Della hired four teenagers on Saturdays.
Paid cash.
They pulled carrots, knocked off heavy dirt, and loaded crates.
The shapes amused them.
One boy held up a carrot with three legs.
"Looks like Uncle Jerry."
Everyone laughed.
Della put it in the crate.
"Uncle Jerry weighs more."
The washer ran evenings.
Crates entered dirty.
Clean carrots exited.
Bag after bag.
The first week was chaos.
One bag split.
Another fell from the wooden stand.
The new brush material loosened on one roller.
Della stopped.
Repaired.
Changed the attachment.
Started again.
She kept notes.
Anything repeated twice became a system.
By the second weekend, the work flowed smoothly.
Dig.
Load.
Haul.
Wash.
Bag.
Store.
The cellar under the farmhouse held roughly four hundred bags.
Raymond had built it in 1946.
Poured concrete.
Earth-covered walls.
Simple ventilation.
Winter temperature between thirty-four and forty degrees.
The rest needed outside storage.
Della rented cool space at the Viroqua grain elevator for forty dollars through winter.
The final tally was close to forty tons.
Roughly eighty thousand pounds.
Fifty-pound bags.
Not every pound was usable.
There was damage.
Small roots.
Breakage.
Spoilage.
Della discarded what she did not trust.
Even after losses, the inventory was enormous compared with what she had paid.
Her complete cost, including bags, storage, fuel, repairs, hired labor, and miscellaneous expenses, came to a little more than two hundred forty dollars.
She called Frances Oberlin.
"I have carrots."
"How many?"
"Enough."
"How many is enough?"
"How many do you want?"
Frances laughed.
"What price?"
Della told her.
Silence.
"Per bag?"
"Yes."
"Delivered?"
"For the first load."
"How many can you bring?"
"Two hundred."
Frances said:
"Bring them."
Gene drove.
Della rode beside him.
Two hundred bags represented five tons.
Frances inspected several.
Crooked.
Split.
Ugly.
Clean.
Firm.
She cut one.
Smelled it.
Fed pieces to three horses.
They ate immediately.
Frances looked at Della.
"You really bought these for sixty dollars?"
"Crop rights."