Chương 76: 75: Homestead

Ionwr 1st (January) By the System it was cold! On average, the weather was about five degrees warmer here than it had been on Earth, thanks to the mountain range and some minor System interference, but on New Year's day, it was sitting at ten degrees Fahrenheit, and that was just too darned cold for my taste. With all the soldiers stationed here at the homestead, I didn't really need to be out here in the cold, doing morning chores, but I wanted to make sure I was keeping a pulse on the homestead.

It had grown so much, so quickly, that l still felt like I was getting to know things a couple of months after the new buildings had been put up. The massive animal barn held all of my goats, pigs, and even the horses and most of the birds right now. It had some minor enchantments that kept it warmer than outside.

The Wizards hadn't included the same number of enchantments here as they did in the house or the cellars, so it still wasn't toasty, but with the enchantment and the heat from the animals, it was close to fifty inside. Plenty warm enough to keep the water from freezing, but not so warm that it would be a shock to their system if they needed to go outside and do some work. The smell was pungent, but not overwhelming, since the stalls were mucked out regularly.

I had always enjoyed the smell of goat and horse manure; it smelled like a farm to me. But the pig manure was a little sour. I'd never consider it pleasant, but it wasn't repugnant at this time of year. Of course, when it was ninety-five outside, the flies were buzzing around, and there was zero breeze. I probably wouldn't feel the same way about the pigpen. Oh well, the animals seemed happy. They had access to the outdoors, but with this cold, they weren't voluntarily going outside very often.

We kept the animals segregated through a series of pens and stalls, but they could all see each other, and more importantly me, as I walked through checking things out. My entry into the barn caused the goats to bleat, the pigs to oink, and the horses to softly whinny as they all impatiently waited for me to give them their morning feed. Gerald, our Billy goat, who had not been allowed to breed the four heavily pregnant does standing next to him, eyed me and pawed at the ground.

I shook my head at him and said, "Gerald, I'm not taking any lip from you today." I was still pretty certain that goat needed to end up as stew at some point soon. On more than one occasion he had torn down a couple of rails on the fence when he'd tried to get to more of the hay that was stored outside their pen. He had hay in his manger, but of course he wanted the hay he didn't already have.

If we ended up with a Herd Leader male goat, I'd probably sell the entire group of them to Brendan and start over with new goats. If we got a female, or no Herd Leader at all, I'd breed back the four original does to Brendan's Herd Leader and let Gerald breed any new female goats we got from this round of births. The four does should have their first kids sometime this month. Unfortunately, we wouldn't know if we had a herd leader until they were around sexual maturity.

That meant no banding the males when they were little. Not the most ideal thing, since the meat would be better if they were banded early. Thank the System we shouldn't have to watch them like hawks to make sure they wouldn't kill their babies like we did with the pigs. I fed said pigs second. The pigs got corn mash and the leftover trimmings from last night's dinner. They greedily pushed each other as they ate, despite there being plenty of room for all seven pigs. We had six sows and our boar now.

We still had three of our original four sows. There were also three additional sows: one to replace the sow who wanted to kill all of her piglets, then two extras to bring our little herd from four to six, plus our boar. We hadn't tried to use Brendan's Herd Leader boar this time around because it seemed like a lot of effort with needing soldiers as an escort, maybe this spring. I was a lot more fond of Jack, our boar, than I was of Gerald. Jack was calm and friendly.

He never tried to intimidate anyone on the homestead, and as long as he was fed and given the occasional scratch on the head, he was content to root around and mind his own business. Next, I got to the horses. They got hay and some oats. We had three, but this spring we'd need to add some draft horses too. I wanted to buy a wagon, and we couldn't exactly use the tractor to pull it to town.

Our three riding horses could carry a buggy, and they were larger than most riding horses I'd ever been on back on Earth, but they weren't truly built for pulling a wagon. My horse, Chessie, pushed the other two horses away from me to ensure I gave her scritches first. She loved having her ears scratched, and she nuzzled her nose into my shoulder as I obliged. There were half a dozen horses for the militiamen in the stables, but they were in charge of taking care of them themselves.

Once she was satisfied, she let me pet the other two horses. Since most of the birds were inside as well, I threw some cracked corn out on the ground in the open area just inside the big doors, where there weren't any animal pens. The geese angrily honked at the other birds, but as if hearing a beacon, Spot and Buck made their way inside the barn through the little "rabbit door" I'd installed after the barn was built.

It was basically just a hole in the barn with a heavy piece of canvas nailed to it to keep the cold air out, but it worked well enough to let the rabbits in and out without too much cold loss. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The rabbits came in and made their barking noises at the geese, who backed off and let the ducks and chickens eat in peace.

Someone had already gathered the eggs, so I petted the two rabbits for a few minutes before I finally got up the nerve to go back outside into the freezing January morning. As I stepped outside, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. I shivered as the wind hit me. It wasn't particularly strong, but it was enough that it made being outside even more unpleasant.

I knew Hari and Glenn were heading out after breakfast to patrol on the other side of the river, but no one else would spend any more than the bare minimum out here today. Looking around, I couldn't believe this was the same place I'd arrived at less than a year ago. Then, there'd only been a single cabin and a fence that wasn't even here anymore. Now there were three bunkhouses and five little cabins. All with smoke billowing out of their chimneys now that we had two married couples on the place.

