"It was good light."
"Ivy."
"He's very — " she stopped. Started again. "He's ex-military. He grows heirloom tomatoes. And he doesn't like sugar."
"Sounds like a serial killer," Roz said.
"Exactly! He's suspicious of cameras and annoyed by my speaker, and he hasn't voluntarily said more than eight words to me."
"With penmanship —and biceps— like that, he doesn't need words."
"Yeah."
"The content is good. Not because of the views. Because on film you look and sound like yourself again. The food vlogger before the reality show competitions."
"Yeah." That was all she had to say. Ivy had used all of her other words during the content she'd filmed earlier.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered what Finn might write on his chalkboard next weekend, and what she would write in response.
CHAPTER SIX
Finn walked the rows at five in the morning, before the heat settled in. The rows didn't negotiate, didn't perform, didn't present a version of themselves designed to manage your expectations. They were exactly what they were. A plant under heat stress looked like a plant under heat stress. Early ripening looked like early ripening. You could note it and address it, or you could note it and lie to yourself about it, and Finn had found over three years that the lying cost more in the end.
Plants didn't have a byline. They didn't fudge the details to make a better story. They didn't look at what he'd built here and see material. They just grew. Or they didn't. Either way, they told the truth about it.
"The Brandywines aren't looking so hot." Boyd was late making it into town. But he was always on time when it came to the farm. Likely because his commute was a walk across the pastures from the small ranch house he shared with his wife.
Finn had already been thinking about the Brandywines. "Heat stress. The ripening's ahead by about ten days."
Boyd crouched slowly and turned a low-hanging fruit in his hand without picking it. The shoulder coloring was off; an earlyblush where there should have been another week of green. "Yield?"
"Down. I'm estimating twenty percent, maybe more depending on the next two weeks." He made a note on the pad he carried for rows. "I'll update the market inventory. The bisque quantity holds. I'm using the Cherokee Purples for that, anyway."
Boyd set the fruit back and straightened with the careful geometry of a man who'd learned to protect his joints. He had something to say, but was biding his time. Finn assumed it was about another crop. He was dead wrong.
"That clip has over a hundred thousand views."
"Clip? What clip?"
Boyd was looking at his phone. "One hundred and eighty thousand people have seen the clip, which is a big deal."
Oh. That clip.
"I looked up her channel. For professional reasons. She has three hundred and forty thousand subscribers and a reach that could significantly improve your foot traffic, definitely your website traffic."
"I don't have a website."
"Precisely the problem."
Finn picked up his row notes and went into the barn.
Boyd followed, because Boyd always followed, which was one of the things Finn valued about him and also regularly found exhausting. "She said something nice about your tomatoes," Boyd said. "In an earlier video. Before she knew your name."
"I'm aware."
"Wait? You watched her channel? I didn't think you knew how to get on social media."
"I read the transcript," Finn said.
