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I sat down to go over some self-help books we had bought, used, in Boston: the National Gardening Association’s Gardening handbook, Organic Gardening Magazine’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, and a dog-eared copy of an old manual with a grandfatherly man on the cover pushing a rototiller. I had already studied them in-depth; now I reviewed certain sections and took more notes. When I was satisfied with the plan, I dropped to the floor for my old rowing warm-up. After stretching my hamstrings and quadriceps, I phased into sit-ups and push-ups. Jumping jacks followed; then windmills and toe touches. Mary looked on pensively.

Catching a kiss on the cheek, I took my leave—almost forgetting to grab from our mound of supplies the small sack of seeds I needed. Hopping aboard my bike, I set out over the hill. Somewhere on the other side lay the field Mr. Miller had set aside for our cash crop: our best hope for financial solvency.

The Miller place was a little farther from our house than it first appeared—not at the top of the first hill above our cottage, but on another hill beyond that. The gravel road rose for half a mile, crossed a plateau with a little dip in it, and rose up again. As I pumped along, it took a few moments before it dawned on me: I had been taking nearly the same bicycle journey each day to Mary’s apartment. The route from my place to hers went up a similarly steep hill, crossed a plateau, dipped a little, then swooped back up again. Central Street in Somerville, of course, had swarmed with moving automobiles, and it was lined with shabby frame dwellings. I also recall a nondescript nursing home, a red-brick apartment building, and an old factory. Here, in place of the houses, was a sloping sward of orchard grass; in place of the nursing home, a row of tall pines; instead of the apartment building, a stand of oaks and maples; and in place of the factory, the Miller compound, a collection of gray farm buildings. Everything had changed but the lay of the land.

It was as if I had entered a parallel world—which in a sense I had. It was an alternate space nearly identical in its geography but somewhat different in its operating principles. What those principles were, exactly, had yet to be revealed.

I began to make out the gables of a sprawling house. Bright pink and orange flowers on the trellises and in the beds alongside the dwelling set off its gray wings and walls nicely. A couple of girls on the front porch were busy at some handiwork, and as I approached, I waved. They waved back.

The barn, an ancient unpainted, sagging structure, towered behind the house roof. As I rounded the bend into the barnyard, I could see chickens rooting in a pen partly formed by the walls of the two structures. To the other side of the pen was a huge low-slung metal shed. Barbed wire twisted and meshed its way among the buildings, and you could see how the inhabitants would move from one space to the next, as through a series of rooms.

I learned from one of the children that Mr. Miller was in the large metal shed. Parking my bike, I entered the building and, after walking around several rickety-looking old implements, came to an interior door. Pushing it open, I saw him crouching over a worktable illuminated by a single shaft of light streaming in from a small window.

I needed a favor. My plan was to sow the half-acre he had allotted me in pumpkins, and the books had suggested burying a shovelful of manure under each pumpkin hill. I wanted to see if he could sell me some manure.

His lips spread to a near-smile, then narrowed again. I braced myself.

After a lengthy silence, he at last spoke. “Do you…” He stopped. He appeared to be suppressing laughter. After regaining his composure, he resumed. “Do you really want to do that? Seems like so much…work.”

I did a double take.

“Well,” I nervously replied, “would there be a better way?”

There was a pregnant pause.

“We’re lazy people, I guess,” he said with a sigh. He went on