A calculator was still running beneath his hand.
Benjamin nudged him awake.
"How rich are you?"
Cole blinked.
"What?"
"Everyone in town says you're rich now. Thought I'd ask before borrowing money."
Cole rubbed his face.
"Gross sales aren't profit."
"That's a very unfun answer."
"I might clear enough this year to pay taxes, pay everybody, replace the well pump, and not panic through winter."
Benjamin pulled out a chair.
"That's rich by farming standards."
Cole smiled.
The seed business developed more slowly.
The source story that later circulated claimed Cole pulled eighty pounds of pure heirloom seed and immediately sold it at forty-five dollars an ounce. Reality was less theatrical and more interesting.
He produced roughly eighty pounds of cleaned seed across all categories, but only a fraction met the standards for verified heritage lines suitable for premium seed contracts. Much of the seed remained mixed research stock, breeding material, or unverified offspring. Some was sold in bulk under transparent descriptions. Some was retained for trials.
The best verified lots commanded exceptional prices because they came with provenance, field performance records, disease observations, and genetic confirmation.
By season's end, seed-related sales and forward contracts added a little over fifty-seven thousand dollars to the operation.
That number mattered less to Cole than what it represented.
Fruit was a harvest.
Seed was continuity.
Clara had believed every agricultural system revealed its real values by what it saved for next year.
Cole saved more than seed.
He saved soil samples from every block. He saved photographs from fixed points. He saved weather records, harvest weights, disease incidence maps, labor logs, and customer feedback. He saved the county citation and both newspaper articles.
He even saved Arthur's first insult, though not deliberately.
Nathan Pike had recorded it on his tape recorder during the April dump and later gave Cole a copy while preparing the follow-up story.
"You want this?" Nathan asked.
Cole listened to Arthur's voice coming through the little speaker: The boy has finally lost his mind.
"Why would I want that?"
"Because if I were you, I'd play it at every company meeting for the rest of my life."
Cole handed the recorder back.
"Then I'd have to keep being angry enough to enjoy it."
Nathan stared at him.
"You're twenty-two. You're supposed to be pettier than this."
"Ask April. She'll fix your impression."
The season total eventually reached just over sixty-two thousand pounds of marketable fruit across all grades. At a blended average that reflected high-value restaurant sales, specialty retail, and lower-priced secondary channels, produce revenue finished near five hundred twenty-seven thousand dollars.
Seed sales and contracted propagation material brought the year's total gross farm revenue to just under five hundred eighty-five thousand dollars.
The number spread through Knox County stripped of all context.
Five acres made almost six hundred thousand dollars.
That was the sentence people repeated.