Chương 83: 82: Early Planting

2nd week of Chwefor (February) When I walked into the kitchen after grabbing potatoes for the last breakfast for our militia crew, it looked like I was interrupting a war planning session. Emily and her Farm Mistresses had a large piece of paper unrolled on one of the trestle tables. Emily was standing over a large paper map showing an overhead view of the homestead. All the buildings were penciled in, and the now massively expanded garden, encompassing close to two acres of ground, had its own sheet of paper.

I set the potatoes down and walked over to peer at the map myself. Emily, Anna, Tess, and the other new woman, Cara, were all staring at the map with focus. I took a moment to look at Cara, who had only just arrived on the homestead a couple days ago. She wasn't a young woman like Anna and Tess. She was in her sixties. Cara still looked fit and hale, but she had a fair amount of grey in her otherwise mostly black hair. She gave off a matronly vibe as well, even though she only looked like she was in her 40s.

She was ever so slightly plump. I laughed at myself for thinking that. On Earth, she would have been pretty average weight, but here on Talamh, people tended to be a lot thinner. Her husband had died a year ago. Her youngest son, who had been fifteen when they'd won the lottery, had taken over the homestead. He had a wife who Cara said she didn't get along with.

By rights, she could have stayed on the homestead, but she took a payout from her son and his wife, then made her way out to Weston to look for domestic work. Priest Lewys vetted her, then asked if we'd like her to help out on the homestead. Once we said yes, she was brought in and had everything explained to her. She outright said she wasn't going to be involved in anything that even hinted at danger, but as long as she was just left to do her thing, she didn't care what plots anyone else might be involved in.

Since she was an older woman, we gave her the final free cabin instead of having her stay in what would have been the women's barracks if she stayed there. Once Emily was done speaking and pointing at the map, I finally broke in and asked if they were planning a full-scale military invasion. None of them laughed, although Cara gave me her best, good try, smile. Emily got a kick out of that. She shook her head at me and said, "We're just planning the garden out. There will be a lot more people here this year.

I want the garden as big and as organized as possible." I looked at the map and pointed at some red spots behind some buildings.

"What are those marks?" She looked at where I was pointing and said, "Oh, those marks are where I want to put some berry plants. The two spots on the northern side of the cabins are where I want to put raspberry bushes. The ones on the front of the bunkhouses are the gooseberry bushes." I'd never eaten a gooseberry before. Heck, I didn't even know what they looked like. However, now wasn't the time to ask, even if everyone here knew about my origins. I just assumed that Emily knew where the bushes should go.

"What about blueberry bushes?" I said. They were native to the area, and I loved blueberries.

"They like full sun, we will probably plant them on the back side of all of the cabins so they get the afternoon sun, but we have not decided for sure how many yet." Emily replied.

"We prepared part of the ground last year, so we will be planting all of the cold weather crops this week. So, radishes, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and the cabbage and kale. Also peas." Emily pointed to the spots on the garden map as she listed off each veggie.

"Now that you have everything, plus a full year with a big garden, will you be following the three sisters planting method?" I asked.

"Is that corn, beans, and squash together?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, I know that it was done that way on Earth." I told her. Emily nodded, then pointed to a good-sized section of the garden plot.

"This is where we'll do that. We have the sweet corn seeds, plus pole beans, and a mix of pumpkins, and various other gourds."

"Sounds good," I said.

"I'm going to start getting the potatoes ready this week too. I'll pull them out of the cold enchanted cellar and put them in the second cellar. I'll open all the window shutters and turn on the heat enchantment to get them to sprout. If you want, you can get some of your warmer weather plants started there too." I continued on, "I want to plant the last week of March, maybe the first week of April like last year. It's a bit warmer here though, so last week of March won't hurt anything."

Cara, who was more likely to ask questions than her much younger fellow Farm Mistresses, asked, "How do you get a potato seed? The hashbrowns were wonderful this morning, but I don't understand how you get multiple potatoes from a single one?" Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Ah yeah," I said." Once they warm up and have some sunlight, they'll start to sprout little green shoots all over in those little divots. We'll cut out roughly one inch square spots around those eyes, then let them toughen up for a few days. After that, I'll load up my potato planter, which is in one of those equipment barns, and it'll plant them."

"I see," she said. I wasn't sure she understood the process fully, but she didn't need to.

"You'll see when we do it, I'll probably need all hands on deck when it's time to start cutting the potatoes for the planter." I told her.

"Is that a difficult process?" Cara asked. I blushed and rubbed my hand across the back of my head.

"Probably?" I laughed.

