We made lists. We posted flyers offering help with odd jobs, we asked Maria to put a notice behind the counter, and Mark talked to his crew about pooling contacts. Someone from a neighboring town needed a fence built; a farmer wanted a deck. Word-of-mouth in the right circles is slow but loyal; it grows roots if you tend it. In the evenings we ran estimates and traded numbers, pacing our future one call at a time.
One Saturday, toward the end of a long week, I found myself sitting on the porch steps of our small rented house as the sun slid down like warm honey. Mark came home from a job and walked up the walk with grease on his forearms and a grin that had outlived good news. “We got that deck,” he announced. “And the farmer said he might need a barn lean-to. Looks like July isn’t going
