"Don't understand me yet. Have your lawyers talk to mine."
Marcus laughed again.
"Fair enough."
The contract took seven weeks to negotiate.
Cole did not sign the first draft, the second, or the third.
He hired an agricultural attorney in Indianapolis named Rebecca Sloan, who charged more per hour than Cole had once expected to make in a week. She was worth every dollar.
Rebecca protected Cole's ownership of his land and independent varieties. She narrowed exclusivity to specifically documented consortium accessions. She required transparent waste-stream testing standards and indemnification for contaminated loads. She separated the annual retainer from seed-purchase revenue so one could not be used to pressure the other.
Most importantly, she added a clause preserving Cole's right to publish nonproprietary soil and waste-valorization findings.
"Your grandmother kept notebooks for thirty years," Rebecca said. "You don't sign away the right to teach what came from them because somebody put a laboratory in your field."
Cole signed the final agreement in late October.
The photograph appeared on the front page of the Herald.
Arthur Vance bought three copies.
He never told anyone why.
Winter changed the field more quietly than summer had.
After the final marketable fruit came off, Cole did not leave bare soil behind. He seeded rye, oats, and hairy vetch in separate strips, choosing mixtures according to what each treatment block needed. Some of the cover emerged thick. Some came up unevenly where the clay still sealed after rain.
He documented all of it.
The first year's success had not cured the land. That fact became one of Cole's favorite things to explain to visitors, especially the ones who arrived expecting to see a five-acre miracle.
"You mean the pH isn't six and a half?" one county commissioner asked during a December tour.
"Not across the field."
"I thought the tomatoes lowered it."
"Organic acids changed chemistry in the active zones and the soil biology changed how nutrients behave. The lab average is still higher than ideal in places."
The commissioner looked disappointed.
Cole smiled. "Plants don't grow in a newspaper headline. They grow in soil."
Clara would have approved of that sentence, although she would also have corrected at least three details in his explanation.
Construction on the seed facility began in January.
The building was smaller than the phrase global research center would later make it sound. The first phase included a receiving room, a wash and fermentation area, drying rooms with controlled airflow, a clean seed room, a modest laboratory, a walk-in cold storage vault, and office space large enough for six people if nobody minded touching elbows.
The consortium paid for most of the specialized equipment. Midwest Canning financed infrastructure as part of its preservation contract. Cole contributed land use, utilities, management, and part of the building cost from the previous season's retained earnings.
He refused to mortgage the farmhouse.
Rebecca Sloan approved.
"You can take risk with the business," she said. "You don't put Clara's kitchen table under a bank lien because a European consortium likes your tomatoes."
Cole had already reached the same conclusion.
Hiring was harder than building.
Cole knew how to read soil reports and repair a seventy-two John Deere. He did not know how to run payroll for twelve year-round employees, write a safety manual, or decide whether someone who interviewed brilliantly would still care about labeling a seed envelope correctly after eight hours of repetitive work.
He made mistakes.
His first full-time operations hire quit after six weeks because Cole answered every question himself and then complained he was overwhelmed. April told him why.
"You hired her to manage work and then you kept taking it back."
"I was helping."
"You were proving you could do her job."
Cole frowned.
"Grandma did that to you all the time," April added.