My own cabin, which Colin, Emily, and I built, was being used for storage for tools. I'd planned to dig it out and make a cellar, but we'd been so successful I hadn't needed to do that. We were still using the cellar that Colin and I had built. It had been enchanted and finished by a team of Craftsmen so it would stay dry. But there was another cellar now as well that could be accessed right behind the house. I also had two massive potato cellars.

One of which was enchanted to stay at a stable cool temperature in both hot and cold temperatures. That cellar would be my last stop before I went in to help the ladies out with breakfast. Anna and Tess, who were the wives of two of the militiamen who would stay on once their militia duties were done, had arrived a month ago. They considered it mildly scandalous for me to be involved in the cooking at all, but the potatoes were mine and I was determined to be involved with at least the breakfast.

Emily had insisted we wait to bring in the ladies until things were safe, but we hadn't had any goblin activity in the area since they were routed at Weston. She was overwhelmed with work with so many people on the homestead, so she'd finally relented after a month of constant toil and never really being caught up with all the work that needed to be done to run a pre-modern appliance household. Honestly, we needed several more women to help with all the domestic work.

And it had to be women; I wasn't being sexist with my word choice. Only women were allowed to sign up as Farm Mistresses. Emily was still doing a lot of chores on the farm that I would have preferred she delegate. We were trying to level up her Bookkeeper class so she could evolve in a year or two, and doing dishes or laundry didn't help her to level. Overseeing more Farm Mistresses would.

Since I had time this winter, I would have helped her out with the dishes and laundry, but she insisted it was not only scandalous but would offend Anna and Tess and their husbands. I was allowed to be eccentric because I was an outworlder, but that was still limited to "manly" things. I still needed to stay within the bounds of what was considered acceptable in Albionese society. Oh well, not like I was going to choose dishes or laundry as my hill to die on.

I was allowed to help cook breakfast, and that was good enough for me. I went into my potato cellar and looked at the massive pile of seed potatoes sitting on the ground. We'd let most of them sit without washing for two weeks to toughen up their skins before storing them here in almost total darkness. When it was time, we'd move them to the second cellar I had built to let them sprout.

The other cellar had heating runes that could be turned on and off, as well as giant shutters that could be opened to let sunlight in. That would help them sprout. The process was called "chitting". We didn't do it back home, but it seemed like a good idea here. Then, when they sprouted, I'd have to show everyone how to cut them up for planting. That was still a while away. For now, I was interested in a different pile of potatoes.

I walked over to our "eating" potatoes and grabbed a small basketful to bring in and fry up for breakfast. There were twenty-eight people on the homestead right now, so we went through a fair amount of food. We'd definitely run out of potatoes to eat before much longer, but I wouldn't be accused of being a poor host just to ensure my own potato stash lasted until fall. On my way back in, I looked at my tractor. I'd checked my magical patches just the day before.

They were holding up just fine, but they did require being topped off every seven to ten days. If those seals failed, I would be in trouble. I was low on fuel, but hopefully that would be rectified shortly. I'd definitely neglected my Alchemy skill thanks to how things had turned out, but I'd still be using it to process the barrels of crude oil that the bishop had secured from the emperor. I'd worry about that in a month or two when the oil hopefully arrived.

Just as I was about to get to the front door, I saw Aiden leaving the cabin he and Colin shared. As a gesture of trust, Brendan had put Aiden in charge of the cows wintering on our place. Like Colin, he was newly sixteen last fall. He'd taken the Rancher subclass just like his dad. Aiden was already his dad's height and looked like he could end up close to six feet tall. If so, he'd practically tower over his parents.

He wasn't as stocky as his dad, but he was still growing, and he looked like he'd have the frame to support a more muscular build as he grew into himself. Luckily, he shaved his own burgeoning facial hair on the regular. Colin was still attempting to grow out his own patchy beard, and it still looked as awful as the day I met him. The cows were currently in a pasture, munching on hay and the cornstalks we'd bundled up the previous fall.

With Brendan wintering some cows with us for the foreseeable future, I wouldn't have the stalks cut and bundled again. His cows could take care of that and provide some fertilizer for the field. Aiden would definitely have to break the ice on the cows' water troughs today. It was cold, but these longer-haired cows were built to deal with cold weather. The cows who were still being milked were pampered and got to stay inside the barn at night, but these cows would be just fine.

I waved at him and made my way over to him to have a quick chat.

"How's it going this morning?" I asked.

"Aside from bein' too cold for me tastes, I'm hanging on. I'm gonna grab your sledgehammer if you's don't mind?" he said.

"Ha!" I said.

"You know where it is. You'll need it with this cold." He nodded and rubbed his gloved hands together. He was wearing a heavy woolen parka and heavy wool pants and his work boots. He no doubt had long underwear on too, just like I did. My jacket was my Carhart jacket from Earth. It was pretty darned warm, and I was grateful it came over with me. I wasn't wearing my only remaining pair of blue jeans though. The heavy winter wool pants I'd picked up from the guild store were much warmer.

"Where's Colin?" I asked.

"Is he going to help you with the cows this morning?" Aiden gave me a pointed look that told me I was going to have to deal with an argument when I got in for breakfast.

"No, sir," he said.

"He plans on going out with Hari and Glenn when they go on patrol."

"Fantastic," I said sarcastically.

"He's inside the manor then?" Aiden nodded.

"Alright, well good luck out there. You gonna want breakfast when you're done?" I asked. He nodded, so I said, "I'll make sure you have hot food and tea then." Then I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the conversation to come.