With frostbitten fingers, sleepless nights and sore muscles, 14-year-old Jackson Jones and his posse of cousins discover the lost art of winging it when they take over an orchard of 300 wild apple trees. They know nothing about pruning or irrigation or pest control, but figure it out they must—if they are to avoid losing $8,000 (because of an unfair contract).

With spot illustrations for mechanical-loving readers—the gears of a tractor, a plow with disks—and with mathematical calculations of the great mount of money to be earned, this novel has the sort of can-do spirt and sense of earned independence not often found in today's fiction.