Chương 39: Almost Done

Day 25, Mai 4th (Sunday) I stayed on the homestead that night and slept in my tractor since we weren't expecting any company soon. Most Farmers would be planting corn, and most Ranchers, who had bred their animals earlier than I had, likely already had their calves and lambs on the ground by then, so they were keeping plenty busy. Sunrise was just around 6: 30 a. m., and as the rooster crowed, I got out of my tractor, stretched, and smiled as I looked at my cabin.

Today we would put the roof beams up and then cut out a door and two windows. Colin had bought hinges for the door and shutters. As I began looking around at the animals, I spotted our small herd of pigs. They appeared to all be pregnant, and only a few months from giving birth already. Pigs followed an easy-to-remember 3-3-3 rule. They gestated for three months, three weeks, and three days before giving birth. After that, they only needed a short while before they could be bred again.

They were capable of producing three litters a year, and they required less hands-on effort than lambs or calves. Growing up, the topic of how pigs came to be all over the world had fascinated me far too much. I'd even written a paper on them in school. Christopher Columbus brought the first pigs in the Western Hemisphere to the Caribbean. Explorer Hernando de Soto and Sir Walter Raleigh, who founded the first British colony at Jamestown, introduced pigs to North America specifically.

Domesticated pigs could go feral in a shockingly short period if left unattended. A domesticated boar would grow tusks and thicker fur in just a couple of months if no one took care of it. Because of that, explorers had a habit of dropping them off at places they thought they might revisit to provide a ready food source they didn't have to take care of. Goats could do the same thing as well, but I hadn't had the same fascination with them, so I couldn't remember if the same people had dropped them off or not.

Brendan told me the goats wouldn't go into heat until late summer, so we had a couple of months before I needed to take our females over to his place to be bred by his Herd Leader. Speaking of goats, I could see our billy, whom Emily had named Gerald, giving me the side eye. He looked like maybe he was going to challenge me for supremacy of the farm. I couldn't have that, so I picked up a good-sized tree branch and waved it menacingly in his direction before shouting at him.

"Gerald, you big bastard, don't you even think of causing me any trouble!" Whether it was my big stick or my intimidating voice, Gerald thought better of challenging me. He and his females, who were named Lilly, Daisy, Trilly, and Bell, wandered off towards some untouched grass closer to the river. I had to admit that they were probably better names than I would have chosen, but Gerald didn't impress me as a name. Colin and Emily were still appalled at the names I'd given the rabbits.

Since the rabbits had responded to their names immediately, Emily's early attempts to change their names had failed. As I was thinking about names, I finally realized Emily was laughing at me. I looked at her and saw she had a load of clothes she was preparing to put in the washbasin to soak. I shook my stick in her direction.

"Hey! That darned goat was giving me side-eye. I had to let him know who was boss." Emily snorted and said, "Well, I suppose you showed him then. Waving your big stick around like that." Then she smiled and winked at me before throwing the clothes into the basin. I just stood there in shock for a moment. Had she just used a double entendre on me? If so, that was definitely the first time. I decided I must have been imagining things.

Either way, I needed to get my chores finished so we could get moving on that cabin! Emily had gone in to make breakfast while the dirty clothes soaked in the lye water to break down stains. So, once Colin and I had all the animals fed and had checked on the potatoes and the wheat fields, all three of us ate a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, and cornbread. It was filling and delicious. Once that was all out of the way, we got to putting the gable logs in place.

They went in on the front and back of the cabin and came to an almost triangular peak. Luckily, I was able to lift all but the largest row of them up by myself with the homemade ladder we'd put together. Next came the thirteen logs that spanned the length of the roof, called purlins. They were the logs we put up to go horizontally across the roof, and they sat on the gables. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. We ate a late lunch at 1 p.

m., mostly to give Colin a break. Then we got to cutting out a door and windows for the cabin. I'd considered pre-making the cuts while we were out in the woods, but just in case something didn't go right, I wanted to wait until it was assembled. That was what the almanac suggested, so I went with it. It took us less than an hour to make our rough cuts. I couldn't extoll the virtues of these magical saw blades enough!

Then, we framed the windows and doors with rough-cut two-by-twelves that used some of the only iron nails in the entire project. I wanted to make sure they stayed in place, and I didn't have the skill to meld them to the logs. The almanac showed that I could have drilled them out and put wooden pegs in to keep things firmly in place, but that would have added time and complexity to the project. After that, we used some screws to secure the hinges for the door, which I had bought in town from a Joiner.

