"Don't let a good story outrun the evidence," she warned as they gathered their things. "I've seen farmers lose money chasing what their grandfathers remembered. The old corn may be special, but you don't know yet whether one kernel is alive, and even a living plant doesn't prove it will do what people say."
"I know," Callie answered. "That's the part I'm trying to be careful about."
Odessa reached across the table and laid a small, warm hand on hers. "Then you're already thinking more like Silas than you realize."
Back at the farm, Callie asked a local contractor to inspect the buried room before they removed more material. He spent an afternoon examining the stonework, timber supports, and collapsed roof above it, then gave them a list of things that would need reinforcement before anyone could use the space regularly. It was not the list Callie wanted. Every necessary timber and fastener represented money she did not have, but she paid the inspection fee and wrote the repair requirements beside the seed inventory.
They could safely reach only the front shelves until the work was done. Even that yielded enough material to begin a careful assessment. Callie selected a small sample from several lots, recorded which crate each kernel came from, and contacted the county extension office about germination testing and seed conservation. She told the agronomist who returned her call exactly what she knew, which was not much, and exactly what she did not know, which was most of the story.
The agronomist's name was Marianne Bell. She had worked on drought response, soil health, and field trials for years, and her voice carried the patient caution of someone accustomed to explaining why an attractive idea was not yet a result. She asked about storage temperatures, moisture, signs of mold, kernel integrity, and the separation of the lots. Callie answered from her notes rather than from memory.
"You may have found a historically interesting seed collection," Marianne said. "That doesn't guarantee viable seed. Very old corn can be damaged even when it looks perfect. If we get germination at all, we need to preserve those surviving plants carefully."
"Can you test it?"
"We can help you arrange basic viability testing and connect you with a seed specialist. We can also document the collection. But if somebody offers you a fortune based on one green stalk, promise me you'll ask more questions before you sign anything."
"I've already learned that lesson once," Callie said.
Over the next several weeks, the seed collection became the center of evenings at Hollow Bend without replacing the jobs that kept the farm running. Eli cleaned labels with a soft brush and copied numbers beneath Callie's supervision. Dutch repaired a loose barn gate and complained that the modern world contained too many people willing to pay for a phone they would replace in two years and too few willing to save a tool that could last twenty. Callie balanced the books, negotiated payment arrangements, and tried to keep the existence of the collection from becoming another rumor somebody else controlled.