Apinsig
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Chapter 215 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-05-05 16:21:46 +0000 UTCI watched as a large piece of steel was heating up. This was going to be the head of my new two-handed mace. Looking around I saw a basically empty smithy as I hadn’t had any time to work on making tables or anything else useful. Even my hammers and tongs didn’t have any place and were just propped up against the forge. Currently, I was using the smaller forge meant to heat up medium or small pieces of metal for forging, but it was only the smaller forge because of the size of the other one.
In the larger forge, I could make a lot of crucible steel and an even bigger anvil for myself and anyone else who wanted one. I should remember to put that offer into the job building so people will know that I could offer that service. Running the large forge requires a lot of charcoal but thankfully my apprentices were working on that.
We had gathered a lot of branches and smaller pieces of wood with all the logging that they had been doing so we were going to get a lot of charcoal. The biggest problem with that was where to store it but building some side storage for a few buildings would be a nice project for my apprentices to learn more about construction.
Forging a mace head was a learning experience as I wanted it to have some spikes, but I didn’t want to add them later on, so I was currently using a square piece of steel to hammer in the straight rows of spikes. It was a delicate balance trying to keep the head round but still have the spikes that I wanted.
The head was a cylindrical shape and now had spikes all over that were about half an inch in length. The head weighed about 12 kilos which was a lot but should work well for me. I could have made it weigh a lot more and still be able to fight with the abilities I have but it would have slowed the mace down too much in my opinion.
Making the centre hole where the handle goes was laugher easy. I just had to use a steel rod and then hammer a hole using my considerable strength that was boosted by energy circulation. After fixing the shape of the head from making the hole I quenched it in oil and then went to work on the handle.
The handle was made from first-rank wood that wasn't too ridged so the vibrations wouldn't be too bad when hitting. While working on both the handle and head I focused a lot on making the energy paths wide and strong so I could use a lot of energy with this weapon. When I was finished, I had an almost 2-meter two-handed mace that would be perfect for killing overgrown bugs.
I also needed to make a few more scythes so everyone could participate in the harvest. There was also quite a lot of hay that we needed to make so after my apprentices were done with the charcoal, I started to explain to them what we were going to do tomorrow and the following week or more after that. They were all quite tired from the constant work, but I needed to get their endurance up as homesteading could be quite an exhausting lifestyle.
I was starting to get to know my new apprentice a lot better and I knew who I needed to push and how. Some require a more gentle approach so they can achieve the best result while others require quite a firm hand. The next day we finally started to harvest.
We couldn't harvest all the vegetables as some of them needed to stay in the ground and sprout the next summer so we could get seeds but only a few species require this. Most of the produce we packed up so we could take it to the village, but some also went to my old apprentices. In the village, there will be a group of people to break some of the vegetables for the seeds inside them and then give out the rest of the produce to the villagers.
It was important to get as many seeds as possible this season so we could plant a lot more the following year. I will also collect all the seeds I can and give everything extra to the nation after I give some to my old apprentices so they can also get started with growing them the next year. For Arthur the amount of seeds I will give is low but he seemed to be enjoying his hunting.
The amount of food we were gaining was way more than my storage could handle. A few weeks ago, I briefly thought that perhaps I should extend my storage but there was no need. It is already quite large for my needs, and I can just keep the rest in the village storage where I can sell what I won’t need. The priority for me was collecting as many seeds as possible but not only that I also wanted to find interesting mutations. I quickly looked over as many seeds as possible to look for promising candidates for my evolution project.
If I was doing this myself, it would of course take a lot longer and I would gain a lot more experience. But I will have hundreds of harvests in my future so there really wasn't a need to hog all to experience to myself.
I was interrupted for a moment when I felt Francis finally advancing to the first rank. He was currently near the village working on preparing the already harvested fields for next year. It seems that he barely notices the difference as he is so focused on his work. Frances wasn’t the first to gain the first rank as two of my wolves already had and some of the knights who escorted the noble that I killed also achieved the first rank.
Our power was rising quite steadily, and we were closing in on 2000 citizens. The legion has also grown but it was still quite small and hadn’t reached the mobilization numbers we had. I had to stop thinking about other things as I almost missed an interesting seed with quite a unique mutation. It made it so the plant would have a bit more sugar in it, which had interesting implications. I added it to my curiosity seed pouch and focused back on my job so I can continue to find interesting mutations.
Everything useful that could be gained from the harvest was collected, processed and stored or made ready for transport. There was a lot of straw from the grain fields, but the horse staples required quite a lot of it and other animals brought with the refugees needed a lot as well. I also collected enough so that George could use it for the few animals that he had. There was no need to make hay for George as that was one thing that he wasn’t short on.
It was quite fun to just work and not have to worry about training as this was the biggest break in my training plan so I could focus entirely on the harvest and that meant I was able to interact with my apprentices a lot more. The atmosphere was quite pleasant as we talked and joked when we happened to be close enough to each other while working. One of the 30-year-old men named Harvey was for some reason incredibly easy to talk to. We quite quickly became good friends.
The constant work continued during the burning sun of the late summer. Harvesting with so many people was an experience I only had when I was really young even before school. It’s something that is hard to describe but it’s incredibly freeing, yet it brings people together in a unique way.
George was the first to show up to help but Emma and Arthur also joined soon after. We all quickly agreed to help each other harvest in the coming year so the job would be completed faster and so we would have more fun.
Towards the end of the harvest, I let Goose deliver a letter to the village explaining that they needed to start sending carts here to pick up the prepared items and take them back to the village. The next few days more and more carts started to show up and load up everything that was going back to the village. This all took multiple days, so we were also able to finish drying and storing the hay as well.
That signified the end of the harvest and I looked at my achievement page to find a level-up for my homesteader class and fourteen level-ups for my advanced farming skill. Everyone else was able to tier up their basic farming, giving them a choice of abilities that I once again recorded so I could give the report to David. That evening we all enjoyed a relaxing sauna so we could finally feel clean again after all that work.
Comments
Lars Heilig
It is realy relaxing to read this chapter.
