Chương 18: Planting Wheat

When Colin and I got to the tractor, I fired up the tractor and dropped the two wing arms down so that it was fully extended so we could check to make sure the many tires had good air pressure, and all the hydraulics were running smoothly. If a tire did go flat, I didn't have a good answer for how I'd deal with it yet. Like all of my way too fancy equipment, the tires and hoses would be an issue soon. Probably sooner than anything else if I were being honest.

The grain drill was actually made by New Holland, like my tractor. Most of my equipment was made by other companies, but my dad liked the New Holland p2080 model grain drill. He'd had it modified, so the hopper sat on the back of the drill and wasn't dragged behind as a separate rig. It still fed the grain through plastic tubes to the seed drills.

The change made it so it couldn't hold as much seed as a pull-behind hopper, but we didn't have any thousand-acre wheat fields that needed a huge amount of seed for a single field on the family farm. The 20 acres' worth of seed we would be throwing in the hopper would barely cover the bottom hole to feed to the seed tubes. The grain drill worked great, but it was prone to breakdowns.

The plastic tubes got brittle after two or three years and needed to be replaced, or one of the tension springs that kept the proper depth for the discs would break. Luckily, there were a dozen of the tension springs inside the toolbox we'd bolted onto the frame of the drill because they broke frequently. I also had some of the plastic tubing, but aside from keeping it out of the weather, it was probably going to get brittle pretty fast too.

The seed drill was only a medium-sized model at forty feet; there were fifty and sixty-foot models too. It wasn't the largest size because my dad had bought it from a farmer who used a smaller tractor to plant with, like a reasonable person. He'd then had it completely refurbished by the local New Holland dealer. Colin found the computer screen inside the cab, which was wired into the planter, extremely fascinating.

I could change how quickly the seeds were fed to the planter discs, the planter's depth, and the pressure used by the rollers that covered the seeds. When he asked about the screen, I lied some more and said that this came from the System, and that only I could interface with it. As far as I knew, I couldn't run the planter without the electronics. Yet another thing that would eventually have to be modified. The almanac gave me a weight amount that was normally used for planting.

When I checked the planter booklet, which had been in the pouch behind my driver's seat, just like the tractor manual and every other manual for my equipment that used electronics. I found out I was actually using just about the same amount of seed as I would at home. I'd thought it would be a lot less. I guess we weren't using less seed, just getting a much better yield. A good old-fashioned planter with set plate sizes would have worked for me for years. Emily had said we could configure extra plots differently.

We could plant up to eighty acres on any piece of ground we planned to designate as primarily a farm plot, as opposed to a homestead plot. We could also do Livestock Plots. Those would be up to eighty acres of grassland, but I'd want to hire a herd master if we did that. When my class said I could farm five hundred acres, that meant five hundred acres of actual farm plots. So, this place just counted as only sixty acres.

I'd initially thought that meant I could own five hundred acres' worth of plots, so this was wonderful news. I'd definitely need to think about what I wanted to do next year if I could buy as much land as I planned to. Expanding into cattle and sheep seemed like a great idea, but how would all the new people I hired react to my tractor? Once we made it back to the homestead, I showed Colin how we lined up with each row we'd made. Grain used 7. 5-inch rows, and the grain drill was already set up for that.

We lined up the discs that made little furrows that would fill with seed as the rubber tubes funneled them in. The machine's discs also covered the seed right back up, and at the back were rakes that made sure the furrows were clear. As a kid, we just had a planter that did eight rows and had a grain bin that sat on top of the discs. You used plastic plates with different-sized teeth that rotated as you moved.

I wish that was what I had here, but "modern" modern farming was all about getting efficiency as perfect as possible. Farm equipment was expensive, and margins were thin. If a computerized planter could get you several percent better yield, then it could be worth it. I'd actually used older-style planters enough that I was fairly confident I could cannibalize the parts from this machine and have a simple seed drill made here on Talamh in the future. Maybe it would be called a Jacobson seed drill!

We finished planting grain in just a couple of hours. That made it right around 6 p. m. Time for dinner based on Emily's schedule from the last few days. We parked by the house. Parking the tractor behind the house wouldn't have done a darned thing to hide it, since it was taller than the house… Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I'd decided that I needed to hide everything again.

I hated the fuel loss, but I was doing better than expected, so I was willing to lose some fuel to keep things hidden. A tarp to cover things would be great. But I'd find some way to really hide the tractor once I was done with it for the spring. Any extra work a tractor might do during the growing season would have been done with a much smaller tractor at home. We had tractors with tires set at the exact width needed to make sure you were running in the furrows, not damaging rows.

