Ready to work when the work was ready.
Doss himself sat in the cab without talking, which was the right way to be present for this.
She suspected he understood that, which was why he was doing it that way.
She pushed the last stake into the clay at the far end of the marked line and stood at the northern edge of the field and looked back across the distance she'd walked.
Twelve new acres staked out.
The first marking of ground that had never been treated, never been amended, never been given what it needed.
Waiting.
She thought about the loading dock at Route 7 Farm Market.
She thought about 400 sacks on a truck bed in a county that had already decided what they were.
She thought about the cut she'd made on the first seed piece in the barn, the exact angle of the knife, the particular resistance of the flesh, the callus that had to form before the wound could go into the ground.
She thought about the one green sprout in the mud in April, three inches tall, pale as something that had never seen sun.
Every good thing she'd put on tables in Harland County this past fall had started there.
In a field nobody believed in.
With material nobody wanted.
Using a method that required failing badly before it worked right.
On ground that her father had tried to fix for 20 years without the materials to do it.
She turned back toward the tractor.
Doss looked at her through the windshield.
She lifted her chin in the slight nod that meant ready.
He put the machine in gear.
Ridgeback Field wasn't fixed.
Six acres were different than they had been 12 months ago.
Thirty-four were not yet.
The work that remained was larger than the work already done.
And the work already done had been the hardest thing she'd attempted.
She'd failed at it substantially before she'd done it correctly.
None of that changed what happened next.
She walked back to the first stake and picked up her spading fork and started breaking ground on the first of the 12 new acres, moving at the pace clay requires.
Not slow exactly.
Patient.
The way you move when you understand that the ground has been this way for 10,000 years before you arrived and it will change on its timeline, not yours.
The only thing you can do is keep giving it what it needs and keep showing up to check.
The tractor came in behind her, following the line she'd staked.
The morning was cold.
The clay was heavy.
The 34 acres waited.
She kept working.