Chương 54: The Rush Before the Rush

Rest of Arturos - Awst 1st-11th: Days 96-121 After a couple of weeks where I worked on alchemy and helped Emily make jam and cordial, things really got busy for us. In late July, or Arturos as it was called here, most of the produce really got going. We ate a lot of vegetables, and Emily stayed busy preserving as much of it as she could for the winter. In fact, she had so much extra produce that she asked me to move up my cellar-building timeline.

So, I made Colin stay home for a couple of weeks so he could help me dig out a new cellar. We needed a potato cellar, and I planned on digging out a basement in my cabin, but that was probably going to be too small for next year, so we had to do some estate planning, and dig out a much larger cellar. Our biggest issue was that we didn't have any good hillsides to cut into to make an easy spot to dig out and have plenty of insulation to keep things cool.

Since we didn't have a natural spot for a cellar, we ended up deciding on a spot close to the eastern border of our property. We chose it because we couldn't think of any other buildings that would need to go there in the future. The ground wasn't particularly rocky, so that wasn't an issue, but we found out the water level was only about twelve feet below us this close to the river, so seepage would be a real issue. Twelve feet might seem deep enough, but the water table was likely to rise in the spring.

I still wasn't 100% sure that six feet was enough, but everything in this cool storage space would be in a waterproof jar, so it shouldn't be ruined. My future potato cellar was going to have to be done professionally though, since I needed to make sure it was high and dry. We ended up cutting a cellar six feet deep, and then we used most of the rest of our lumber to build a lean-to style structure that gave us an additional four feet of height at the front that sloped down to a foot at the back.

Then we piled dirt on top of the roof, and cut strips of sod to place on top of it. The only exposed wood was the four feet at the front, and a ramp going in so we could place a door. I knew that at some point in the not so distant future we would probably have to replace this with the wood directly on the dirt, but it would solve our problems for a few years at the very least. We built some shelves and, voila, a cool storage place that was already packed full of pickled vegetables and blackberry preserves.

Blackberries were fine, but I really loved strawberries and raspberries. Strawberries didn't seem to be a thing many people cultivated, but raspberries were, and I planned on putting in a huge patch of them next year. They were my favorite berries. The whole strawberry thing was funny to me. Emily said they were mostly just a woodland berry that came from the continent.

The rich and nobility might have them in their gardens, but they were no larger than a raspberry and didn't propagate like strawberries on modern-day Earth. Although I wasn't an expert on strawberry history, I could only guess that botanists must have crossbred modern strawberry varieties to create the large fruit I loved growing up. It wasn't something worth putting too much brainpower into, since I couldn't even get the versions that currently existed in this world.

In addition to digging out a vegetable cellar, our pigs farrowed (gave birth), and we got our first baby ducks, geese, and chickens. Back home, we raised pigs twice while I was growing up, but we bought them around eight weeks old, right after their mothers weaned them, and then sold them when they weighed around 300 pounds. This time it was a much bigger deal, and it was all hands on deck for a few days as we closely watched the pigs.

We also separated the two larger pens into four pens to keep the sows separated from each other, and the boar, once they gave birth. Brendan had told me that pigs could be cannibalistic and eat even their own babies if they didn't have enough feed, but they had more of a tendency to eat each other's piglets if they were all left together. That definitely wasn't nightmare-inducing to think about…

Our four sows, which were apparently called gilts before they had piglets, just like cows were heifers before having a calf, were watched around the clock once they showed signs they were about to give birth. The first of our gilts stopped eating and looked like she was trying to build a nest off by herself on the last day of Arturos. Her teats also swelled up with milk, and she began to have a creamy discharge that signaled things were getting started.

We set up a rotation to keep watch on her, and just before sunset, she went into labor. We had all made sure to spend time with the pigs during the summer so she wasn't distressed that Emily and I hovered around her while she was in labor. Emily had helped her late husband with the farrowing process for the pigs they had before he died, and I asked Brendan for tips on signs things were going okay or if the sow was in trouble.

The biggest concern seemed to be that if she went more than an hour between birthing the piglets, but still seemed in active labor, then we'd need to reach in there and see if there was anything to pull out. I was definitely hoping things went smoothly there. I'd watched a vet friend pull a calf from a cow on Earth, but that was done with full arm gloves and a rubber apron to keep oneself clean. If things went poorly here, I was just going elbow-deep with my bare hand.

The first sow gave birth to five piglets, apparently a good number for a first-time mother, and all five piglets were born in under three hours. Emily grabbed each of the piglets as they were born to wipe them down and make sure their airways were clear. She also kept them away from their mother until the sow was done farrowing.

I had initially thought we'd want the piglets nursing from the very beginning, but the sow did a lot of moving around and she paid zero attention to any of the piglets until she'd had her last. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. After confirming everything was fine and she was mobile again, we installed additional boards a foot above the ground.

These boards would keep the sow contained and offer her piglets an escape route if she became agitated or suddenly lay down. I was honestly a little shocked at how much effort it took to ensure all the babies survived the birthing process. I guess pigs thrived as a species because they could have so many babies so quickly, not because mama pig made sure each baby lived.

