On the Jennings property, Clara harvested what she could from the orchard. The apple crop was not abundant, but it was better than the drought had led her to expect, partly because Evelyn had mulched the trees for years and tended them patiently through earlier hard summers. Clara picked carefully, sorted the fruit into grades, and sold the best through the feed store and a grocer two towns away. Bruised apples became sauce and preserves. Ben helped load the crates into his pickup on mornings when the elevator was quiet, and Ada recruited two teenagers from church to help with the heaviest picking in exchange for cash and a basket of fruit each.
The work paid bills rather than fortunes. Some evenings the money from a long day disappeared into envelopes for taxes, groceries, and the bank before Clara could enjoy the sight of it. Still, every completed sale strengthened the argument she was preparing for Henderson. She kept records of weights, prices, transport, spoiled stock, and the hours she spent on each task. At the end of the week she could explain where every dollar had come from and why several of her plans needed more time.
A county newspaper reporter named William Doss came to the farm after hearing that a young woman had made a wet field green in the middle of the drought. He was a friendly man with a battered camera and a talent for recognizing when a simple story might interest readers. He asked Clara to stand in front of the tallest willows and hold Evelyn's note for a photograph. She refused the note, not because she was ashamed of it, but because it felt like showing him something private before he had earned the right to know its meaning.
"I want to write about what you've accomplished," Doss explained. "A young woman doing what trained farmers said couldn't be done. People like a story like that."
"Then write what I actually did," Clara replied. "I planted cuttings in a wet place. A lot survived, some didn't, and I learned why the difference matters. I didn't cure the drought. I didn't turn forty acres into garden soil. I grew some trees."
Doss looked disappointed for a moment. "That's not much of a headline."
"Maybe that's why nobody wanted to listen in April."
The remark surprised them both. Doss put down his camera and asked to see the notebooks instead. Clara showed him the pages marked with failures, the photographs of washed-out rows, and the letter from Margaret Ellis explaining the limits of what could be concluded. The reporter spent longer with her than he had planned. When he finally left, he promised that whatever headline the editor chose, the article would include the fact that the experiment was still being tested.