She also sat with Daniel Serrano at the restaurant one quiet afternoon before the kitchen opened for dinner. He showed her how his staff stored tomatoes, explained why they preferred some delivered just short of full ripeness, and asked whether she could provide a standing mixed order during the growing season. Mary Ann wanted to say yes immediately. Instead she opened her notebook and calculated what she could reasonably produce without leaving her market customers empty-handed.
"I can give you one scheduled delivery each week," she told him. "The quantity will vary at first. I'll confirm it before you plan a menu around it."
Daniel nodded. "Good. We'll make it a seasonal special instead of pretending we can get the same tomato in February."
"And if I lose a crop?"
"Tell me early. A good relationship doesn't mean the weather obeys either of us."
She drove home thinking about how unusual it felt to negotiate without apologizing for realities she could not control. The restaurant order was not enormous, but it was repeat business, and repeat business allowed her to plan. She had learned that a market crowd could disappear after a rainy Saturday, while a chef who trusted the quality might keep ordering through a difficult stretch. It was a kind of stability she had missed since Walter's cattle checks stopped coming.
The spring looked promising. Mary Ann staggered her planting in smaller groups to avoid having every row reach peak harvest at once. She devoted part of the area to the four selected lines and part to reliable tomatoes that could carry the weekly sales if an experimental group disappointed her. She improved paths between rows, kept foliage from crowding, and adjusted supports so she could work without bending as often.
She asked Lena to help her evaluate the previous year's surviving plants rather than simply choosing the most vigorous descendants. Together they compared health, yield, flavor, cracking, and consistency across the repeated lines. Lena praised her recordkeeping but warned that plants could appear stable in one field and behave differently under another set of conditions. Mary Ann added a column for weather and soil observations and invited June Palmer to grow a few trial plants in her own garden as an informal comparison, clearly labeling them as experimental.
June agreed enthusiastically. "My students are going to think this is better than science class," she said.
"Tell them it is science class," Mary Ann answered. "Just a slow version that gets dirt on your hands."
Then June asked the question Mary Ann had been avoiding. "What happens if all this works? What do you want the farm to be?"
Mary Ann glanced out at the prepared rows. "I don't know yet. I wanted to grow tomatoes that tasted good. Then I wanted to sell enough to cover the cost of growing them. I haven't let myself think much beyond that."