Stranger Things have Happened
“Hey there, I almost didn’t see you in this light.”
“Please, do sit down, ah’d hate to make you stand while there’s space here ‘round the fire.”
“Now ain’t that better on your bones? ‘Scuse me, ah don’t get many visitors ‘round these parts anymore. Not with all that’s changed, ya know?”
“You don’t? Where’ve you been living for the past year and a bit ey?”
“No, I ain’t making fun of you, don’t you worry about that. Least I can do is fill you in about this all. Company’s enough repayment before you say anything.”
“First of all, Ah suppose I’d better introduce myself. The name’s Applejack. Ring any of them bells up in your head yet?”
“No? Well huh… I suppose I’d better start at the beginning then.”
“As ah said, the name’s Applejack, element of honesty and one-time owner of Sweet Apple Acres, that one behind you for that matter. Ah… I remember it back then. We had fields and fields of trees, all filled to the brim with some of the nicest apples in Equestria, not that I’m bragging ya understand, honesty remember.”
“Which isn’t to say that we don’t now, our trees still produce some of the finest produce this side of Canterlot, we’ve just had to change our tactics a bit. But anyway… I’d like to tell you a story about this place, as long as you’re interested that is?”
“Good, I wouldn’t want to bore you now would I? Anyway… Sweet Apple Acres, just imagine it… the rise of the fourth princess. Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Twilight Sparkle. Would ya believe me if ah told you that I knew them all personally? A farmer such as myself, shaking hooves with royalty? Ah know, a mite unrealistic right?”
“Alright, alright, I’m getting to the story, this is all important background information ya hear? Anyway, where was I?”
“Yes, yes. Anyway, Twilight Sparkle was one of my friends at the time and ponies started taking an interest in her friends too, her being one of the most important ponies in Equestria an’ all. It gave us the biggest boost of customers we’d seen since donkeys’ years. Heck, even Granny Smith, bless her bones, couldn’t remember a boom that big.”
“How big? Hmm… I can’t quite remember the specifics, numbers was always Twi’s strong point, but easily enough to keep us on the lookout for more stock. And once the first Zap apple harvest came ‘round… well. That was a surprise to us all. They just kept coming and coming for more. Even Filthy Rich had to come for restocking about five times every day.”
“Huh? You don’t know him? Well… I don’t suppose he’s a very well-known name anymore, made a couple of bad investments and lost his money, you know how it goes. But that doesn’t really matter. We were expanding, the bits kept on rolling in, but good apple trees cost a lot of bits and we were running out of apples to sell.”
“Hmm? About three thousand left at the time if memory serves.”
“Out of the full yield of a million, roughly. And that was over four months.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what we thought at the time. Yes we were selling almost absurd amounts of stock, but we didn’t actually ask all that much for it if I’m honest.”
“Oh quiet you. Anyway, we were in a slight pinch. We could have stopped selling apples for the year and built up our yield for the year after, keeping our apples as good as that year had been, or we could have invested in some more sub-prime apple trees. These are trees that are a bit cheaper than the prime alternative, but carry more risks of bad apples.”
“Well look around you, what do you think I went with? Some might say that it was probably greed talking or something, but before you say that, both me, Mac and Granny Smith talked this over and over. We needed food for ourselves too don’t forget, and the house had taken a recent battering in the spring storms so we needed money too.”
“The princesses? Well I suppose I can be somewhat bull-headed at times. Asking the princesses for help was never an option. If there’s one thing that I am, it’s proud.”
“Or stubborn, yes I guess you could say that. But anyway, we decided to go sub-prime. It left us with enough money to do some repairs and enough apples to do business for another month or so. Well enough that we finished the year with bits to spare and everything accounted for.”
“Well I suppose that’s where things started to take a downward spiral, yes. Strange thing about some infections that trees can carry, sometimes it only affects other trees. All around the acres, trees had been infected, ‘cept we never noticed until it was too late. We just bucked the apples into buckets and packages to sell to the customers who had been waiting eagerly. T’wasn’t until Granny Smith got a mite peckish one afternoon and ate one that we knew something wasn’t right. That and when the other reports came in.”
“Well that sort of crippled us, you’re right. On top of planning Granny’s funeral, there’d been shouts for us to be brought to the solar court for selling poisonous goods. Thankfully I still had some friends, Twilight’s probably the reason why ah never got called to Canterlot. But it left us all with a problem. Here we had fields and fields of potentially infected trees, none of us were eager to test whether each one of them was poisoned or not and the bills still needed to be paid.”
“Well Mac hired himself out as some sort of workpony an’ Applebloom started helping around town, fixing an’ mending things. As far as I know, they’re still doing it, working around the clock to try and bring in more and more bits. An’ I? Well I guess I decided to get the money rolling in again to the farm. Ah’ll be the first one to admit that our reputation had taken a beating, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.”
“Yep, d’ya like it? I thought of the name myself. Sweet Apple Lumber. Alright maybe I’m not the best pony to name something, but it suits its purpose ‘bout right. Anyway, we’re the biggest supplier of wood around now. Every single tree had to be chopped down and now you can find our wood almost everywhere. Powering the steam engines of Manehatten, inside the stone fireplaces of Canterlot, you name it.”
“Would I ever go back to selling apples? Now that’s a question. Well I suppose that we’re going to run out of wood to sell sooner or later and then we’ll need a new game plan, but ah’m still not sure whether Apples is going to cut it anymore. We may have ruined any chance of that business restarting with the whole poison thing remember?”
“The princesses? Again? Ah thought I told you that I wasn’t going to run to them for help. Although I appreciate what Twilight has done for me, keeping me from the courts and all, this is my land and my business. Having the princess run it for me just ain’t what I want.”
“Thanks for listening all the same. It’s been a while since anyone’s actually come to visit me to see how I’m doing for that matter. I wonder what happened to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie and all that lot. Ah can appreciate that they have jobs too, but they were some of my most loyal customers way back when. Ah always set aside a basket of apples for each of them, even when they were competing with all the other customers.”
“It’d be nice to see them again.”
Author's Note
... Lack of sleep does strange things to me.