[Cozy Fantasy] [Farming LitRPG] The Chronicles of Emberstone Farm

Chapter 73 - Spud-tacular or Tater-ific?

🙞❤︎🙜

Oh, it was just a [Thunderbolt Tuber]. Those were added in a minor update to celebrate Adventure Incarnate’s fifth anniversary. Or maybe it was the sixth. Anyway, a free [Potato Cannon] was added to the Cash Shop for everyone to enjoy. I used to go to the Chitinous Caverns with GodIAm to kill Cavecrawlers with the cannon. Nostalgia hit me hard when I thought about those days when I was a young and avid player of an MMORPG that was at its peak popularity.

I checked my inventory and, sure enough, I had 2,147,483,647 [Thunderbolt Tubers]. The [Potato Cannon] was pretty effective when a player needed to kill a lot of mobs, but the downside of using it was that it only gave half the regular combat experience. It was still useful if you only wanted the drops though.

The kids were fascinated by the strange potato.

“What’s this, Teacher?” asked Kharli.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

When I put the item in the inventory, instead of having a stack of 2,147,483,648, I got one stack of 2,147,483,647 and one stack with only one tuber. It was a peculiarity of the game that 2,147,483,647 was the maximum number of items that one could have in one inventory slot.

“Can I eat it?” asked Lari even though I had already put it away.

“No! Don’t eat strange stuff,” I said. “Everyone, start harvesting. Remember not to use up all your energy or you’ll collapse.”

“Yes!” Mo scampered off to the other side of the field and started harvesting the sweet potatoes.

“Those are mine!” said Kharli as she tried to run ahead of her fellow apprentice.

They were fighting over the sweet potatoes because they gave more exp compared to the other vegetables.

Lari didn’t bother competing with them over the sweet potatoes and headed straight to the Three Sisters mounds where he immediately started harvesting the corn, beans, and squash.

I continued to harvest the potatoes until I was almost out of energy, putting the potatoes in wheelbarrows when I was done because they were going to be taken to the house for cleaning when I was done. I also stored the plant’s inedible parts in my inventory for later use.

The trophy added a tiny amount of exp which was hardly noticeable when harvesting. I noted that my apprentices were so used to it by now that they didn’t even comment about the boost.

[Ninth Place Trophy (Mid-Autumn Farming Contest)

A wooden trophy in the shape of an acorn.

+0.1% Farming Exp]

Mentally giving the Mid-Autumn game event two thumbs up, I tried to calculate how much bonus experience I was getting. It wasn’t a lot, but the cumulative effect was very welcome, and all I had to do to get a trophy was to create a nice stall display and make nice with the townspeople.

It was totally worth it, in my opinion. Perhaps next year I’ll get an even better trophy.

I finished harvesting the potatoes before mid-morning.

“Lady, get some rest,” said Fengying as she handed me a piece of cloth I could use to wipe my sweat with. “We’ll take care of the vegetables.”

“Great!” I motioned to my apprentices who obediently showed me their harvest. Then I handed the baskets of vegetables to be judged by our resident expert.

“Starry Sweet Potato, low grade,” was the verdict from Deming. Despite the fact that his tone of voice was monotone, his eyes gleamed. It was nice to see that the Demon Chef was as excited to cook the fresh vegetables as I was to eat them. The rest of the crops had appropriately awesome-sounding names. “Hundred Treasure Spirit Corn, low grade. Mystic Summer Squash, low grade. Phantasmal Beans, low grade.”

When he finished the evaluation, Deming and his assistants took the produce away to work his miracles on them. My mouth watered at the thought of the upcoming harvest feast.

“Aw, everything is low-grade again!” said Lari.

I ignored his whining and asked them, “How’s your energy?”

“Almost gone,” said Kharli.

Lari held up his thumb and index finger a few millimeters apart to indicate the amount that was left in his energy bar. “This much.”

“I have a little bit left!” said Mo. “Can I harvest more?”

