Chương 45: Mai/Routines

The Month of Mai, Days 31-52 The next month absolutely flew by and I settled into my new routine with relative ease. The first two weeks, we had a bonus that helped all of our crops grow faster. I hadn't anticipated it, but that included our pasture land as well. We didn't have enough goats to eat anywhere near all of our grass, and it was already waist-high in some places. I ended up cutting close to thirty acres of grass to make hay after speaking to Emily about it.

The almanac showed me the proper way to bundle it, and we ended up selling more than twenty tons of hay to Brendan for a gold per ton. I could have gotten more from the Guild Store, but I would rather help a neighbor instead. By the end of the month, the wheat was fully grown, and the head, where the seeds were, was beginning to form. It was still a vibrant green color that I loved so much. It wouldn't begin to turn golden until the end of Merlotus, or June as I would have called it.

The above-ground portion of our potato plants were now fully grown, and the brilliant white flowers had begun to bloom. Potatoes didn't need to pollinate, but that didn't stop a swarm of huge black and yellow bumblebees from descending on the field to do their thing. The bumblebees were the size of my thumb and made one heck of a buzzing racket anytime we were out hoeing weeds. Luckily, they weren't aggressive, and Colin and I made sure to be intentional with our hoeing motion.

I had watered them once so far, and planned on watering once a week moving forward. It was getting a lot warmer now. Emily and Colin were both pretty astounded that the potato plants did look a lot like tomatoes. They didn't smell anything alike though. Potato plants smelled earthy. Tomato plants smelled like, well, tomato plants haha. They are pungent and the smell sticks to your hand if you handle the plant.

We hadn't started our grafting project yet, I had never actually done it myself and wasn't sure when you were supposed to, but I figured I'd let a tomato plant get larger before attempting it. And finally for our row crops, our cornfield was already knee-high. When it first began to sprout, I was concerned. One of the few plant deviations from Earth crops was that the cornstalks on Talamh were what I would call a sickly yellowish-green. The best color description I could come up with was calf scour yellow.

I'd raised a few 4H calves for fair time growing up, and any time a calf was a little sick, or had just drank too much milk, its excrement would be a yellowish-green color that our corn stalks mirrored to an alarming degree. When I'd expressed my alarm at the corn, Emily and Colin had to reassure me every day for a week that everything was going well. Apparently, the cobs would all be a deep maroon color as well.

There were heirloom corn varieties on Earth that were a dark red, so that didn't bother me, but I would never call a cornfield pretty again. Emily and Colin both put on another few pounds, and they no longer looked gaunt. Neither had any extra fat on them yet, but they definitely looked better in my eyes. On the other hand, I lost another five pounds. I had now lost fifteen pounds in only two months. My ex-wife had always hated how easily I lost weight when I would start working out.

It took her forever to get back in shape whenever we slacked off. Her fertility treatments hadn't been fun, and they'd caused her to gain a lot of weight a few years back. When we both started working out and I lost almost ten pounds my first month things had gotten frosty. Now, I also gained weight super fast if I wasn't taking care of myself, so it wasn't all roses for me. But in this world where I was doing physical labor every day, I was feeling much better physically.

Colin spent his free time hunting and trapping in anticipation of getting his class in a month. Buck and Spot had mostly stopped bringing carcasses to Colin. It seemed that predators had decided to avoid our land for the most part. So, he was forced to find his own pelts. The two murder bunnies did start going with him when he went to check his traps. Colin always gave them the carcass after he skinned the animal. We weren't starving, and most predators tasted horrible. Plus, our protectors needed to eat!

We still hadn't lost a single bird. In a sign of how quiet my life had now become, the coolest thing we saw for the entire month was when Buck, who had been laying down in the midst of the flock of chickens as they foraged, had jumped up and knocked a hawk out of the air as it dove for a chicken. One of the two had killed an owl while we were sleeping as well. The geese were still assholes, but the rabbits kept them away from the other birds when they were all out foraging.

We had so many eggs there was no way we could deal with them all. We'd used some of the gold from the hay to buy a bunch of 5 gallon crocks and pickling lime to begin preserving eggs for the winter already. The garden took up a lot of Emily's time. That and cooking and laundry. She still refused to let me help cook despite me telling her I did a lot of cooking on Earth. She considered that firmly within her domain.

Her last real project, that didn't require too much effort, was to watch for which birds seemed to be good brooding animals. She planned on beginning the work of enlarging our flock in the coming weeks. My own free time was spent making my water gates for all the fields. They were only around a foot and a half wide and two and a half feet tall with an H frame I stabbed into the ditch bank to anchor in place.

I cut a groove into the inside of the top part of the H so I could slide boards in and out to let water run into the field. I then had to use my shovel to join four rows together so that each H frame watered four rows. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. This stopped erosion on my ditch bank. Without siphon tubes there was no way to just water every row on its own. Maybe one day, but they weren't a thing in this world yet. I only ended up watering the wheat a single time.