My tracks were thirty-six inches wide, and even with the excellent diffusion of pressure, they'd ruin the corn or grain they drove over after it had grown a bit. The wonderful scent of bacon greeted us when we stepped out of the tractor. My stomach growled, then Colin's stomach echoed mine. Once he'd stepped down from the tractor, he got down on his hands and knees and jokingly thanked the System for their new bounty. Well, I thought he did it jokingly. There might have been a tear or two in his eyes.

Having heard us pull up in the tractor, Emily was standing in the doorway to her cabin, her arms crossed as Colin played out his exaggerated scene. Once he looked her way, she shook her head and told him to get up off the ground.

"Dinner is ready," she said. Colin and I sat down on the largest log that I'd brought back to the homestead, and Emily handed each of us a steaming plate with several large, thick strips of bacon, along with some biscuits that Emily said were made with flour, salt, and bacon grease. They definitely tasted like bacon and flour. They weren't the best thing I'd ever tasted, but I still enjoyed them. We each got one egg, over easy, that had come from our own chickens. Amazingly, three of them had already laid eggs.

Last was more kale. Good thing I enjoyed it. It was cooked in bacon grease, and Emily had charred it just a bit. There was a good crunch to it that really made it feel good in my mouth. We talked idly about how to take care of the animals, as well as the schedule for the next couple of months. I wanted to get my ditch dug over the next week. Then we needed to get my cabin built. I had five more weeks until I needed to go to town to do my first two days of militia duty. I had to do that task on my own.

Women and children were expected to stay back and take care of the homestead while I was off doing that. I'd need to leave on Friday morning to get there to sign up and be ready for drill on Saturday. Hopefully, I could ride back to the nearest homestead with our neighbors on the way home. If I made a good impression at drill, this would be valuable networking time. In just under three months, Colin and Emily would go into town to get his first class.

He was planning on going for the Woodsman subclass in Homesteader. He didn't know if they would give him the Militia military class or not. Normally he would get it, but the Bishop could withhold it, and likely would. Colin looked dejected during this part of the talk. He controlled himself and didn't outright kick at the dirt, but the toe of his boot was certainly digging a hole as he sat on the log. Oh well, it was progress. His boot would wear out at the toes, but at least he wouldn't tear the heel off that way.

At 7: 30 p. m., I excused myself with a bucket of water so I could refill my water jug, and took a bar of soap. Then I drove back to the woods. Once there, I made my way down to the river and washed both myself and the shirt, socks, and underwear I'd been wearing for a few days with actual soap, then put on a brand new pair of underwear, and a new shirt. I kept my jeans for now. After that, I tucked into the almanac for a good history lesson.

————————————— The System Priests of the Albion Empire claim that humans are the only species native to Talamh, and that is why Arturos and Merlotus were brought to the planet to liberate us from the bondage of the orcs. It is unknown exactly how the other races unlocked classes of their own, but they have many classes similar to humans. Therefore, it is highly likely that a traitorous human leaked the knowledge of how to unlock classes, first to the orcs, and then to the other races.

Furthermore, the Empire claims that because they are the only race native to Talamh, it is their right to reconquer any lands they can. There are other humans on Talamh, but none are as organized or as powerful as the Empire. Arturos and Merlotus, along with the veterans of the Orcish War, easily pushed out the elves who were living on the island Arturos called Albion. They initially forced them to the smaller island to the west, called Eire, or to the continent to the east.

During the time before Arturos and Merlotus disappeared, they conquered Albion in its entirety and established the capital at a location they named Londinium. After their disappearance, the eldest of the thirteen male children whom Arturos fathered was crowned King Arthur the 1st by the nobility of the realm. He began the Eire Wars, which would last for forty years before the elves there were driven entirely out of the Isles and onto the continent.

Arthur the First's great-grandson, crowned King Arthur the Second, created the first foothold on the continent of Ennor in 444. The elves on the continent were much more organized and numerous than they were in Albion. With the help of their dwarven allies, they were able to stop the human advance, despite the lack of widespread System levels. They would gain System access thanks to the peace accords signed to end the war.

Today, human control of Ennor goes no further inland than a day's walk in any place, except the northwest coast of the land we humans call Hispania, and the elves call Pertil. Excerpt from The History of Humanity's Wars, Volume 1 by The Royal Historian Arthur Byrne of the House of Byrne who can claim direct lineage from Arturos. This book is available in the Albion Guild Shop