She walked back to the farmhouse in the dark.
She sat at the kitchen table with Earl's journal open beside her own and worked through what the failure had told her and what the one survivor confirmed.
She wrote until close to midnight.
"Higher ridges. Fourteen inches minimum, not eight.
"Drainage channels cut between the worst rows, angled to carry water off rather than just slow it.
"Straw mulch on top of the ridges to moderate the moisture cycle at the surface.
"Compost concentrated directly beneath each seed piece rather than spread thin across the row.
"Start from the driest ground and work outward toward the wettest sections.
"Prove the method on what gives it the best conditions. Then push into harder ground as the soil improves.
"3,000 lost. 8,000 remain.
"Change the method. Replant."
She closed both notebooks.
She went to bed.
She didn't sleep easily, but she slept.
The second planting looked different from the first because Ren had changed almost everything about her approach based on what 37 days of failure had taught her.
She built the new ridges to 14 inches, some of them closer to 16 in the lowest sections she was still willing to attempt.
The work was physical in a way the first planting hadn't been.
The clay was heavy.
Building ridge height meant moving substantial material by hand and with a small tractor she kept running with parts sourced from two other tractors that had given out over the years.
She cut drainage channels between the rows at a downhill angle using a trenching spade that had been Earl's, the handle worn to a particular smoothness in the grip that she'd stopped noticing years ago.
Birch Tadwell appeared on a Saturday morning with his work gloves already on.
He wasn't asking for work this time, but presenting himself as available in the way of someone who had decided the question in advance.
She put him on the drainage channels while she handled the seed pieces herself.
The placement was too important to delegate, each piece going in at a consistent depth below the compost she'd concentrated directly at the root zone rather than spreading it thin across the ridge surface.
Birch worked without needing instruction once she'd shown him the angle and depth of the channels.
He was a quiet kid, the kind of young person who understood that showing up consistently was worth more than talking about showing up.
He didn't ask her what she expected to get out of the field.
She appreciated that more than she would have appreciated encouragement.
The remaining 8,000 seed pieces went in over 12 days.
Ren planted from first light until she couldn't see well enough to be accurate about depth and placement, then stopped regardless of how much remained because tired hands make mistakes that cost more than the lost time.
She ate standing at the kitchen counter most evenings.
She fell asleep on the couch twice with her boots still on and woke at four in the morning when something in her internal clock registered that there was work to start.
She mulched the ridges with straw from the barn, working backward down each row so she didn't compress what she'd just built up.
The straw would moderate the moisture cycle at the surface, slowing evaporation in dry spells and buffering against the saturation effect of heavy rain by absorbing some of the impact before it hit the clay.
On the 12th day, she planted the last seed piece into the last ridge of the last row and stood at the eastern edge of Ridgeback Field while the light went golden over the far ridge.
The six acres in front of her looked different from the first planting.
The ridges were taller.
The straw gave the surface a rough texture that broke the gray uniformity of the clay.