The full three-hundred-pot grid was complete by the last week of April. Evie walked every row that evening after they finished, not inspecting, because she had already inspected, but simply looking at the thing she had built. From the road it was invisible. Four acres of turned earth, some rough vegetation, no indication of anything buried below. You had to know what you were looking at to see it.
Silas was at the fence watching when she came back to the edge. "It's good," he said. "It's not proven yet." "No." A pause.
"But it's good." She almost said something that would have been more personal than she intended, so she didn't say it. She said, "I'll start seeding the eastern rows Monday," and went inside. The corn went in during the final week of April. Climbing beans alongside every other stalk.
Squash planted in the broad spaces between where the western density was highest. She had chosen varieties with deliberate care. A flour corn that had performed well in dry conditions in the southern territory. A bean she'd grown twice before and trusted. A Hubbard's squash whose thick leaves she intended to use as living shade for the soil surface.
She seeded by hand, dropping each grain at the depth her soil tests told her was right for this field, this moisture level, this season. Then she waited. Waiting was the part of farming nobody prepared you for adequately. You did everything the math and the experience and the instinct told you to do and then there was a gap where you couldn't do anything at all and the outcome had been decided by the quality of your preparation. Some people filled the gap with hope or prayer.
Evie filled it with maintenance work. She checked every row every morning, tested the soil moisture with her fingers, topped up the vessels that the dry air had drawn down furthest, repaired a section of fence the northeast corner post had been pulling loose for months. Silas stopped by less regularly once the seeding was done. He had his own operation to run and the spring cattle work didn't slow down because he'd been spending mornings in someone else's field. But he came by twice in the first two weeks with no stated purpose, walked to the edge of the rows with her and left when there was nothing left to look at.
On his second visit she made coffee. They sat at the small table near the window and she showed him the moisture log she'd started keeping for each row: depth readings, days since last fill, estimated seepage rates. He studied them with the same expression he'd used in the field, not a man performing interest, but a man genuinely working out what the numbers meant.
"The eastern rows are holding better than the western," he said. "Smaller vessel volume on the western side," she explained. "The denser placement compensates for the faster draw, but doesn't fully match the eastern reserves." "Is that a problem?"