Chương 44: Homestead Life

Day 30 Dydd Mercher Mai 8th I awoke at daylight on the 30th day of my new life on Talamh with a subtle feeling of relief. I'd had a day to unwind after the confrontation with Robert, and most importantly, all of the crops for the year were now in the ground. My tractor was hidden, and aside from a trip out to start it up and let it run for an hour about once a month to make sure the battery didn't go dead, I was done using it for the year.

No more super obvious sign I was from another world in case someone else came to check on me. At home, we would throw a big party when we finished with the corn planting. It was the last crop to go in the ground for the year, aside from winter wheat of course. With modern pesticides and herbicides, along with so many pivot irrigation systems, that would mean the end of the real hectic part of the year until harvest began.

We would still make sure to check on everything regularly, and there was plenty of maintenance to do, but we weren't swamped for a few months. The three of us didn't have a party, since we were going to be busy all summer with weeding, taking care of the animals, and doing all of the little things that were necessary on a homestead. I had two projects I wanted to get done before harvest though. First I wanted to get my irrigation system finished.

It felt like I was talking about it every day, then always putting it off. Then, I wanted to get a pole barn or something similar built for the animals to keep them out of the weather, both rain, and sun, before we had a real barn built this winter. We had talked about building a barn ourselves, but it was just too much for us to take care of on our own. Plus, if we had Craftsmen build it, there would be bonuses that we wouldn't have if we did it ourselves.

Animals would need 10% less feed through the winter, and they'd be 10% less prone to illnesses. I really did have to do some cost benefit analysis stuff for everything we did on the homestead to decide if it was worth it to save gold. After I made my bed and tidied up my cabin, I got dressed and wandered out to check on the birds. Buck and Spot hopped over to me. They didn't have any dead predators with them this morning, but Spot did have some blood around her mouth.

I knelt down and petted them for a bit, once again marveling at their sleek bodies and sharp teeth. They were true predators. They had grown a little during the month we'd had them, and now they were about the size of one of those Maine Coon house cats I'd seen on Earth, but a little heavier. I didn't know how much larger they'd get, but they were still growing. After that, I went and started collecting duck and goose eggs.

As I was searching all of the usual hiding spots for duck eggs I heard the door to Emily and Colin's cabin open up. Colin made his way to me while Emily waved as she pumped water into a pail.

"You're up early." Colin said to me as he got near.

"It's after daylight, sleepy head." I joked.

"I just feel so invigorated every day now. It must be the levels. I haven't been sore a single time since I've been here. Even after hoeing and lifting logs I'm fine all the time. Plus, I don't think I need more than six or seven hours of sleep."

"Yeah, it probably is the levels. If you hit level 21 and evolve I hear you'll really get strong and you'll pretty much never get sick." Colin said. I smiled and nodded, then handed my large basket of eggs to Colin.

"Take these to your mother then grab the hoes. We might as well get it done before she gets breakfast ready." Colin groaned, but he did as he was told, and he brought two hoes back out with him when he returned. We took care of the light weeding, then headed towards the house when we heard Emily call out that breakfast was ready. Today was more bacon and eggs, as well as some corn bread. In other words, the usual.

While I preferred more variety in my lunch and dinner menu, I was pretty fine with eating the same breakfast most days. As long as it wasn't a fish scrapple that is. I shuddered involuntarily thinking about that. After we got our resupply I had kindly asked Emily to feed the leftover fish to the pigs. I was not going to eat that again unless I was starving.

"Are you going to attempt to dam off an area to get water to flow into your ditch today?" Emily asked as we finished up eating. I laughed.

"Hopefully I do more than just attempt it, but yeah. I have a good stack of various sized rocks ready to go into the creek." Then of course Colin piped up with his usual comment whenever this topic came up.

"I still don't see why we need to irrigate. No one else does." I just sighed and told him it was happening. If he didn't want to be involved then he could go hunting or something. That was the wrong thing to say because he was grabbing his rifle and already halfway out the door before I could say another word. Emily just laughed.

