They agreed to a limited visit. Claire photographed the surviving plants and the restored entrance to the seed cellar, but Callie did not permit photographs that would reveal the detailed storage arrangement or publish the exact location of the most valuable remaining kernels. She showed the reporter Silas's 1962 newsletter photograph and described the conservation work without claiming the variety had already been proved better than modern corn. Marianne agreed to speak on the record about the test methods and the reasons for caution.
The resulting article occupied half a page beneath a report about drought relief meetings. Its headline was plain: "Voss Family Tests Forgotten Flint Corn Collection." The story described the historical seed, the unusual field observations, and the effort to preserve it, leaving out the exaggerated claims Claire knew readers might have enjoyed. Callie was grateful for that restraint.
The paper also mentioned, briefly, the farm's recent financial difficulties. Callie had not wanted that detail, but she understood that a discovery on land close to foreclosure was a different story from a collector finding heirloom seed in a well-funded research greenhouse. Claire had asked permission before including it, and Callie had reluctantly agreed. By the next morning, strangers were calling the house, some with genuine advice and some with proposals that sounded suspiciously like Bragg's original contract dressed in friendlier words.
Helen Carver had warned her. The first caller offered to purchase the remaining seed as a curiosity, payment immediately, no questions asked. Another promised to market Voss Flint nationwide if Callie assigned all rights in perpetuity and accepted a small percentage of future sales. A third claimed to represent an international seed broker but would not put the company's address in writing.
Callie declined every proposal. She copied the correspondence into a separate folder and sent the more serious letters to Helen for review. Some evenings she wondered whether she was being foolish to refuse cash while the barn roof still leaked. Then she thought of a man standing on her porch fourteen months earlier with a contract that seemed reasonable and remembered how expensive a signature could become.
One Saturday, a man from a neighboring farm arrived with his teenage daughter to see the plot. He had been among those who laughed when Callie's father insisted years earlier that certain parts of Hollow Bend needed less aggressive cultivation, and now he was embarrassed enough to speak without his usual confidence. He asked whether she thought the old corn could save all their crops if the next summer turned dry.
"No," Callie said. "I think it might teach us something about preserving useful traits and taking better care of the soil. I won't promise anything more until we've earned the right to say it."
The farmer looked disappointed, but his daughter stepped closer to the fence and asked Eli about the weather measurements. Within minutes the two teenagers were comparing rainfall charts and arguing over which soil sample should be checked first. Callie watched them and thought of Silas refusing to sell seed to people who wanted control of its future. Perhaps there was a way to protect the variety without burying every lesson beneath a building.