Chapter 53 Teaching a random child
One of the children in the village wanted to learn how to be a farmer, so that’s what I was doing today. I was showing him the ropes as I explained every question he asked. Wade was a little blonde-haired boy in the eight-to-twelve age range. Wade asked a question. “Why are you letting the cows out?” I moved toward the barn and opened it up, which let the cows and bull rush straight towards the clover field I planted for them.
“Silk comes out early in the morning to milk the cows and feed the chickens to get their eggs. It’s still a little cold for them; otherwise, they wouldn’t sleep in the barn. First thing I do when I start is to open the barn door so that the bull doesn’t smash through it.” He made no indication that he had absorbed what I was talking about as he asked another question. “Then what do we do next?” I moved toward the well outside the village as I told him. “It depends, my wives will pick the ripe crops, but if I didn’t have them, I’d have to do it myself.”
“I used to have to help, but with so many wives, I don’t have to anymore. Since I have wives who will harvest and take it to the trader, I don’t have to worry about that. So we’ll quickly water the plants, which will take two hours, then plant new plants in any space that opened up on the field; otherwise, we’re pretty much done for the day with the straightforward stuff.”
I fill his watering can up as I tell him. “We don’t have to de-weed right now, we do that about once a week, so you’ll have to come back Monday to see how we do that. Go along these rows, they don’t need too much water, so as long as you keep walking as you water, they’ll get enough. After you reach the end of this field, turn around and water the other side of the crops, then you’ll need more water.”
He asked incredulously. “Is this all there is to farming?” I could only smile at him. “It’s this easy because we put in all the effort in the first few weeks of spring. It’s mostly waiting now that everything is planted, but I’ve found a few other things to keep myself busy, which we’ll get to after we’re done watering.” I started on the opposite side, as I instructed him to slow down when he was going too fast to adequately water them.
It was boring, but this was something that was absolutely necessary to do. We finished with that field, and he was already looking bored and ready to quit. That was fine; if he did quit, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “Alright, this field is the only one that needs water every single day. I used to plant crops by the color or if they were a fruit or vegetable, then I changed it to how much water they needed, starting from the most and going to the least.”
We had to water the third and fifth fields today as well, and got to that. It meant that it only took an hour to water everything, as we only had to water half the fields. We had even more free time than normal, which is when I started showing him all my projects. “What’s this?” I brought him into the herb greenhouses as I watered them. “These are herbs for alchemy. Really expensive compared to normal crops. This project is a gold sink right now, but soon, I’ll start to make money with it if I can get the quality above common.”
I wanted to brag about the skills I got from growing it, but after seeing him lose interest once I explained what it is… Next, I show him the heated greenhouse with the peppers inside. It was still a few weeks before I’d have to remove the petals and apply the pollen, or do the same on the peppers growing outside with these. It wasn’t until you grew peppers from the hybrid seeds that you knew you succeeded.
Wade yawned as he asked. “Why are you doing this?” I laughed before saying. “Well… To make money and level my farming class faster.” Talking about money had him looking interested again. “How much money are we talking about?” I scratched my chin. “Well, it’s hard to say. The special pepper seeds were extremely expensive, and the environment in which I have to grow them is also expensive, and this can fail. So it’ll either be a huge disaster, or possibly a new type of pepper that is hotter and can grow in our climate.”
I think I knew why he wanted to see what I did on the farm; he knew I was making money and wanted to figure out how he could as well. I showed him the separated dandelions as I explained. “Do you see anything different about these plants?” He looked before saying. “No… Those look like yellow weeds to me.” I quickly ran and grabbed a wild dandelion before plucking one of the ones I was selectively breeding.
Showing them both, I asked again. “Do you see the difference now?” Wade looked before pointing out the obvious. “That one is bigger.” I handed them to him. “Can you tell the difference in taste?” He looked at me incredulously as he bit the top off the weed before spitting it out. “Yep, that’s definitely a dandelion, too bitter for me to eat.”
He looked at me again before biting the head off my dandelion. He chewed it twice before spitting it out. “Yeah, still way too bitter. Why did you make me try this?” I could only shake my head. “That’s another long-term goal of mine. I’m trying to make dandelions edible, it might take years to finally accomplish, but the process is easy enough, just keep choosing the few plants that lean in the direction I want them to grow.”
I could tell I had all but lost him on what I did. Not only was farming boring to most, but everyone wanted to be an adventurer, and the pull of how much gold I earned made him curious about what I did. What I did wasn’t glamorous; it was slow and tedious, like most jobs. I had gotten extremely lucky with my bundles, which was why he wanted to see what farmers did to see if he could replicate it if he got the farmer class.
Farmer really boiled down to a little work and a lot of waiting. I had one last thing to show him, then we’d eat. I started lopping branches off the fruit trees as I shook off some of the fruits from them. He asked again. “Why are you cutting branches and shaking the trees?” “I’m trimming these branches because they will crowd the fruit if I don’t. That’s why I have these weights tied to the branches as well, so they’ll grow more out than up.”
“Alright, but why are you shaking the fruit off the trees?” “The trees try to grow too many, and it’ll stunt the growth of all the fruits. I shake the tree, which knocks loose the weaker ones that are likely to fall off anyway, to let the remaining fruits have more energy to grow bigger.” He looked like he understood, but didn’t know why I was shaving the bottoms of the branches off.
“What are you doing now?” “I’m going to try and graft these branches onto the stumps so they’ll bear fruit as well. It’s easier to do with a citrus tree and citrus fruit, but it’s possible to do with any. I’m still testing which of the fruit trees are compatible with these root stumps, so I’ll only know which ones I can do it with in the future.”
We finished that, and I went back to the fruit trees to do something else. Wade asked. “What are you doing now?” “I’m peeling off the bark and putting these containers around the tree where I stripped the bark from in hopes that it’ll grow a root system. You’ll get clones or dwarf trees by doing this, which are easier to get the fruit from because it’ll be lower to the ground.” With that, I knew Wade had lost all interest in farming. “Alright, now that we’re done for the morning, let’s go see what Cherry made us to eat, then we’ll feed the animals again and bring them into the coop and barn before we call it a day.”