After our first pig gave birth, our second and third pigs gave birth the next day, and the final pig had her first piglet just before sunrise on the third day. We ended up with sixteen live piglets, and two stillborn. Emily and Brendan claimed that was about average for first time mothers. We could expect up to ten piglets per pig the next time. Our boar was a big, calm guy who didn't make too much of a fuss that he was locked away from his sows.

Three of our four sows were great with their piglets, but the fourth sow seemed to hate them, and after she killed one, we had to make a tight, box-like pen for her so small that she could barely even turn around in it. That stopped her from being able to kill them, but it wasn't great for her quality of life. After the first week, when she still hadn't warmed up to them, Emily arranged for us to buy one of Brendan's extra sows to replace her.

Once we weaned her piglets, in about another seven weeks, she was going to find her way into our larder for the winter. It wouldn't do to have a pig we had to watch constantly to make sure she didn't kill her piglets. Life on a farm had to be practical. That meant that sometimes you had to make decisions that seemed brutal. Her true crime was that she was both a negligent mother and would taste delicious.

When I joked about that with Emily it only went over slightly better than my first joke about her not having to marry me. As for the rest of our animals, we took our four does: Lilly, Daisy, Trilly, and Bell, to the Newtons' farm to be bred by their herd leader goat the week before the pigs began giving birth. They would be staying there for a couple of months. We had plenty of extra baby birds running around, too. If you walked around outside, it was impossible to avoid all the chirping.

The baby chickens loved riding on Buck and Spot, and they seemed to get a real kick out of it. The two rabbits seemed to patrol day and night to make sure their charges were safe. We hadn't had any issues with predators in a long time, but with all the new baby animals around, the foxes and hawks that had stayed away were lured in by the false promise of easy prey they'd be able to quickly snatch and run away with. The rabbits proved the folly of that decision.

During that month, Colin found himself in possession of three more fox pelts, two weasels, and a coyote. We also found the feathery remains of a couple of owls and hawks. No one was going to be allowed to mess with our farm. We also made our last hay cutting for the year, and it was a real whopper. We got three tons per acre for each of the twelve acres we cut. Our five goats would only eat half a ton each over the winter, and the pigs would eat a little as fiber, but otherwise needed grains to grow.

Brendan took another twenty tons for a gold per ton and we sold another thirteen tons to the guild store for a little over a gold per ton after shipping costs. There were plenty of ways to make money on a farm, as long as you had the labor and gumption. The one thing we did miss out on was the Lughnasadh festival on the 1st of Awst. Our timing with the pigs was really poor there. Luckily, the System always gave a way for people to celebrate at home in order to receive at least a minor blessing.

You didn't receive the major blessing unless a System priest blessed you, but luckily it was only a five percent difference. In town, they ritually killed a bull at sunset on the 30th of Arturos, and then roasted it whole before Priest Lewys blessed it in the System's name. They also cut an acre field that belonged to the township at sunrise, milled it right there, and then baked up bread from the grain for the feast they held just before sunset on the 1st.

There was horse racing, a foot race, and various other athletic events. The event that drew the largest crowds was caber tossing. Contestants would pick up twenty-foot-long poles and toss them either as far as they could, or as straight as they could after a flip. Everyone got drunk and had a great time. It was also when most betrothals between teenagers were officially recorded with the System at the temple. Couples would be engaged over the fall and winter, and then get married on or around Bhealtaine.

Out here on the frontier, those couples usually even knew each other! Thanks to the System and its contracts, that wasn't a necessity. I was definitely sad that we missed out on the event. Next year we would make sure to time our farrowing better. They should have been born a couple of weeks earlier but my arrival time hadn't let that happen. On the farm, we butchered a goose, which Emily then slow-roasted overnight. At daylight, I cut enough wheat for us to mill and cook up a small loaf for each of us.

Since we didn't have a priest's blessing, we received a Minor System Blessing. In this case it was a 15% bonus to our stamina and constitution for two months. We also received a 15% bonus to the length of time before any produce or grain harvested during this time would rot. If we had been in town, our Major System Blessings would have been 20%. But apparently, sows will eat their young, that blessing wasn't worth losing piglets over. We would definitely be making it to Samhain.

Ben told me he would have several kegs of a spiced pumpkin beer. He got a special order of nutmeg from Hispania just for those three kegs. He charged twice as much per beer, but if there was one thing I was guilty of, it was being a basic white woman. There was always the joke that middle-class suburban white women loved pumpkin spice anything from Starbucks, but that also applied to me. I loved pumpkin spice coffee and beer. It didn't matter how much ribbing I got from friends or my brothers.

On August 12th, harvest season officially began on the Jacobson Homestead.

The naming convention of the four major holidays in the Arturian calendar has always been a mystery, and Arturos and Merlotus refused to elaborate on the significance of the names. No matter the reason behind each name, one cannot overstate their provenance. Imbolc and Lughnasadh both provide constitution and stamina bonuses to help till the land and bring in the harvest. Bhealtaine provides a growth bonus for plants, and a fertility bonus for humans and animals.

Samhain provides a preservation bonus for meat over the winter months in addition to the minor cold resistance bonus to humans and farm animals. These bonuses ensure that humanity has System backed bonuses for fully six months out of every twelve. The System truly has blessed humanity. It is responsible for breaking us free from bondage, and for enabling us to thrive in this harsh world. Excerpt from The System, our Provider by Archwizard Wyclef, grandson of Merlotus' first disciple, Archwizard Cynan.