"You did that to yourself. Now I am going to pick some peas and carrots and then do a little foraging this morning. I'll have to get to our clothes from yesterday as well. We are not wearing them a second time before washing."

"No indeed." I confirmed.

"You know, at home we have machines that do all of the washing and drying on their own. That reminds me, is there any electric grid anywhere that powers things?" Emily shook her head.

"The rich employ magic to power things, but there is nowhere in human controlled territory that has widescale power. Rumors are that the gnomes have some, but I would have no way to confirm if that's the truth or just fanciful talk. There are some large cities with electric mage powered trolleys though."

"I'd like to see that one day." Standing up, I said, "alright, time for me to go push rocks for a bit." I walked outside into the beautiful early summer weather. It was already 63 degrees even though it wasn't quite 9 a. m. Wearing my boots, jeans, and one of my wool long-sleeved shirts, I was very comfortable. The quick walk to where the irrigation ditch almost met the river only took me a couple of minutes, and I couldn't help but smile as I saw birds and insects everywhere.

The burbling sound of the river was soothing. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I'd piled rocks ranging from head-sized, all the way up to small boulders half my height, as we had worked the last few weeks. Many of them had come when I was digging this ditch. None had come from plowing fields. Some sort of System shenanigans made sure there were no obstacles in a farm plot.

My first step was to dig out the last few feet of dirt that I'd left just in case water could seep into the ditch and wash it out before I was ready for it. Once I did that, I installed a wooden box that I built to fit snugly in the end of the ditch, where it met the river. The box was slightly taller than the ditch I'd dug, and in the middle I had a groove where boards could be put in or taken out to control the water flow into the irrigation ditch.

My third step was to take six twelve-foot long logs that were around a foot in diameter that I'd sharpened into giant stakes, and I began pounding them into the riverbed. The water was only around six feet deep where I was standing, so I pounded the logs into the riverbed five feet deep so that they stuck out even with the top berm of my ditch. Once I had six of them in the ground I was already getting some water flowing into the ditch.

With my strength bonus, the task wasn't too difficult, but it still took me until lunchtime. When I was finished, and I was sure they wouldn't be washed away, I rolled the four small boulders into the water right in front of the logs. Then I spent another hour throwing rocks into the river until I was satisfied with the work I'd done. The river wasn't affected in any meaningful way, it still had forty feet of uninterrupted flow, but the water was definitely backing up in front of my little dammed area.

I took a few of the boards out and watched as water began to flow into my ditch. Within a few minutes, I could tell I would have an issue with erosion on the ditch side of my water box. Unless I had all the boards pulled out, the water splashed down and began to dig a hole in the fairly soft ground almost immediately. That forced me to go and find several armfuls of fist-sized rocks that I used to line the entirety of the first six feet of my irrigation ditch.

Once the water made it that far in things seemed to smooth out. The grass that I'd left on the banks was growing pretty well from there on out, and I hoped that the grass would grow into the ditch eventually, helping seal it. If I ever had the time I might cut strips of grass and line the ditch to move the timeline up. I could probably add that to my list, which rarely got any shorter. Once I was happy with my progress so far, I looked at my UI and it said it was 3 p. m.

I really wanted Emily and Colin to see the irrigation ditch in action so I walked over to the cabin to see what Emily was up to. I doubted Colin would be back before dinnertime. Emily was in her garden, fussing around with something, like usual. She seemed to enjoy spending time there, and she could be found in it any time she wasn't too busy with other tasks. The full acre fenced in garden plot was much larger than anything I'd ever attempted back home.

When she noticed me, she stood up from the beans she was weeding.

"How did your project go? I am just getting a salad put together for dinner. The peas are coming along nicely. The kale is still going strong and I can throw some radishes on it too. Do you want carrots?" I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Up to you, I like carrots, so if you're planning on putting them in it I'll eat them. You know, it's funny how similar many of the plants are between the two worlds. Do you have cucumbers?

