Commercial remediation was possible.
It was also expensive.
Cole priced agricultural sulfur.
Organic amendments.
Compost.
Transport.
Nitrogen.
Equipment.
The number passed $30,000 before he finished estimating.
He had less than $4,000 in savings.
That should have ended the idea.
Instead, Cole started looking for materials nobody else wanted.
He talked to dairies.
Tree crews.
A brewery.
A vegetable processor.
Then he learned about Midwest Canning's upcoming production schedule.
The factory sat eighteen miles away.
Usually it processed commercial tomatoes.
But that spring, the plant had won a short specialty contract from a European organic food consortium.
For one week, its equipment would process trial batches of approximately forty open-pollinated heirloom varieties supplied through heritage-seed programs.
The names caught Cole's attention immediately.
Brandywine.
Cherokee Purple.
Mortgage Lifter.
German Pink.
Green Zebra.
San Marzano selections.
Several old Italian and French lines.
Varieties grown more for flavor and genetic diversity than for mechanical durability.
Cole drove to the plant and asked what happened to the processing residue.
A manager named Harold Keene stared at him.
"We dispose of it."
"How?"
"Depends on volume."
Cole kept asking.
The factory had limited capacity for on-site treatment.
That particular seasonal purge would create a large quantity of organic byproduct.
Transport and disposal were expensive.
Cole asked whether they would deliver it to private agricultural land if documentation and county rules permitted agricultural reuse.
Harold became interested.
"What do you want it for?"
"Soil amendment."
Harold looked doubtful.
"All of it?"
"About fifty tons."
The manager laughed.
"You understand this stuff smells awful."
"Yes."
"It ferments."
"I know."
"You sure?"
Cole was.
Midwest Canning's environmental officer required paperwork.
Cole produced soil tests.
A land-use plan.
An incorporation schedule.
A statement that the material would not remain indefinitely in exposed piles.
After several days of calls, signatures, and liability waivers, the deal was approved.
The company would transport the material.
Cole would accept it.
No disposal fee.
No payment to Cole.
No payment from Cole.
Each side avoided a cost.
Cole told almost nobody.
He did not tell Arthur Vance.
He did not tell the newspaper.
He barely told his uncle Raymond, from whom he needed to borrow a tractor.
Raymond Evans was Clara's younger brother.
He read part of the plan.
Then stared at Cole.
"Your grandmother know you're doing this?"
"She'd probably tell me I'm using too much."
Raymond laughed.
"That's true."
He loaned Cole a 1972 John Deere.
The tractor smoked when cold and had a hydraulic leak that required a pan beneath it overnight.
But it ran.
That was enough.
When the tomato slurry arrived in April, the town saw garbage.
Cole saw two resources arriving at once.
Acidic organic matter.
And seed.
The first part was chemistry.
Tomato residue was naturally acidic.
As it decomposed, organic acids and microbial activity altered the immediate chemical environment.