Apinsig
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Chapter 11 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2022-08-02 08:32:52 +0000 UTCNext morning, I decided to put cheese making back on the menu. It will take approximately the same time as my trip to the forest which I was skipping, so why not fill it with some good cheese.
Today I was finally going to start sowing some grains. After my chores, I started to prepare the fields. They were divided into 7 uneven sections with plenty of room in between, so you could bring your farm equipment back without disturbing the field and can keep a better eye on the fields.
I was going to sow three fields with wheat, three fields with rye and the last one will be flux. After I sow everything, I will need to use farm equipment that's meant to be used by a human that will cover the grains with some dirt. This is needed so there will not be flocks of birds eating everything the following days.
Even then, I think it might be a good idea to bird watch and maybe shoot some down if needed. It would also be good to get some more feathers for arrows because I’m going to need a lot of them. While I was sowing, I also was thinking about the future. Not about the vegetable garden or the potato field, but training myself correct.
I will need to add to my days a training schedule meant not only to get my proficient in archery up but other weapons as well. Training my body to use the stats and just to train my body will also be important. I’m fairly strong, so boosting what’s already there will be important. I hope if I’m extremely well trained, it will help with the stats even better.
This job took a little while to get the hang of. Throwing was simple, yet it took a certain technique to make it work. What made the work go faster was me being strong enough to bring a full bag of grains with me, so I didn’t have to walk back too many times. Sowing still took time and you can’t rush those things.
Skill increases basic farming level 10 is upgraded to farming level 1
Choose one of the following abilities
Faster growth
Plant sight
Disease purification
I have never liked faster growing abilities in stories. In my opinion, it just feels unnatural, and I always wonder what impact it will have on the soil. If you get multiple harvest how will the soil recover.
Maybe there will be an ability to counter that, but currently I will have to discard this choice. The other choices were all question marks as well. I choose plant sight simply because disease can be cured by removing the infected plants.
This turned out to be the wrong choice. What the ability did was grey out everything that was not plants and make plants a bit more vibrant in colours. A beautiful way to look at the world, but nothing more than that.
When I was done with sowing, evening had started. I wanted to get everything done today, so I strapped on the tool to cover the seeds with some dirt. It was a simple tool made mostly of iron chains that will bounce around and agitate the ground.
When in place, I started running the way I remembered was the correct way to use this tool. It was a good exercise that even regular human could have done. I tried to keep an even pace and not speed up too much because I think that would mess up the function of this tool.
I had to use the last of the light to close up the seed house, now a lot emptier. I eat a quick dinner of smoked deer and some carrots. Looking at the food amount I have, I will need to do some foraging to keep up with my calorie needs during midsummer.
Next day I was mostly spent in the grain fields hunting birds. I needed to move fast and shoot them down before any of them went and got friends. The day went by fast and in a blur; I killed 24 birds. Only 5 were of any use as food and feathers for arrows.
Most were too small for anything useful. By evening, there were no more birds trying to eat my grains. I fired up the smoker and smoked all but one big bird that one was going to be cooked in the oven and it tasted good.
Tomorrow will be a digging day so I can finally get started with the vegetable field. I want to make it so it will be used for years to come. Just a simple one that will be easy to make will need to be done every year and will not be as good as raised beds.
The next morning came with an extremely pleasant surprise. I found three eggs from two different chicken nests. They didn’t like me taking them, but my mouth was salivating.
So, before I could start my cheese making for the day, I actually fried up some eggs. While they were not twice the size of regular chicken eggs, they are more like half bigger.
I still got a lot of scrambled eggs from them. Making them with onions was the right choice. It tasted heavenly. At this moment I decided that I was going to eat luxuriously, even here. For this I will need to find some more herbs, spices and salt, but I believe it to be a good endeavour.
Expeditions will be called for and it would fit well with my future hunting plans. Currently, the biggest problem is that they would need to be one day affairs, maybe two or three at the max.
But my animals will need feeding and taking care of, so currently I can’t be away that long. When I get more building done and more proper animal care facilities built, I can maybe go on longer trips to find the things I need.
After this lovely breakfast and cheese making, it's time to get some work done. First, I started with laying out where I wanted the raised beds to go. They will be wide enough where I can plan two rows of vegetables or if it’s a bigger plant like pumpkin one in the middle, so it will have room to grow.
It will be a shit ton of digging, most likely three days of only digging. The raised beds will be 100 feet long and I will have 12 rows with 4 of them in every row. This will give me the almost 2 acres I need to plant everything.
During the second day, I was cursing myself for wanting to do this, but the more logical part of my brain wanted to continue and actually do things properly. I overestimate the time it will take a bit, because I was finished by noon on the third day. That doesn't mean that my to do list was done, it was only the first step.
Now I had to line the walls with the boards I made. I will use simple stakes driven in to keep them against the walls of the trench. The ones that were going to be underground were easy, but the ones over the ground needed to have stakes on both sides.
It was a bit finicky to get it the way I liked, but it was just a matter of trial and error until it was done. That took me the rest of the day to finish. Next day I started to haul rocks for the bottom of the trenches. I will need a good layer of them, and it would be best if it started out with large rocks and finish with smaller rocks.
Layer of rocks needs to be thick and tight so there wouldn’t be any large holes. Luckily, decades of this farm being run has produced a lot of rocks, leaving rock piles beside the fields. The bull got some work again. He was happy about it. All this work got me a level in farming.
Laying rocks took another two days to finish. After that, I threw in branches that I had stored up. Then I started to fill them back up with dirt. I filled them up only until they were level with the ground. That only took one day.
I had a lot of dirt left over for the raised beds area. The raised part will be filled with nutrient rich soil. That meant getting some river mud and cow shit and mixing it together with the dirt.
It was smelly work and took four days do mix and fill all the elevated beds. When this was done, I finally was able to start planting. By this time, the planter box plants were big enough, and the weather was warm enough for them to survive replanting, so they went into the ground as well.
That only took half a day to plant everything, because I watered them as well. Otherwise, it would’ve been even quicker. If I was able to get good enough with my crafting that I can make water barrels or if I built water delivery system, I would be extremely happy.
I took the rest of the day to cover the raised beds with tree bark so weeds will not have a great time and to help keep heat in the dirt.
Next day I spent relaxing going for a swim and crafting some more arrows. I even got a level up in basic animal care, bringing it to level 8 for just interacting with one of my rabbits.
The next day I will need to start thinking about how to plough the potato fields. Because no matter what, I couldn’t use the current plow that I had, because it needed humans to operate and I’m currently all alone. Perhaps I could modify it so that the bull could pull it. I guess we will see tomorrow.
