"What are you going to do with it?" Grant asked.
"I'm thinking about vinegar."
He looked at her for a long time. "Have you ever made vinegar?"
"No."
"Ever made cider?"
"Helped my grandmother when I was little."
"That's different from making a product people put in their mouths."
"I know," she said, although she would later admit she had not known nearly enough.
Grant rubbed a hand across his forehead. He explained that he could not promise every load would be suitable for food processing, that she would need the correct approvals for receiving and handling such quantities, and that he did not want his orchard's name attached to something unsafe. Emily promised to separate food-worthy fruit from waste and to seek advice before selling anything. At his insistence, they wrote a simple trial arrangement covering the source of the loads, the requirement that she manage them legally, and his right to suspend deliveries if the farm became a nuisance or a safety problem.
She signed with a borrowed pen. Grant watched her cap it and asked, "You're sure about this?"
"No," Emily admitted. "But I'd rather be wrong because I tried to make something than because I never bothered."
He did not smile, but he gave her the start date. The first delivery would be Tuesday at seven. If she could not manage it, she needed to call before the next truck left the yard.
Emily spent the weekend making the farm look as prepared as she could. She cleared a path around the cider barn and bought heavy tarps, sorting gloves, pallet boards, and a set of secondhand food-grade bins with a history she could verify. She marked separate areas with bright paint and worked out a temporary way to keep the rejected material contained until she could build something better. On Sunday evening she stood in the barn studying the old cider press, its iron wheel rust-colored beneath a decade of neglect, and wondered whether the entire plan had been an expensive misunderstanding.
The truck arrived just as Grant had promised. The driver, a broad-shouldered man named Paul, leaned out of his cab and looked at Emily's equipment. "You the one who wants all the ugly ones?" he called.
"That's me."
"Lady, you haven't met ugly."
By the time he finished unloading, Emily understood what he meant. The volume was shocking, and the job of separating the material seemed larger with every passing minute. She had imagined feeding a few crates into a press, not managing an industrial quantity of rejects with two hands and one wheelbarrow. She worked until her back hurt and her shoulders refused to lift the shovel. After dark, standing in the shower while brown water ran around her feet, she realized she had done less than half of what needed doing.