Teresa raised an eyebrow. "You wanted experimental agriculture. Congratulations. Experiments create paperwork."
By noon, Cole was on the phone with Marisol Vega.
Midwest Canning's legal department reviewed the transfer agreement again. The European consortium was contacted. Two days later, a botanist named Dr. Elise Marchand called Cole from Chicago, where the consortium maintained a North American research office.
"I understand you have volunteer tomatoes," she said.
"Thousands."
"From mixed pomace."
"Yes."
"Do you know which varieties?"
"Not yet."
"Then do not call them by accession name."
"I haven't."
"Do not sell seed as true-to-type."
"I won't."
"Do not represent them as certified organic heritage stock."
"I won't."
There was a pause.
"You are agreeing with me too quickly," Elise said.
"My grandmother was a scientist. She would've come back and haunted me if I sold an unidentified volunteer as pure seed."
Elise laughed despite herself.
"Good. Then here is what I propose. I will come down next week. We can phenotype the most promising plants as they develop. If any appear consistent with our source accessions, we can use marker testing later.
The consortium has no interest in destroying your crop. We do have an interest in knowing what survived."
That visit changed the project again.
Elise arrived in a rented sedan carrying field tags, a camera, and the kind of practical clothing that told Cole she had spent more time in research plots than boardrooms. She walked the five acres with him for six hours.
She was blunt.
"Too dense," she said in the first block.
"I know."
"Disease will love this if you leave it."
"I know."
"Then why haven't you thinned?"
"Because I wanted to see emergence before I destroyed data."
Elise stopped.
"Good answer."
Together they marked sampling squares, estimated emergence density, and selected several hundred seedlings for transplanting into spaced rows. Cole had not budgeted for a full transplant operation. Benjamin found him an old tobacco setter in a neighboring county. It took two days to repair.
The next week became controlled chaos.
Cole recruited three high school seniors, his cousin April, and Edwin Bell's grandson to help thin and transplant. Strong seedlings were moved into rows spaced for airflow and hand harvest. Weak, crowded volunteers were incorporated back into the soil before they became disease reservoirs.
Arthur Vance drove past twice a day.
On the third afternoon, he stopped.
"So the miracle weeds needed rescuing?" he called.
Cole was kneeling beside a transplant row.
"They're tomatoes."
"I've grown tomatoes longer than you've been alive."