I swear that radishes come from the same place as cucumbers, which is to the East of what you call Ennor." Emily shook her head.

"I've never heard of them before. Radishes, kale, and peas have been around for a long time. Some humans who had been living in the southern lands of Ennor migrated to the home isles a long time ago." I gave a fake grimace and said, "Aw, that's too bad. Cucumbers are my favorite. They're the staple for what we call pickles in my world."

"Huh." Emily said.

"We will pickle green beans, cabbage, carrots, onions, and mushrooms." I rubbed my hands together in anticipation.

"Ooh. I love pickled mushrooms. Throw some garlic in with them and they're delicious." Emily confirmed she was a fan as well.

"What else do you have planted?" I asked. Emily looked around and began pointing things out.

"Well, I just planted some sweet corn while you two were planting field corn. Then we have cherry tomatoes as well as a couple of larger varieties of tomato as well. We have pumpkins and honeynut squash, and blue squash. There is summer squash and climbing beans as well as common beans. We have several varieties of onions. Of course we also have green peppers and hot peppers. We have mustard seed that I planted from what you got. I also grow a lot of garlic, the whole section in the back is just garlic."

She looked at me quizzically.

"I hope you are okay with all of the garlic I've been putting in the food. Colin and I both love it." I laughed heartily at that.

"I have rarely met a dish that I felt had too much garlic, I love it." She smiled.

"That is fortuitous then. Now, did you get your irrigation ditch finished?" It was my turn to smile.

"You're darned right I did. I haven't filled it up yet. I want to do that after we eat, just to show you guys how cool it'll be." The look she gave me showed she was less than confident she'd think it was 'cool' even if it did work, but I wasn't deterred. She decided we'd have a cut of the elk for dinner to go with our salad, so I helped her pull one of the barrels up to grab some of the salted meat. We had the cuts packed in the order we would eat them in. While she rinsed the meat, I buried the barrels again.

Colin finally showed up at 5: 30, empty-handed, but he said he'd had fun and scouted out a few good locations for deer. After we ate, I grabbed my shovel and took both of them out to look at my new irrigation ditch. My logs and rocks were all looking good, so I pulled most of the boards in the water box and watched as the water flowed down the length of the ditch.

We walked towards the first bend, where I had actually bothered to put grass strips to stop erosion, and watched as the water eventually hit the first of the water box style dams I had put a third of the way into my potato field and began to back up. It was clear I had too much water flowing in and things would flood if I didn't pull boards for the dam. I hadn't had time to build individual gates for the ditch, so my plan for now was to cut a notch in the ditch and let water flow into several rows for each notch.

I would have to move dirt around a bit to make sure each row got equal water, but it was doable for this year. We got to the second dam, then the third and fourth, before the ditch had a long stretch behind the house before it hit the cornfield. There it flowed through the fifth, and then the sixth and final dam before making its way back into the river on the other side of the property.

"Well?" I said to them, expectantly.

"Well." Emily responded.

"Well, indeed." Colin finished.

"Darnit! It's super amazing! I don't care what you two think. You'll be impressed when we're rolling in gold this fall after we get record yields! Now I am going to spend the rest of the evening watching to see if there are any problem spots." With that, I took my shovel and walked back up the ditchbank to keep an eye on things while Emily and Colin shook their heads and headed back towards their cabin.

Despite rather minimal contact between the Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes on the continents of Ennor, and Gnimafar, there has been a surprising influx of vegetables brought to the Albion Islands largely due to the forced emigration of humans who had previously coexisted in some way with the invading races. After the invasions by the Empire, the invading races deemed it unwise to allow humans to remain in their lands. These groups brought with them new fruits and vegetables previously unknown to our great lands.

Excerpt from On Fruits and Vegetables by the Royal Botanical Society, Volume III by multiple authors. This book is available in its entirety as a subtab in the almanac for anyone possessing a Farmer related class.