I'd also only watered the corn once so far, but I planned on watering it every week moving forward. At home, our pivots would be running on twelve or twenty-four hour intervals putting out a couple inches of water per acre every week. Here we seemed to get rain when we needed it. It wasn't quite enough to maximize crop growth, but it kept it going for sure. When Colin and I were both home and not busy, we worked on building a lean-to without sides to provide shade.

We also cut more lumber to build some better corrals for the animals. At some point, we would need to have fences that we knew were high enough quality to keep male animals away from females when they went into heat if we didn't want babies. My problem animal Gerald was not going to be siring any baby goats this year thanks to my potato trade. Brendan's Herd Leader male would get that privilege. Gerald would be very displeased by this turn of events.

The term 'horny as a goat' didn't refer to the horns on his head after all. A male animal trying to get to a female in heat could cause some real damage, and our serpentine fence was unlikely to do the job. Brendan had a Herd Leader boar as well, but we weren't as concerned with when we'd breed our sows to him since pigs had such a fast reproductive cycle. We would butcher one or two of this round of baby pigs, and sell the rest before they were ready to breed again so we didn't need to worry about inbreeding.

The second most exciting thing for the month had been our one delivery of goods from the Guild Trade Store. It cost 5 gold to get goods brought out, an exorbitant amount as far as I was concerned, but I still didn't have a cart, or horses, and Emily wanted to get started on preserving the eggs. The wagon was almost completely full of crockery, vinegar, pickling lime, and barrels of salt. Plus bacon. Of course we needed more bacon.

Our load actually ended up costing closer to 50 gold, not 20, but I still had gold left over from my Homesteader Package and I'd rather eat through the winter than hoard gold. She also wanted to start pickling veggies. It felt crazy to me, but it was already time. We'd bought a few jars and vinegar when I first arrived, but since we had plenty of food, early growing plants like carrots were already needing to be pickled and we needed more crockery.

Emily had started making sauerkraut on a small scale already as well. She said the later heads of cabbage would have a higher sugar content and ferment better, but all three of us loved pickled things, so she pickled a few heads for eating during the summer. Finally, in addition to now having lost fifteen pounds, my mental health was in a much better place. My anger and resentment towards my family had lost its edge.

I was unlikely to ever see them again, and in talks with Emily about others who had come to this world, it seemed like most people who were brought over by the System had dealt with some sort of upheaval that meant being brought to Talamh was often a positive. My encounter with Thomas Roberts had shown that was definitely the case for him.

Emily didn't know why people were brought over, but in the years before new people were forced to either lie low or submit to authorities, they usually brought some sort of good to the world in one way or another. I was sad that I would never see my family again, but I took solace in the fact that I probably wouldn't have had the same close bond I had for the first thirty-five years of my life moving forward.

That could be seen as overly harsh, especially towards my mother and grandmother, but they'd known what was happening and hadn't told me either. I knew that I had a bit of a martyr complex. I still would have been better off than like ninety-five percent of people on Earth. I would have had money and options, but I just didn't like the way it went down. Their secrecy during the whole process was what angered me more than anything.

Whatever the reason for the System bringing me here, it meant I was still farming, and it was a lifestyle I'd always loved. I enjoyed seeing tangible progress on the homestead as we worked. I'm sure it didn't hurt that it was currently early summer, and the weather was amazing. Hot days were in the low 80s and cool days in the low 70s. Once it hit 105 degrees in August I would probably be cursing the lack of AC, and in the winter I was probably gonna be freezing, but for the moment I couldn't complain.

As for any possible relationship with Emily, well, I just kept my mouth shut about that for now. I probably was catching feelings for her, but the power imbalance was still very real and I just couldn't make myself feel like I would be a good person if I asked her about potentially marrying me. She wasn't putting off vibes like she wanted me to ask her to marry me, and that is what it would have to be. This world didn't seem to do dating.

You got married as the first course of action, then went about forming a relationship. We got along great though, and didn't have any issues, so that wasn't something that needed to be addressed in the near term. Even this fall after we built a farmhouse, nothing said I had to stay in the main house. I could take over their old cabin if we spent an extra 150 gold and kept it separate from the new house. Colin definitely saw me as a parental figure, and he was a good, hardworking kid who I enjoyed working with.

All in all life was going pretty well.

In the first two centuries after the conquest of the Home Isles, nearly fifty thousand human refugees from the various lands in Ennor managed to make their way to the Albion Empire. They were initially met with suspicion because they had previously lived in harmony with the interloper elvish and gnomish populations. Over time however, they were fully integrated into the Albionese population. These groups brought with them many of the fruits and vegetables that are now considered staple foods that we now eat daily.

Onions, radishes, and peas came from a group who had lived in gnomish territories. Their migration had taken them the better part of six months of grueling overland travel. And it would be impossible to overstate the importance of garlic to Albionese cuisine. A majority of the vegetables that are staple food products were actually brought back from our ancient homeland. Tomatoes, peppers, squashes, and beans being among the most prominent.

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.