Dileia looked toward the field.
“No.”
He laughed.
“Good answer.”
She climbed into the tractor.
He stepped away.
Then she drove toward the nearest test plot.
The first pass was disappointing.
The ripper disturbed the soil but lifted only a few roots.
Several broke.
Others remained buried.
Dileia stopped.
Adjusted the equipment.
Tried again.
The second pass was better.
The third was better still.
Then, on the fourth pass, the machine broke through a compacted layer and lifted a cluster of enormous black roots into the sunlight.
Dileia stopped the tractor.
Climbed down.
And stared.
The roots were larger than she'd expected.
Thick.
Heavy.
Covered in black soil.
She knelt beside one and brushed away the dirt.
Then she laughed.
A strange, breathless laugh.
“Dad, you stubborn old man.”
She wiped her eyes.
Then looked toward the tractor.
For the first time, she could see the scale of what he'd planted.
Not because every root was enormous.
Not because every acre was productive.
But because the field contained far more mature material than she'd imagined.
Over the next several days, she measured representative sections.
Used the weights to build rough yield estimates.
And began understanding how much root biomass might be available.
The figures were uncertain.
Harvest losses could be significant.
Processing costs were unknown.
And she still had no buyer.
But the crop was no longer a mysterious promise buried beneath the ground.
It was something she could lift.
Measure.
Photograph.
And show to people.
She decided to take a small commercial sample to the Nampa Produce Exchange.
She knew the roots weren't an established food crop.
She did not intend to misrepresent them as edible produce.
She wanted to contact buyers who handled unusual agricultural materials, plant biomass, or industrial crops and see whether anyone knew an appropriate market.
She loaded roughly two tons onto a rented trailer.
The work took almost an entire day.
By the time she finished, her arms ached.
Her clothes were covered in mud.
And the truck's fuel gauge reminded her that even this experiment cost money.
The next morning, she drove to the market.
Several buyers laughed before she finished explaining what she'd brought.
One examined a root and asked whether it was rotten.
Another suggested selling it as decorative firewood.
A third said he'd never purchase an unidentified plant material without testing, processing information, and a reliable specification.
That answer was reasonable.
Dileia understood it.
But the mockery wasn't.
One man laughed so hard he called his friends over to look.
“Come see what the Ashford girl dug up!”
Several people gathered.
They poked the roots.