At the end of the day, the shared-kitchen manager, a woman named Celia Brooks, reviewed the finished batch records with her. Mary Ann was tired enough to make mistakes in simple arithmetic. Celia pointed out an omitted date and waited while she corrected it.
"You can come back next week," Celia said. "But bring someone to help if you increase the batch size. The paperwork and the food both need your attention."
"I always think I can do more by myself than I actually can."
"Then you're running a small farm," Celia replied. "Most of us start there."
Mary Ann began asking Owen for more regular harvest help. He had finished school and was considering technical training, but welcomed seasonal work that paid fairly and taught him more than carrying crates. She also hired a local woman named Teresa Mendoza for part-time packing and market preparation during peak weeks. Teresa had worked in a nursery before and noticed immediately when the seed labels were not organized in a way that made fulfillment easy. She suggested a different layout for the storage bins, and Mary Ann listened.
At first, having people work on the farm made her uneasy. She had always been responsible for her own mistakes, and she knew exactly how much profit could disappear into wages if the work was not planned well. But Owen could perform tasks that strained her knee, and Teresa made order packing faster and more accurate. Their labor was not an indulgence. It allowed Mary Ann to spend time on seed selection, quality checks, and the relationships with buyers that only she could manage.
Hollis was delighted when he found Teresa labeling packets at the worktable. He stood near the door of the shed, hands on his cane, and watched her check a batch against the notebook.
"You've got staff now," he told Mary Ann.
"Two people part-time. Don't make it sound like a factory."
"Doesn't matter. You hired somebody because the work's real. That's different from asking a neighbor for a favor."
Teresa looked up and smiled. "She also makes us record every mistake. Including hers."
"Especially hers," Hollis said. "That's how she got this far."
The season was busy enough that Mary Ann sometimes longed for the quiet winters she had once dreaded. She rose early, checked the hoop house, worked at the feed store on selected mornings, then returned to harvest or manage deliveries. She had to learn when to say no to a customer who wanted more fruit than she could responsibly supply. She had to learn when the lower price offered by a large buyer would not cover the additional handling. She also had to learn that leaving enough work for another person to do properly was not a sign that she was losing control.
One afternoon she found herself correcting Teresa's arrangement of the packing table, then realized Teresa's system was more efficient than her own. She stopped mid-sentence and apologized. Teresa laughed and said it was not worth apologizing for, but Mary Ann insisted that it was.