Chương 112: 111: Blackberries and Summertime

Over the course of the first couple weeks of Arturos, Baddon and Zach got the rest of the lodging and the new baths installed. The baths were super cool as far as I was concerned. Everyone else enjoyed them, but they weren't as in awe of taking a shower as I was. First off, regular baths were largely a relaxation tool here on Talamh. The average person took a full-on bath about once a week. Something about levels kept body odor in check.

It had to be that since even I had stopped stinking despite never using deodorant. If it was just a lack of whatever bacteria caused pit smells, that wouldn't have stopped me from smelling. I also sweated an unfortunate amount from my armpits, so I would definitely have stunk all the time without deodorant. But that didn't stop me from just enjoying taking a shower after a hot day at work. And this Arturos was shaping up to be a hot one.

The average temperature for the first couple weeks of Arturos was right around 90 degrees fahrenheit but it had been 95 plus for two weeks straight. It was just a miserable temperature. We made sure we got all the weeding and irrigation work done early in the day, then we spent a lot of time down by the river.

I did much less drinking than I had been before learning I was going to be a new father, but that didn't stop the other men from enjoying plenty of Bryce's beer and Rupert's seemingly never-ending stock of spirits. The man almost never went to town himself, yet every time Sean took the team of horses to town, he came back with alcohol for Rupert. I still enjoyed an ale or two each day, but I stopped there.

One benefit to it staying as hot as it was was that I could make cooling runes for each of the cabins that acted as non-stop air conditioning. The cabins were too small to be practical if it dipped below the low 70s at night because they dropped the temperature a good 20 degrees day and night. The low 50s was cold, but most everyone loved snuggling up under a big comforter at night since it was otherwise so hot.

The farm manor had an advanced cooling rune that only a water mage could make, which could be turned on and off, but my own runes were single-use. They would last up to thirty days, and as long as I recharged them before they ran out, they would last in perpetuity, but once they were turned off a single time, that was it. And that advanced rune was the center of some contention between Delyth and Emily.

Delyth and Baddon had briefly moved out of the main farm manor, only to have Delyth come back after only two nights and insist that her pregnancy was making her far too uncomfortable to handle the cold from the runes. She had been uncharacteristically deferential to Emily, and for some reason Emily had caved and allowed Delyth and, by extension, Baddon, to move back into the manor. I thought that was outright insane, and I told Emily the same.

Then I told Baddon that by the time Delyth had her baby, they had to be out of our manor. I told him I didn't care if that meant I allowed him to be released from his contract so they could head back to town, but I wasn't dealing with a crying baby that wasn't my own. I actually felt pretty bad for Baddon. His marriage to Delyth looked good on paper.

The daughter and nephew of the two Secretaries of the heads of the only two cities in the Territories seemed like good matches on paper, but the governor had been a noble on the Isles, and his Secretary had been his Steward on his estate before he came over. That was a much higher social position than what Baddon's uncle had held before he was made Mayor Evans' Secretary.

It was frankly surprising to me that Baddon and Delyth had produced a child, with the way she seemed to treat him, but it was honestly only my business because it frustrated Emily. I remembered reading that stress was bad for a baby, and I told Emily about that. She just said she would deal with it when the time came. On that front, I also got Lorcan to check on Emily and the baby, despite her protestations that she was sure everything would be fine.

Lorcan could check everything out with his version of the diagnostic thing, so there was no reason not to. He said Emily looked to be in perfect health, and the baby was developing just fine. He even told us that it wouldn't be long until he could tell us what the baby's sex would be. Emily strictly forbade him from telling her, so I reluctantly told him not to tell me either. No way I'd keep that to myself if I found out.

The other frustrating thing was that Delyth was still not working on any of our clothes, saying that the pregnancy was too much for her. I could be understanding there, but once she'd had her child and had recovered, she'd either need to start helping out, or I'd begin charging her room and board out of Baddon's pay. I was trying to build a community out here, and we weren't large enough to deal with a cancer in our midst yet. The most important thing was that we had had no attacks now in several months.

Tieg and his squad, along with Colin, were now ranging miles in either direction, making sure no goblins were anywhere in the area. Rupert and I had put up all the permanent walls for now. It wasn't perfect coverage. We still had openings on the north and south sides where we had pasture up against the river, but we had built a sturdy twelve-foot fence that went out into the river on both sides.

The western side now had walls aside from a large double-iron gate that was large enough for my tractor and the largest piece of equipment to go through. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Thanks to my new Runecrafting abilities, I got to level 11 in Wizard in less than two weeks by crafting a mix of detection, soil stability, and mana absorption runes. I could make three runes a day thanks to the reduced cost of Tier 1 runes now.

On the 14th of July, we had an all hands on deck blackberry picking session. We even called in the Newtons for reinforcements. Of course they'd be getting all the preserves they could use for the year in exchange for their help.

