Walking back toward the stairs, she points at one of the racks filled with seedling trays. “This is where my starts acclimate before we take them outside. These are the autumn varietal strawberries you were asking about. We’re planting them this week.”

Pointing at a roll of plastic, she adds, “In the winter, we wrap the racks and turn them into little greenhouses.”

Looking around the efficiently laid out basement workspace, where Ethel seems to literally take food from seed to table, I ask, “What made you think to do all this?”

“I saw something like it on YouTube.” She leans on the central table, tapping its surface. “At first I was only growing down here, but then I figured out that it’s also the perfect place to dry seeds. We just run the dehumidifier.” After tipping her chin toward the machine humming in the corner, she lifts a paper towel covering a metal baking tray. “These are from early summer crops.”

“It all comes full circle down here,” I say as I shoot a closeup of the tray of seeds. “It’s beautiful.”

Not only is it beautiful, but Ethel is the most progressive farmer I’ve met of her generation, and it makes me wonder how much input she has in the soybean operation, which seems more conventional. We’re too busy to delve into these questions, however. I spend the next hour toggling between shooting footage and jotting down Ethel’s many ideas for videos, which include people to interview as well as topics that hadn’t occurred to me. From a neighbor who’s growing black cohosh—“I wouldn’t have made it through menopause without her tinctures”—to another who grows twenty different varieties of winter squash, some I’ve heard of, like Hubbard and Spaghetti and others that I can’t wait to see, like Cinderella and Honey Bear.

By the time we wrap, I’m convinced. “If you’re sure it’s not an imposition, I’d love to stay. For another few days at least.”

“I’m so happy to hear it.” Ethel clasps her hands in front of her soft bosom, her smile lifting her cheeks into bright pink apples reminiscent of my own grandmother’s crops. “Let me show you your room.”

CHAPTER 5SAM

After spending the morning touring the Upper Hudson Valley Cooperative Extension office, doing my best to keep my temper in check, I need answers. But when I ask horticulture team leader Carlos Gutierrez if he’s ever going to tell me why I’m being asked to transfer to the one region I asked to avoid, he deflects.

Again.

“I need to make a few farm visits south of here.” Removing his 4-H ball cap, he scratches his head through his crazy thatch of hair. “How ’bout we get some lunch on the way?”

My stomach grumbles in response, so when he tells me that we’re headed to Greene County, I suggest the Lick Your Fork diner. I offer to drive since I know those back roads like the back of my hand and so that Gomer can join us.

“You’ve never had a problem bringing him along on the job?” Carlos asks while I clip my dog’s harness to the seat. “He’s a little scary looking.”

I give the big lug a scratch behind the ears. “Never have. Gomer’s what they call a career-change dog.”

“Like, you got him when you changed careers?”

“Well, yeah, I adopted him right before I started working at CCE.” I don’t mention my previous employer. People at the extension tend to have strong opinions about Congento. “But it’s the nice way of saying he’s a service dog who flunked out.”

“Was he a police dog?” Carlos twists in his seat to get a better look at Gomer. “Isn’t that what German shepherds do?”

“He’s actually a Belgian Malinois.” I catch my dog’s eye in the rearview. Just looking at him tends to calm me down when I’m anxious. “The breed is popular with law enforcement and the military, but Gomer was trained to be a seizure alert dog.”

“So why’d he flunk out?”

“He failed the smell test.”

Carlos leans toward Gomer and sniffs a few times. “Smells fine to me. But then again, I spend half my day tromping through manure.”

“It’s not about what he smells like. His nose isn’t good enough. Part of his job was to detect the chemical changes in the human body when a seizure is coming on. He couldn’t do it reliably.”

“And they couldn’t, like, retrain him for something else?”

“Funnily enough, he’s also too friendly. That’s a big no-no for assistance dogs.”

“How’d you end up with him?”

“I just applied. Paid a pretty steep fee to help cover the cost of breeding and training him.”

What I don’t say? He’s also turned out to be good for my mental health. Instead of sharing that news with the guy who may be my new boss, I give him the spiel I give farmers when they meet him for the first time. “He’s kind of an icebreaker for me. He helps carry equipment, but because he was trained to find his owner’s cell phone and medical bag, if I leave something behind in the truck, he’ll find it and bring it to me—sometimes before I realize I’ve forgotten it. People think it’s hilarious.”

By the time we get to the diner, Carlos has warmed up to Gomer considerably. Sadly, that’s not the case for Lick Your Fork’s head waitress.

“Samuel Bedd.” Latonya stops us with a hand in the air. “You cannot bring that dog in here.”

“But he’s a⁠—”

“If you are about to tell me that this mutt is an”—she makes air quotes—“emotional support animal or what have you, you’d best be telling the truth. Because you know I’m gon’ be on the phone to your grandmama before you say boo.”

I consider blustering through, but then realize that I don’t need to be on my grandmother’s radar. Not until I figure out what the heck’s going on with my job. “Fine. We’ll take it to go.”

Latonya tips her head to the side. “We have outside seating now, you know. In the back.”

“Oh, okay.” I raise my brows at Carlos, and he shrugs in response. “Can Gomer sit out there?”

Latonya gives Carlos a nice long look over. “If this is Gomer, he can sit wherever he pleases. Including my⁠—”

“Latonya! Gomer is the dog.” I gesture to my colleague, who doesn’t seem disturbed by Latonya’s perusal. “This is Carlos.”

Unrepentant, Latonya shoots him a feral smile. “The offer still stands. Nice to meet you, honey.”

Squelching a shudder, I tap my thigh. Gomer comes to heel as we follow a gravel path around the diner.

“Seat yourselves,” Latonya calls. “I’ll be out there in a minute with menus. Two coffees?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I yell back.

After we’re settled, Carlos looks around the patio, set up with planters full of summer-blooming perennials and colorfully striped market umbrellas. Tapping the bright red composite decking making up our picnic table, he says, “Nice place. I don’t know why I never stopped in before.”

“Fork Lick’s easy to miss.”

“How do you know about it?”

“I grew up here.”

“On a farm?”

I wince, not really wanting to get into it. “Uh, kind of.”

“How do you ‘kind of’ grow up on a farm?”

Pulling a water bottle and portable dog bowl from my messenger bag, I give Carlos the Cliff’s Notes of my tragic tale. “We lived in town, and my dad worked the family farm with my grandfather. But after my parents died, my siblings and I moved onto the farm proper.”