“I don't know.”
“That your experiment can't fail?”
Emma stared at him.
Daniel set down his cup.
“If you want that, don't experiment.”
She hated that answer.
Mostly because she knew it was true.
The acre mattered.
Not as much as the cornfields did.
Not as much as soybeans.
But vegetables were where the Reeds made some of their best direct-market money.
Emma had asked for real ground.
Her father had given her real ground.
Which meant failure would also be real.
Every chewed leaf had felt personal at first.
She had almost sprayed the entire section after the third week.
The sprayer was sitting in the shed.
Conventional insecticide.
Fast.
Reliable.
Familiar.
Her finger had been on the cap.
Then she remembered why she had started.
The previous summer, Emma had watched her father spray after a major beetle outbreak.
The beetles disappeared.
So did nearly everything else.
Ladybugs.
Small wasps.
Hoverflies.
For two weeks the field had felt strangely empty.
Then the aphids returned.
Faster.
Daniel sprayed again.
That bothered Emma.
Not because she believed chemicals were evil.
Her father didn't either.
He used what kept the farm alive.
What bothered her was that nobody seemed to ask whether the farm could be arranged so the problem became smaller before the spray was necessary.
So that winter Emma read.
University extension articles.
Old gardening books.
Crop management studies she barely understood at first.
She filled a notebook with words she had to look up.
Trap cropping.
Beneficial insects.
Threshold.
Intercropping.
Monitoring.
Habitat strips.
Economic injury level.
The phrase that stayed with her was not “kill the pest.”
It was “manage the pressure.”
That sounded different.
More like farming.
Less like war.
She showed Daniel her plan in February.
Six early-planted trap rows.
Main bean rows behind them.
Marigolds and flowering companion plants near the borders.
Sticky cards for monitoring.
Garlic-pepper spray on selected areas as a repellent.
A separate untreated control block.
Daniel read the pages.
Then read them again.
“You made this?”
“Yes.”
“You understand all of it?”
“Most.”
“Most isn't all.”
“I can learn the rest.”
Daniel had stared at her for a long time.
Then he drew a rectangle on the field map.
“One acre.”
Emma smiled.
“One-point-two?”
“One.”
“One-point-one?”
Daniel looked at her.
She stopped.
“One.”
By planting time it somehow became one-point-two.
Later, one-point-three.
Daniel pretended not to notice.
Now, standing in the field while Dalton and Earl mocked the very rows she had spent months planning, Emma felt something hotter than embarrassment.
She felt protective.
Not of herself.
Of the experiment.
Dalton pointed again at the damaged plants.
“Go get your dad's sprayer.”
Emma shook her head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't need it yet.”
He laughed.
“Yet?”
“Yes.”
“Emma, by the time you decide you need it, there won't be enough plant left to save.”
She looked toward the next field.
“No.”
Dalton's smile faded slightly.
“No what?”
“You’re looking at the wrong beans.”
Earl chuckled.
“There are different beans now?”
“Yes.”
Emma picked up her notebook.
“Come on.”
Dalton folded his arms.
“Where?”
“Thirty yards.”
He looked at Earl.
Earl shrugged.
The two followed.
Emma walked past the chewed outer section.
Past the first sticky cards.
Past the marigold edge.