The enormous blackberry patch on the other side of the river had a bumper crop, and while there was constant picking of blackberries for pies and tarts, Emily and Cara decided on the 14th that we'd reached critical mass on the number of ripe berries we had, so it was time to pick as many as we could, and cook them all up on one day. We would be making several hundred jars of blackberry jam. There would be blackberry cordial and blackberry cider thanks to Bryce.

Jac was planning on distilling a blackberry brandy that would be more alcoholic than the cordial I'd made the year before, and with better flavor than what Alchemist allowed me to make. I was also planning on barbecuing and making up a big batch of blackberry ice cream for everyone to enjoy at dinner. I was cooking up an entire rack of ribs and plenty of steaks. We'd had the Newtons stay the night at our place while Aiden stayed at home to feed the animals back at the Newton's homestead.

Then he would come over to our place for dinner. We were all up at dawn to begin picking. I checked the water by myself and took the opportunity to really look at all the animals again for the first time in quite a while. The wheat was fully grown, and was just starting to turn golden here and there. It was still a month from harvest, but the heavy grains were fully formed. As I walked through the field, I could just start to get that smell that wheat gave off when it was time to harvest.

The potato fields were just about done blooming, but there were still plenty of the beautiful white flowers on the plants, which were lush and green. It looked like year two was going to turn out just fine. I'd been worried that all the genetic tampering would cause my yield to drop dramatically. It was still going to be a full quarter less than a year ago since I'd used my Crop Specialist skill year one, but it was otherwise looking good.

The red bean plants, which I took to be kidney beans or something similar, stood in beautiful rows about a foot and a half tall. They were beginning to sprout pale pink blooms that were quite the sight to behold. Then there was the corn… On Earth, I'd always loved looking at the vibrant green corn stalks as they grew. Our silage corn could grow to be ten feet tall and just a solid wall of green while they were shooting up. This corn looked a sickly yellow that basically broke my brain.

I just couldn't get my mind to agree with what I was reading about how this is what a corn stalk looked like on Talamh. I'd seen parts of a field look like this on earth, right before it died. It would be stunted and sickly. Right now these stalks were growing thick and straight. The fields were uniform and already waist-high. I shook my head and walked along the ditch bank as I pulled boards out of some water boxes, while I closed others as I rotated the water.

With this heat, I would never fully pull the water off the corn. Luckily, even if I thought it looked radically different, it still loved the heat as much here as it did at home. As long as I kept the water coming, I would have a heck of a crop of silage corn this fall. I checked on the pigs. They were already lying in the shade near the river on the southern side of the pasture ground. They'd made a wallowing pit that I didn't love, but Sean had told me it was necessary in this heat.

I would have preferred they just go to the barn and hang out there since I'd put a couple of cooling runes in it, but they liked their mud. They'd be giving birth two or three weeks into Awst this year. No missing Lughnasadh because we were trying to make sure the pigs didn't eat their young this time. I chuckled to myself, thinking about that fiasco. At least those piglets had all survived. Sean and Aiden would most likely deal with their birthing again.

I didn't talk about Sean all that often because he really just did his own thing most of the time. He helped with the weeding when we needed it. But otherwise he took care of all the animals except the draft horses. Those were still Laeth's responsibility. Laeth helped me most days, unless he was helping Seamus with the forge, or making the bi-weekly supply run. Laeth had recently begun spending some time with Jac, finally, but I kept out of that for now. That was their business.

I checked on Chessie, Madge, and Char after I grabbed some carrots from the cellar. Chessie made sure I petted her before the other horses, but then let me scratch the other two. They were getting a little fat. I needed to start riding all three on occasion. Emily said she wouldn't be riding while she was pregnant. Apparently, it was taboo for a woman to ride while pregnant on Talamh. Colin never rode his because the squad did all their soldiering on foot.

When I finally made my way to the goats, I saw quite a little herd. We had Gerald, whom I had finally warmed up to since he'd basically saved Laeth's life. I felt like something had changed in Gerald's personality that night. He had been far less confrontational towards me, so I was friendlier to him. Our does, Lilly, Trilly, Daisy, and Bell, all came running up looking for their own carrots, and I was practically swarmed once the eight younger goats saw me too.

They'd been playing in the trees before they noticed me, and if Gerald hadn't interposed himself between me and them, I might have been knocked down. I thanked him and then checked on the birds. Sean usually gathered the eggs, but I told him I wanted to do it this morning, so I went to the chicken coop, which Sean had said needed to be expanded, and grabbed a full three dozen eggs. A couple of the laying slots had our brood chickens laying on clutches of eggs, so I left them alone.

The ducks were thriving now that they weren't living in terror of the geese. I threw them some cracked corn before I took all the eggs to the house cellar. Once I was satisfied that the animals were all in good order, I made my way to the large metal grill on the beach. I scrubbed it down and loaded it up with a big batch of charcoal. I poured a small jar of the pure alcohol I'd made in my still and struck a flint to get a spark.

Right as I felt the heat from the rush of flame caused by the alcohol igniting, I heard shouting coming from the direction of the blackberry patch. Oh shit, I thought, then started putting priming caps on the cylinder of my revolver as I made my way towards the shouting.