He looked at Ren.
He looked at the potato.
He looked back at Ren.
"These came off Ridgeback?"
"Six acres of it."
Ray set the potato carefully back in the crate.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
Then:
"This is good stock, Ren."
Not enthusiastic.
Not surprised in a performative way.
Just accurate.
The assessment of a man who dealt in facts about produce the way Ren dealt in facts about soil, without sentiment, without editorializing.
She sold to the market at a price they both agreed was fair.
Ray didn't negotiate hard, which wasn't like him, and she noticed it without commenting on it.
She thought he understood something about what had happened on that field that he wasn't going to say directly because he was not a man who said things directly when the facts said them adequately on their own.
The school district's procurement office was next.
The woman she'd taken a name and number for back in June, the one who'd been at the farm stand looking for alternatives to a supplier who'd cut his fall delivery projection, had already called twice in August while the crop was still in the ground.
Ren had told her to call back in October.
She was calling back now.
Ren drove to the district office on a Tuesday morning with a sample crate and her price sheet written out in the notebook.
The procurement coordinator, a practical woman named Lois Featherstone who had been managing food-service contracts for the county schools for nine years, picked up a potato from the sample crate.
She turned it over the same way Ray had.
Checked it.
Pressed it.
"We've been paying 32% over last year's rate for the regional supply contract."
"I know what the market's doing."
Lois looked at the price Ren had written down.
It was below the regional rate.
Not dramatically below, not a number that would make anyone suspicious or raise questions about quality, but below.
A fair price for what she was selling in a market that had moved above what fair used to mean.
"How much can you deliver?"
Ren told her.
Lois looked at the number.
"For the fall lunch program through November?"
"After that, I'd need to discuss winter storage capacity."
They shook hands.