She looked up at him. "Are you helping, or are you here to make the observation of the century?"
Frank considered that, then set down his keys and pulled on a pair of gloves. They sorted until sunset. He complained nearly the entire time, but when the final crate was stacked he brought her a sandwich from his truck and did not mention selling the farm again.
For her first experimental batch, Emily restored the old cider press with help from a retired mechanic and cleaned the surfaces until she could no longer find traces of old residue. She selected several hundred pounds of sound apples, crushed them, and collected the juice in food-grade containers. The process took an entire day and left her arms aching. When she finally closed the barn doors, she felt a small surge of triumph simply because she had made something liquid out of the fruit that would otherwise have been rejected.
That satisfaction lasted less than a week. The first containers developed an ugly gray film and an odor that made her recoil when she examined them. She had not yet established a reliable sanitary process, and the experiment had gone wrong. Emily stared into one bucket, desperately tempted to believe the surface growth was a normal part of fermentation. Then she reread the notes she had printed from the extension office and accepted what she did not want to accept. She discarded the batch rather than risk using it.
The smell lingered for two days, slipping into the farmhouse whenever the wind shifted. Frank stopped by with replacement hardware for the porch and stood just inside the barn door. "Good Lord," he said. "What died in here?"
"My first business idea."
"Can we bury it?"
"Already working on that."
She laughed, but later, alone with the cleanup, she cried from frustration. It was not a dramatic breakdown. She sat on a stack of clean crates, pressed both hands against her face, and let exhaustion catch up with her. She had traded a secure salary for a barn that smelled like a failed science experiment. Her grandmother was gone, the farmhouse needed repairs, and she could not explain to anybody why throwing away a ruined batch made her want to try again.
Batch two was smaller. Emily followed a more controlled sanitation plan, kept better records, and monitored the initial fermentation more carefully. This time the juice changed gradually, releasing bubbles and developing the scent of a developing cider. She leaned over the container after two weeks and felt the first genuine excitement of the project. The transformation had happened. At least the first half had.
Then the process stalled. The alcoholic cider did not develop the character of vinegar, no matter how often she checked it. She reread her notes and discovered that the tight seal she had used to protect the containers had also denied the acetic acid bacteria the oxygen needed for the next stage. She had treated two biological processes as though they needed the same conditions. The mistake was so basic that she wanted to throw her notebook across the barn.