"I'm going to be honest, I've never done it before. Back home, most people buy their seed for each of their crops every year now. We didn't even store potatoes in our cellars anymore. My grandfather did, but now there are huge seed companies that engineer crops so they have maximum yield each year. They just brought however much seed we needed out to us and we planted them." I sighed, then said, "Alright, enough about that. I better get going and let you all get back to work."

I gave Emily a quick peck on the cheek before I excused myself to let them continue their planning. The garden was Emily's purview, and I had zero desire to insert myself into her planning there. It's not like I could provide any expert knowledge. I planted row-crops, but that didn't make me an expert on every fruit and veggie she might want in her garden. Plus, she was the one with the gardening bonuses for her class.

I did want to add a true greenhouse next year, then I'd try to experiment with some strawberries and potatoes if I was able to procure some plants. It would be insanely expensive for the glass. It wouldn't need to be high quality, so that might offset things some, but not enough to make it cheap. Future goals! The rest of the morning was spent helping to make sure supplies were packed, and the bunkhouse and cabins were ready for the new crew arriving the next day.

The new elite troops and Wizard Rupert would be here by tonight. They also had the barrels of oil with them. Tomorrow I'd be putting the first barrel into the commercial alchemy lab to see what options popped up. Alchemy was definitely the most video game-like element I'd dealt with in this world so far. My new blacksmith, along with the final farmhand for the moment, would be arriving with the new soldiers.

The current group of soldiers, minus Hari and Glen, left at noon. I was sad to see them go, but many of them were itching to leave for their own places. The non-farming soldiers all told me they'd prefer to stay here instead of going to wall duty or being assigned to march to a fight somewhere in the interior of the territory. They didn't do any leveling out here, but they had a good time.

I was still a little uncertain about how leveling worked for them, but it seemed most had laborer main classes, which gave the actual stat boosts, then they had classes like Line Infantry or Army Scout that gave bonuses that weren't just tied to fighting in an area like militiamen were. You could make any of your classes your main stat giving class, but unless you were actually fighting, you didn't get a ton of levels as a line soldier.

The whole simplification of classes into such a small group of possibilities really bothered me. The secret almanac hinted that classes had once been far more varied, but I hadn't had a chance to read the whole thing, and it wasn't an issue that had come up in any detail in my reading yet. Once the soldiers were all ready to leave, I thanked them all and watched as they marched or rode back towards Weston. Once they'd made it a reasonable distance away, we all turned away and made our way back to the farmhouse.

For dinner that night Emily fried up some steaks, and I made a big batch of twice-baked potatoes for our much diminished crew. We could use the rest of the potatoes for a first meal for the new crew tomorrow. It was always good to make a good first impression. Emily and I spoke about the chores that would need doing now that we didn't have so many hands to make things fast and easy. The women on the homestead would actually have a reduction in the amount of work they had to do every day.

I doubted they were feeling anything but relief as long as those elite soldiers showed up tomorrow. I put Sean in charge of animals. When I'd arrived, Emily had said that it was the farm wife's job to take care of animals, but we had a decent amount to take care of now, and it wasn't a strict "women's only job" in this world, so it was now Sean's job. Zack was handy with a hammer and saw, so he was put in charge of farm maintenance.

Finally, Stephen, along with whoever the new guy was, would be with me on actual farm duties. That would include setting water and hoeing weeds. Colin would be leveling his main class when he wasn't off with his militia duties. That would help provide fresh game meat for us, so I considered it a good use of his time. The last thing I did for the day was clean up the little smithy we had, and stock it with coal for the new blacksmith's forge.

Life on an industrial farm in the Albion Empire can make one feel like one is part of their own little village. As a farm grows in size, it will need, among other professionals; Blacksmiths, Veterinarians, Crafters, and possibly even Brewers and Millers. This is in addition to two to four full-time farmhands, in addition to a Farmer and their family, per hundred-acre plot.

One Farm Mistress per two to three Farmhands is considered a standard number if the lady of the property, and any daughters the family may have, also participate in domestic chores. Additional workers will be needed for the planting and harvesting season. Specialty crops, as well as Herdsmen, may be necessary depending on the subclass a Farmer or Homesteader chooses.

Special Note: The Woodsman subclass of the Homesteader class may disregard most of these suggestions as long as they have the proper agreement in place with a Rancher or Farmer subclass Homesteader to take care of their property. It is important to remember that at least twenty acres of a cereal grain must be grown on the homestead regardless of who they choose to lease out their plots. Excerpt from The Proper Staffing of a Homestead by The Royal Research Academy. Multiple Authors.

This book is available at the Guild Trade Store.