Daniel increased his standing order modestly for the remainder of the season, and another restaurant owner who had tasted the tomatoes called asking whether she could supply a special dinner event. Mary Ann accepted only after checking the field. She also sold more directly to market customers through advance reservations, which reduced the amount of ripe fruit she had to carry home at the end of the day. The adjustment did not erase the warehouse loss, but it gave her a more stable way to continue.
By autumn, the garden was smaller than the first glowing projections had suggested and more productive than any plot she had managed since Walter died. She had learned a great deal about disease pressure, airflow, transport, and the limits of a tomato's beauty. She had not made enough money to consider leaving the feed store. But she had customers who wanted her crop, records that explained her failures, and four promising lines whose descendants were moving, unevenly but recognizably, toward the qualities she wanted.
On the final market Saturday, June Palmer brought her daughter to the stand. The girl chose a yellow-striped tomato and held it carefully in both hands as though it were a small painted ornament. June asked if Mary Ann ever planned to sell the seed itself. Mary Ann looked at the girl, then at the rows of empty crates behind the table.
"Maybe," she said. "When I can tell people honestly what they'll grow."
June smiled. "Then put me on the list."
Mary Ann drove home with a new thought taking shape. Until then, she had been trying to turn seed into tomatoes that people would buy. Perhaps, after enough careful breeding and testing, the seed could become a product too. It would not happen the following week, or simply because someone liked a story about a widow and a cannery. But the idea was large enough that she wrote it on the first blank page of her new winter notebook and circled it carefully.
The sixth year began with a different kind of winter work. Mary Ann was still sorting seeds and planning rows, but now she was also learning about licenses, labels, and the rules that followed a product once it left the farm. Selling fresh tomatoes at the market had required some recordkeeping and direct-sale compliance; selling seed packets across state lines and processed foods introduced questions she could not answer with a garden notebook. She made appointments with the appropriate agricultural and food-safety offices, asked about seed labeling and sales requirements, and began building a separate binder for the business she was slowly creating.
Evelyn found her one afternoon leaning over a stack of forms in the back room of the feed store. "I thought you took this job to get away from paperwork," Evelyn said.
"I took this job because I needed to buy groceries. The paperwork found me afterward."