other sections of the program while I’m gone.”
    “Here’s where I’d like to focus while Andre’s gone.” I redirected the team, knowing a short break would draw them into production issues. “The preliminary government recommendation is that Ashwood absorb up to ten residential workers while we retain existing day laborer and worker numbers.” I paused as the team took in that information. “That means adding significant expense with no assistance.”
    Lao, his logic and calmness always critical to our proceedings, put up his hand—a quirky habit he had never shed while sitting at the management table. I nodded toward him.
    “Timing is everything. If these kids arrive for the harvest, we could use temporary quarters without a housing variance. Once harvest is complete, we do not have space, beds, or other facilities to meet Bureau of Human Capital Management domestic worker requirements. Taking on that kind of building could