Hollis came over while she was deciding what to keep. He examined the leaves without touching the fruit and asked what the yield numbers showed. She handed him the notebook. After reading a page, he looked toward the weaker dark plants.
"You know what you want me to say," he told her.
"I want you to tell me I can keep everything."
"You can keep it if you want. But the market doesn't pay for what a plant might have done in kinder weather."
"People love that tomato."
"Then work on improving it. Keep selecting the healthiest families, test them again, and be honest about its weaknesses. But don't let affection make you blind to what your records say."
She went home that evening and made a difficult choice. She would keep a smaller breeding population of Dark Shoulder under careful observation while devoting more production ground to sturdier lines and dependable varieties. The decision felt painful and strangely liberating at once. She no longer needed every beloved plant to justify her faith in the entire project.
Despite the blight, the farm produced enough fruit that summer for Mary Ann to think seriously about a larger sale. She had kept Daniel's restaurant supplied most weeks and built a growing list of returning market customers. A regional grocery distributor called after hearing about her tomatoes from a buyer who had tasted them at The Orchard Table. He offered to take a larger mixed order for a small chain of specialty groceries, provided she could meet the delivery date and packaging requirements.
The quantity was more than she had ever moved in one shipment. Mary Ann asked for time to check the field, then spent an afternoon calculating yield and labor. She had enough tomatoes approaching maturity, and the price looked better than what she usually received after paying market costs. The buyer sent a purchase order. Mary Ann signed it, proud and nervous, and began preparing as though she had finally crossed into a more serious level of farming.
She bought additional boxes that looked sturdy but were unfamiliar to her. She packed the fruit carefully in the way she would for a short trip to town, then loaded the truck early on the delivery morning. The drive to the warehouse took far longer than the run to Daniel's restaurant, and the road was rough in places. By the time she arrived, several tomatoes had bruised despite their careful appearance when packed.
The receiving inspector opened one box, then another. He handled the fruit gently, but his expression told Mary Ann the answer before he spoke. The product did not meet the distributor's condition requirements. Too many tomatoes showed pressure damage or softened shoulders, and the mixed ripeness levels made consistent retail handling difficult. He declined the entire order under the terms they had agreed to.