Through the use of a skill, his door was much lighter and sturdier than if I'd built it myself. The hinges were also magically infused to ensure they didn't rust. I'd also bought pre-made shutters. That was probably a wasteful spend, but it saved a lot of time, and gave the same benefits as the door. Last, we draped the canvas tarp over the purlins and tied it down as securely as we could with a heavy-duty hemp rope.

Normally there would have been a fireplace or an iron stove, but I didn't plan on being in this cabin once it got cold enough to justify the extra work it would take to put it in. I would probably be worrying about the heat more than anything during my planned time in the cabin. From what I could tell about the expected weather in the almanac, this world was about 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than I was used to.

Finally, we also put down a canvas tarp that I staked down to the ground so I wasn't dealing with a dirt floor. After we had everything put together, it was time to start the chinking and daubing. Colin and I had brought back a bunch of wood shavings from the forest; those would go in between the gaps in the logs. We would fill all but the last inch on the inside and outside with them. When Emily finished her laundry, she came and helped us finish up the chinking.

By the time we got the chinking in, it was already time for dinner. Which was leftover beans and bacon in our ever-simmering stew pot, along with some day-old bread. We finished off our repast with some garden veggies that Emily had picked after doing laundry. The daubing, or mud mixture, that went into the small gaps was a mixture of water, goat dung, grass, and clay, all smashed together into a paste-like mixture.

When we got done with that, we would all be absolutely filthy, and we would all need a proper bath after that. So, we decided to skip the daubing for the day. Colin and I washed up with rags and a bar of soap, then took our leave to look at the crops in the dying light in order to give Emily privacy while she took care of her own cleaning necessities. Our crops were coming along nicely, despite the lack of irrigation.

I had the ditches dug, and the sluice boxes installed so I could control the water once I engineered something to bring the water into the ditches, but the frequent small rains we'd had over the last month had made it unnecessary to prioritize that last step so I could water my fields. We had needed very little hoeing either. That part made me very happy. Colin and I only needed ten to twenty minutes a day to make sure weeds didn't take over from the plants we wanted to be growing.

The potatoes now had two or three leaves on each plant that had made it out of the ground. The green plants were now visible in unbroken rows throughout the entire twenty-acre field. That indicated that almost all the pieces I'd planted had sprouted. So far, so good there! The wheat was around three inches tall already and looked like a beautiful carpet of green. Both crops were growing as well as I could possibly hope for, so I was feeling confident there.

Hopefully, the Bhealtaine bonus would be as advertised, and they'd really shoot up fast. Finally, we went to look at the soon-to-be cornfield so I could make sure the soil wasn't too crusty. It was still fine. If it had been too hard, I would have used the cultivator on it to break up that crust so the plants could come through the soil. After yelling out to Emily that we were coming back, she told us she was decent, and we made our way back. At that point, it was nearly 8 p. m.

and getting dark, so we all went inside to hang out for a while before we went to bed. Colin and I cleaned our rifles, and he helped me make sure everything was in order. No screws were loose, and everything seemed in good shape, so I hadn't gotten a lemon of a rifle. I was wise enough to keep that term to myself. I wasn't sure if lemons existed in this world, or at least this part of the world, but I hadn't seen any, so I was going to keep my mouth shut. My hiccups were growing less frequent as time went on.

Colin hadn't been trying to find out any details that I wasn't volunteering for the last week or so either. I didn't really believe that either of them truly believed I was from this world, but I'd done a good job with everyone else so far. Things were going smoothly, so no one was pushing the issue anymore. I debated throwing a bedroll into the cabin and sleeping in there tonight, but I was still worried something might crawl into the sleeping bag with me since we didn't have the door on. By the time 10 p. m.

rolled around, everyone was ready for bed, so I made my way to my tractor to go to sleep. Everything was running smoothly. My crops were doing well. I had one more day until my cabin was livable, and then I'd get the corn planted. That left getting my irrigation ready, then preparing more lumber for a lean-to for the animals to have shelter from the rain as my only big projects for the moment. I thought about looking at my almanac for a little while, but honestly, I was just a little too beat to do so.

I kicked off my boots and pulled my blanket up to my shoulders and let sleep claim me.