Chương 90: 89: Almost Ready

Mawrth 1st (March 1st) The next two weeks were a whirlwind of activity. First off, all the pigs gave birth. We had over forty piglets. The cribs worked great, and none of the sows were more aggressive than normal. The two pigs who were first-time mothers required some help from Sean and Aiden, but the four who had already given birth did just fine. Rupert came through for me and brought back all the supplies I needed to make diesel.

He also came back with an angry missive from the Bishop, courtesy of a message through the mayor, that my damned tractor still might be more trouble than it was worth. It turned out most of the items I needed weren't too rare in this day and age. Sulfur and lead were used for gunpowder, and an array of other alchemical mixtures. Iron powder was used for rune making and alchemy, and lye was widely used as a soap, just like it had been on Earth.

Fluorite was a mineral I was aware of because of the chemical compound that had been isolated and used in refining fuels. But I wasn't aware of its historical uses, and certainly not for its uses on Talamh. When fluorite was added to metal ore, it helped the ore melt at a lower temperature and made it flow evenly. It was commonly used on Talamh to produce defensive runes that were of a very high quality.

Acquiring the material in the quantity I asked for was tricky, but the town had enough in its reserves to fill my order. After that, the alchemy table did its magic. It only produced four products, and I had to vent the gases; I didn't have a way to capture them. With the extra ingredients and my volume bonus, I came out with twenty-nine gallons of diesel per barrel, and twenty-two gallons of gasoline for every barrel of oil. We stored the fuel in well-tarred barrels in one of the equipment sheds.

As for waste products, I got a gallon of usable lubricating grease, and two gallons of a sludge that made your eyes water even being too near it. For now, we just threw the sludge in another tarred barrel. Luckily, the sludge didn't eat through it right away, but it would be something to keep an eye on. I didn't want to create this world's first superfund site. I also netted 1, 000 XP for my alchemy class, which got me to level 8 with 142/477 XP to level 9.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any of my soil samples to give me the readout I wanted yet. I could extract one element at a time right now, but I certainly couldn't get an extensive chemical analysis yet. One of my second tier of skill options for Extract Ingredient had me hopeful, though. Analyze Mineral - You may crush a rock into powder form and mix it with purified water to get an analysis of the mineral types a rock consists of.

I wasn't a hundred percent sure it would work, but the table seemed to be able to do a lot more than it said if you used it with intent.

Potatoes Stephen, Laeth and I washed, then moved all the potatoes from the cold cellar to the heated cellar with lights to begin the chitting process. Chitting would encourage the potatoes to sprout little green stalks on the eyes on the little divots in the potatoes. Back home, we never did this. I actually didn't think that even seed companies went through the whole process we were using now.

They would wash the potatoes and then turn the heat up shortly before they processed and used a commercial machine to cut the potatoes into appropriate sizes for our planters a few days before they'd ship the seed potatoes to us in the field. I wanted to ensure the best outcome for our potatoes for year 2. For one thing, none of my farmhands had any idea what they were looking for to get ideal chunks of potato for my planter. Having the sprouts visible was helpful there.

I also had a nagging worry that the potatoes wouldn't do as well this year. And I didn't just mean because of my big bonus being gone. We were using potatoes that had been genetically engineered for peak growth for one season. They weren't as bad as some crops which were engineered with two different seed strains that wouldn't grow in year three, but our field man had always told us it was best to just buy new seed every year.

We figured that price-wise it was basically a wash, and then we didn't have any of the risk of holding the seed potatoes in our cellars for the winter. The potatoes were just starting to sprout, and so far everything looked good. I was shooting for the last week of Mawrth to plant if the weather cooperated. Things had been rainier than average so far, but it was looking like I could get out and plow in the next few days as long as the forecast held up and no more rain arrived.

This time it was my turn to roll out a big physical map on one of the big tables. As I looked things over with the farmhands, we made a few changes to the plan from last fall. First off, I was happy to find out that I didn't have to grow one wheat plot on each of the homestead pieces, just a number equal to the number of parcels I owned. That meant I could bunch things better to make for less work for the tractor. I also just had to have four pasture plots. I didn't need one on each parcel.

I also confirmed that I could even drag my corrugator from one end to the other on my parcels that were double deep and have the water flow just fine. That might sound ridiculous to worry about, but I seriously worried that the game mechanics would somehow stop the water or something. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Since we could, I was going to plant the same crop in each parcel that was across from another on the southern side.

Our new setup was in an L-shape, with our original homestead in the middle, and the extra plot coming off on the southern side of the property. The homestead was long and narrow, at sixty acres wide, and only five deep for the northern and middle parcels, and just ten acres deep on the south side. It felt a bit odd, but the System allowed for a lot of leeway as long as I could get five plots in a homestead. This long and narrow plot also let me irrigate everything more easily with a single ditch.

With the setup we had, I could have a full ten fields lined up properly, then we had the three original plots that were a bit offset because of the homestead corridor. On the north were three pasture plots, then the last two farm plots. In those ten fields, starting north to south, I went with four corn plots, then four wheat plots. Finally, I had two of the three potato plots. That left five more crop parcels.

