Preparing for the state competition felt harder than buying the tractor. At the auction I'd only needed to raise a paddle and speak when asked. For the exhibition I had to stand in front of judges who understood agricultural machinery and explain a year's worth of decisions without pretending I had made them alone. Mrs. Calder let me practice in her classroom after school. Lucas sat in the second row and played the part of a bored judge, which came naturally to him, while Grandma occupied a chair near the window and Mr. Pittman watched with his arms folded.
My first presentation was terrible. I rushed through the auction story, talked too long about the corroded sleeves, forgot the machine-shop report, and ended by saying the tractor was fixed. Mr. Pittman cleared his throat so loudly that I almost dropped my notes.
"Fixed for what?" he asked.
"For farm work."
"All farm work?"
"No. For the work we've tested and approved."
"Then say that. If you finish with a claim bigger than your evidence, you'll have spent fifteen minutes teaching those judges not to trust you."
Mrs. Calder suggested I divide the talk into decisions rather than dates. Why did we buy it? How did we assess it? What did the evidence support?
How did we decide whether to continue spending money? Who was responsible for the dangerous tasks? What had we proved at the end? The answers formed a story that made more sense than reciting each Saturday in the machine shed.
Grandma suggested I include the farm's need at the beginning. At first I argued that the competition was about mechanical restoration, not farm finances. Then she reminded me that a tractor restored for nothing more than applause would have been an expensive hobby we could not afford. The 4020 mattered because it gave us a way to use the ninety-five acres instead of giving up more control over them. I added photographs of the upper hay field, the old Case, and the note showing the repair estimate we had been unable to pay.
James came for the final practice a week before the event. He listened without interrupting, the way he had listened in the auction parking lot. When I finished he asked how many people had contributed to the restoration. I told him I had counted thirteen, plus a few people who had offered advice. He asked whether they appeared in my cost and support records. They did, but I had placed that page near the end because I thought the judges mainly wanted to hear what I had done.
"Move it toward the beginning," he said. "A project that depends on a community doesn't get smaller because you admit that. It gets accurate."
Then he asked the question I feared most. "What if you had found an irreparably damaged engine block during week one?"
"We would've stopped before spending grant money on parts we couldn't use," I answered. "We might have salvaged or sold the tractor and looked for another way to help the farm."