Now they thought the answer might be three weeks.
The Farmer leaned over her truck bed.
The smell made him pull back.
“Good Lord.”
One of his friends laughed.
“Maybe that’s the fertilizer.”
The Farm Girl continued measuring.
The loud Farmer picked up the weather-stained notebook lying on the hood.
She moved instantly.
“Put that down.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Touchy.”
“Put it down.”
The edge in her voice made the others stop smiling for a moment.
He flipped it open instead.
Pages of numbers.
Dates.
Grid coordinates.
Soil-test values.
Bulk density.
Moisture.
Infiltration.
Microbial respiration.
Earthworm counts.
Plant height.
Leaf color.
Boll retention.
He frowned.
“What is this?”
She stepped closer.
“My property.”
She took the notebook from his hand.
He let her.
“What are you feeding?”
he asked.
She looked toward the trench.
“The soil.”
The men laughed again.
She returned to work.
That should have ended the afternoon.
It almost did.
Then a county pickup turned through her gate.
The men noticed the agricultural seal on the door.
The Farmer smiled.
“Well.”
He crossed his arms.
“Told you.”
The Agricultural Specialist stepped from the truck carrying a sample case.
A woman in her forties with sun-browned skin, boots, khaki work pants, and a clipboard thick enough to look dangerous.
She walked past the farmers without slowing.
“Ready for C plots?”
The Farm Girl nodded.
“C7 through C10 first.”
The Farmer’s smile disappeared.
The Specialist looked toward the trench.
“You kept the same ratio?”
“Three-to-one carbon by wet weight around the fish material.”
“Depth?”
“Ten to twelve inches.”
“Direct contact with irrigation water?”
“No.”
“Runoff channel?”
“Blocked two feet below with soil berm.”
“Good.”
She opened the sample case.
The Farmer stared.
“Hold on.”
The Specialist looked toward him.
“Yes?”
“You know about this?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
The Specialist glanced at the Farm Girl.
“Four months.”
The men stopped laughing.
That was the first thing they did not understand.
Because four months earlier, nobody had seen fish in her field.
The Farmer pointed toward the rows.
“She’s been doing this since spring?”
“Testing.”
The Farm Girl walked toward a wall of tall switchgrass planted along the western side of the property.
She pulled one temporary fabric panel aside.
Behind it was a small cotton plot.
The men went silent.
The plants were not enormous.
Nothing magical.
But compared with the struggling rows around them, they were visibly different.
Deeper green.
Thicker stems.