I was going to put corn in the old potato field, red beans where the corn had been, and barley where the wheat field was last year. The northern piece of land was only one field deep this year. The first three plots, sixty acres, would all be pasture land. That made it easier to move animals around, and the cows had a fenced-in corridor if we needed to move them from the pasture to the barnyard area. The last two plots were another corn field and the third potato field.

I wanted one of the potato fields separated by some distance, just in case something went wrong with fungus or bacteria. I hoped the seed would be effective for a while against anything in the ground here, but at some point soon, I needed to begin a breeding program. I hoped to procure some of the dwarven potatoes sometime this year to begin that process in time for next year. I rarely saw Colin for very long these days.

He was still friendly when I saw him, but he seemed to really be doing his best to establish himself as his own man, not as the adopted son of the big farmer. He slept in his cabin and only came in to eat with everyone else. He and I had talked about his needing to do whatever was necessary to level up, and he determined that this was the best way to do it. I could have used his help on the homestead, but I didn't need it, and I respected his wishes to do things on his own terms.

He spent just about every waking moment on patrol with our new protection crew. If anyone knew what he needed to do to evolve, they would be the ones. Their entire squad was tier 2. He'd gone up and sat down with them at breakfast after Hari and Glenn decided to take a long run into the wilderness. I respected his go get em attitude. Maybe it was because Tieg looked like Magua from Last of the Mohicans, and I'd watched Magua as the villain a hundred times growing up, but Tieg made me nervous.

His son, Cathan, was much friendlier, but he still wasn't particularly talkative to me. Rick, Mick, and Lorcan hadn't said anything other than basic greetings to me in the two weeks they'd been patrolling the area. Hari and Glenn told me that Colin would be in good hands with them. I trusted the two men, so I did my best to put the matter out of my head. Emily liked the crew, and she shut down my one attempt at asking her how she felt about the situation.

Emily's method of relieving her emotional frustration was pleasant. It put me in a weird headspace where I felt bad that I could tell she was upset with where her relationship with her son was at the moment, but I didn't mind going up and "having tea" every day. Sometimes more than once! Before they left, Hari and Glenn had joked that I needed to be careful that Emily didn't get conditioned to have to be upset in order for me to enjoy regular tea dates. I told them I didn't find that very amusing.

All that being said, when Colin came and stood next to me while I was moving potatoes around so the ones not getting sunlight got their turn, I was surprised.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said, with surprise and excitement in my voice.

"Whatcha doing? Not out on patrol?" He gave me an embarrassed shake of his head.

"Tieg says I need to talk to Ma. He said that you're the only one benefitting from the tension on the homestead." What the hell?

"Aright," I said awkwardly.

"Then why are you talking to me, not your mother?" He looked at me pleadingly.

"I don't know. I figured maybe you could help me make a plan for how to talk to her." I barked out a laugh.

"Your mom is just struggling to adapt to you wanting to go off and do your own thing. You know that. You guys were out here on your own for years. Now things are good, and suddenly it's tense." I took a breath.

"I think the two of you need to just sit down and talk, one on one."

"But I'm not being a bad son!" Colin said, frustration in his voice.

"Most people would be happy that I'm trying so hard to level up. I've been working hard every day since I got my class."

"You have," I said, agreement in my voice.

"You have worked incredibly hard. You've freezed your rear end off out patrolling, you've been involved in actual fighting already, and you've only just barely got your class. What level are you now anyway?"

"Level 14 on my Woodsman subclass. Level 8 in my militia class."

"Wow, so many levels so young," I said.

"Remember when I got here and you guys talked about how hard it is to level?"

"It was hard to level back on the Home Isles," Colin said.

"But it's the evolution that's so hard to really do."

"Wars sure help too," I said.

"I'm already level 9 in my combat class."

"Yeah, but what can I say to Ma that will help her understand?" he asked me. I took a breath, then said, "My theory is that your Ma hoped you guys would have some time being mother and son again now that things were good. That she would have some time to baby you, and take care of you."

"That's just silly," Colin said.

"I'm an adult in the eyes of the System. Aiden is here, not with his family. He only even sees them a couple times a week when he does the supply run."

"True," I acknowledged.

"But his mom and dad got to treat him like a kid longer than your ma did you. And being sixteen doesn't just automatically make your mom quit being your mother. Hell, back on Earth, you'd still be a kid in the eyes of the law for another two years."

"Well, I'm not going back to being a kid. What else can I do?" He asked. He wasn't exactly sullen, but I don't think the conversation was going the way he hoped.

"Honestly," I said.

"Just come and hang out with us every once in a while. Take one day a week, and have breakfast with us upstairs. It can even be when Hari and Glenn are here. You know we eat upstairs when they're here."

"But Ma is just gonna treat me like a kid then," Colin said with irritation in his voice. I patted his shoulder and said, "I'll talk to her, I promise." I wasn't looking forward to the conversation, but if I could get the two of them talking more, I'd feel much better about things, even if it meant I drank less tea.