Clara Bell visited again after a useful overnight rain. She compared the newer rows with the unprotected sections and found that some of the stone-mulched areas retained more near-surface moisture, especially where the soil had been loosened and the stones were placed without forming barriers. She warned that the improvement was not identical across the field, but she considered the results encouraging enough to justify continued careful trials. Thomas listened to her findings with the relief of a man who had wanted permission to believe what his eyes were showing him.
Bell also helped the family think about the longer term. Keeping organic matter in the soil, reducing unnecessary disturbance, choosing crops suited to lower rainfall, and protecting the upper slopes from erosion mattered alongside the stone cover. She recommended that Thomas speak with the extension office about drought-tolerant varieties and soil conservation programs before the next planting season. Eli wrote down the suggestions, realizing that the stones were an entry into a larger conversation about how land functioned rather than the entire answer.
When Bell left, Thomas walked with Eli through the new rows. They could see a gradual difference where the work had been done carefully, though the field was still far from the lush green of older family photographs. Thomas asked his son how much of the remaining ground he believed they should treat before harvest. Eli looked over the four acres, counted the available time, and suggested working across selected rows in the poorest sections rather than trying to place rock everywhere.
"So nearly half the field might get some benefit if we focus on the places most likely to lose water?" Thomas asked. Eli agreed, but he added that the benefit would depend on more rain and that the harvest would still be modest. His father nodded and said a modest harvest would be a welcome change after three years of nearly nothing. The words settled between them as a goal honest enough to work toward.
They continued through September, sometimes alone and sometimes with Henderson helping them bring stones from his old pile. A boy from down the road volunteered for an afternoon after reading the newspaper article, and Ruth sent him home with a jar of preserves in thanks. By the time the late-summer light softened, stone-mulched root zones and shallow water-guiding channels reached through nearly half the planted area, though only a fraction of the ground was actually covered with rock. To someone passing on the road, it looked less like a paved field than a careful pattern woven through the crops.
The storm that decided much of the harvest came during the second week of September. It began with a strange stillness in the afternoon, the birds retreating beneath the eaves and the leaves of the pear tree hanging without movement. By evening the western ridge had disappeared behind dark cloud, and Thomas stood at the barn door watching the horizon with the uneasy attention of someone who needed rain but had learned to fear what came with it. Eli checked the small channels one last time, clearing leaves from their outlets and making sure no stone had shifted into the path of runoff.