The second was forked in the specific way carrots forked when they grew into a stone. The third had wrapped itself around a piece of buried gravel and come out of the soil in a shape that would have jammed a commercial peeler in under 5 seconds. She bit the end off the third one and stood there in the dust chewing it. It tasted the way a carrot tasted.
It tasted, in fact, better than the carrot she was used to buying at the grocery store in Viroqua because it had been pulled from ground 20 minutes ago rather than shipped from California in a refrigerated truck. She spit the greens onto the row. She walked back to the F-100. She drove home.
That was three weeks before the auction. She wrote in the green notebook that night. Holdridge carrots. Sound sweet.
No woody core in the three sampled. Cannery rejection is cosmetic. Francis's price minus my delivery cost minus washing minus bagging minus cold storage equals margin sufficient to feed 16 horses through winter with surplus to sell. Continue calculation.
She continued the calculation for another two weeks. By the morning of the auction, the calculation was complete. She did not need to bid against anyone at $60 because she knew what $60 represented. It represented the exact price at which a plan she had been building since August, became a piece of ground she could walk onto.
The shop behind the farmhouse had been built by Raymond in 1946, the year after he came home from the Pacific. He had poured the concrete himself and set the tin roof over the summer of that first year, working weekends between hay cuttings. It was 40 feet by 24 feet.
It had a wood stove in the northwest corner with a length of stove pipe that ran through the roof at an angle Raymond had cut precisely to clear the ridge cap. Along the south wall was a workbench Raymond had built in 1948 from 2-inch oak planks he had rough-sawed from a windfall in the wood lot and dried under weight in the loft above the machine shed. The bench was 6 feet deep and 18 feet long. It had held every tool Raymond had ever owned and now it held every tool Mari had inherited. There was a cutting torch he had bought used from a pipeline crew in 1951 for $18. There was a Lincoln arc welder he had traded a spring calf for in 1955.
There was a bench grinder, a drill press, a bench vise from a factory in Fond du Lac, and a set of taps and dyes in a wooden case with a broken hinge Mari had fixed with a strip of leather and two tacks when she was 14. The cutting oil in the torch reservoir was the same cutting oil Raymond had poured in the last time he had used the torch, which was the winter before he died. Mari had checked the level once in the four years since. It was fine.
On the afternoon of the day after Wendell Krauss dropped the gavel at $60, Harlon pulled his neighbor's flatbed truck into the shop yard with the root washer strapped to the deck. He and Mari unloaded it onto the shop floor with a come-along and two hardwood planks laid at an angle from the deck to the concrete. Harlon looked at the crack in the drum. He looked at the brush rollers worn down to the steel.
He looked at the crankshaft which turned but rattled. He said nothing. Harlon had learned to say nothing about things Mari intended to fix because he had learned that saying nothing was usually the more useful contribution. He drove home in the flatbed.
Mari lit the wood stove and let the shop come up to temperature. She sat on a milking stool in front of the washer for the better part of an hour before she touched it. Raymond had taught her that. Look at a broken thing long enough to know why it broke before you decide how to fix it.
The crack in the drum ran 4 inches along the weld seam, opening at one end where the sheet metal had begun to flex under load. She could see the fatigue marks in the steel. The brush rollers were shot, but the cores were sound, which meant she could rebuild them with new bristle material rather than replace them entirely.
The crank mechanism was intact and would turn smoothly once she pulled it apart and oiled the shaft bearings, which had gone dry over what looked like three or four seasons of neglect. The frame was straight. The output chute was too narrow for a 50 lb. feed bag, but could be modified.
The drum seal had failed and was going to need to be fabricated from scratch. She welded the drum crack that first evening with the Lincoln and a rod she found in a coffee can on the shelf above the welder. The coffee can had been on the shelf for at least 11 years. The rod was fine.
Steel did not know how to age when it was kept dry. She ground the bead smooth with a wheel she mounted to the bench grinder. She wire brushed the seam and looked at her work under the drop light. It was clean.
Raymond would have said it was clean. That was the highest form of praise Raymond had ever offered on any subject. The following Tuesday, she drove to a farm supply in La Crosse and found brush stock in a bin near the back of the store. Stiff nylon bristle material used for grain elevator cleaning equipment.
She bought enough to repack four rollers at a cost of $11 for the material. The drum seal she fabricated from a strip of conveyor belting she found folded under the workbench so old it had taken on the shape of the floor. She cut it to width with Raymond's tin snips, punched the bolt holes with the drill press, and had it fitted in under 40 minutes. The output chute she rebuilt from a piece of 18 gauge sheet steel she found in the corner of the shop, left over from a repair Raymond had done on a grain bin sometime in the mid-1960s.
She bent the new chute over the edge of the workbench with a rubber mallet and a piece of angle iron for a form. She welded it to the output housing at an angle that directed cleaned carrots into the mouth of a 50 lb. Burlap bag without her needing to hold the bag and turn the crank at the same time. Total cost of the rebuild, including the $60 for the lot 11 for the brush stock, four for welding rod, and two for hardware, $77.
She wrote every number in the ledger that night. Below the numbers, she added in her father's small precise hand commercial equivalent unit priced at farm supply, $400 minimum requires PTO connection, not applicable to this operation.
Francis called on the last Wednesday in October. She wanted to know how it was coming. Mari told her the washer was rebuilt and the carrots would begin coming out of the ground the following Saturday. Francis asked whether Mari had run into any trouble with anyone.
There was a pause on the line. Mari understood what she was being asked. Francis went on. Three horse operations in the La Crosse area had been contacted over the past four days by a man from the Vernon County cannery. The man had told them in tones ranging from concerned to insistent that the Holdridge carrots carried a risk of soil born pathogens because of an issue with the drainage on that particular field.
Two of the operations had called Francis to confirm. Francis had told them what she thought of the claim. She was calling now because she wanted Mari to know. Mari's hand tightened on the receiver.
She did not raise her voice. I appreciate the call, Francis. Francis went on. She thought Mari should come up to Cedar Bluff.