As lunch concluded, I had learned the Red Fire history, but I was still unclear on what exactly made its presence so appealing. As we left the kitchen to tour the farm, however, an insight began to develop. I noticed that as Ryan explained his crops, much of his early wariness fell away. Ryan is shy. When he talks in front of crowds, he tends to rush his sentences to completion, as if apologetic for interrupting. But once he got going on his farming strategies, explaining the difference between Merrimack sandy loam and Paxton silt loam, for example, or his new weeding strategy for the carrot
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