“It’s best that you rest,” I said. “Remember what happened last time.”

During the summer harvest, she had collapsed and missed a few days’ worth of exp.

“Yes, Teacher,” said Mo.

“We’re done for the day,” I said to Fengying.

My household and I trooped back to the main house, content with the day’s harvest.

***

The rest of the vegetable field was harvested in five days. Since the next season was winter, the cover crop I used this time wasn’t the [Wild Seed Mix] but the [Winter Seed Mix] that contained special frost-resistant wildflowers, grasses, and legumes that would protect the soil from erosion and add nutrients to it. Due to the simplified graphics of the game, the winter cover crops were exactly the same as the regular ones, except palette-changed to icy blue and white colors.

Now that we were finished with the vegetables, it was time to tackle the rice paddies.

“Deming says that the black and red rice crops are ready to be harvested. Let’s go!” I set off with my three apprentices, Fengying and Deming, the kitchen assistants, and the maids behind me, like a mother duck with her ducklings.

The red rice was waist-high and had bright green leaves and stems that were slightly bent down due to the weight of the seeds. I took out a sickle from the toolbelt and slashed at the nearest plant which immediately disappeared into my System inventory, the rice seeds already separated from the rest of the plant.

Though I had manually harvested the potatoes and some of the other vegetables earlier, the rice was a different matter. Harvesting it manually meant that I would have to use the sickle to cut off the plants which would then have to be threshed in the traditional manner, by beating the rice plants against something hard like a table or bench.

Or I could just automatically harvest it using the System.

Actually, I think rice was bundled after harvesting and left in the fields to dry for a while before threshing, but I didn’t want to do all that since it took too much physical effort, and I wanted to save my energy. Therefore, we used the automatic harvesting mode.

I gave the kids the signal, and they dashed off to the other side of the field and settled into their positions, widely spaced apart in order to avoid hitting each other with the sickles. Then they started swinging away. It didn’t take long until Mo dropped her sickle and started jumping around like a demented rabbit.

“Fireworks! I leveled up!” she screamed.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Congratulations,” said everyone.

After thirty seconds, the fireworks died down, and we continued harvesting. The plants smelled like fresh hay but with a little more sweetness and earthiness mixed in. We worked until our energy ran out, which didn’t take long at all since we were in automatic mode.

“All right, show me what you’ve got,” I said to my apprentices.

They obediently took out the rice in their inventory, and we merged the half-filled sacks until we had a total of five.

Deming walked over and scooped up a handful of the grains. “Tiger’s Blood Rice, low grade.”

“What a name!” said Kharli. “It’s not poisonous or anything, is it?”

“Does it ooze blood when you bite into it?” asked Lari.

Mo didn’t say anything and just knelt in front of an open sack, sniffing and inspecting the grains.

I had to admit that it did look a little weird to people who were not familiar with red rice. The grains had an uneven coloration that ranged from light pink to dark reddish-brown, and in their unmilled form, they looked quite rough.

“But it’s almost medium grade,” added Deming.

“That’s great!” I said. “And red rice is healthier than white rice.”

“What does it taste like?” asked Lari.

“A little nuttier and sweeter than white rice, I think,” I said. “The texture is a little tougher and chewier, too.”

“Aw, that’s no good. I like my rice fluffy.” Lari remained unconvinced of the superiority of red rice over white rice.

“Kids always prefer the softer rice,” said Fengying.

I think she was trying to console me.

“Nevermind. We’re done here. I’ll just bring this to the mill,” I said.

The white rice would be sold to the clans, who would do their own milling, but we were keeping the black and red rice for ourselves. I really didn’t trust outside millers to properly process the exotic varieties, so I was going to mill those myself.

When we got to the mill, I climbed the ladder and poured the rice into the container while the kids played rock-paper-scissors to determine which one of them would press the big red Start/Stop button.

“Yes! I’m the winner!” said Kharli.

“I never win,” said Lari.

“You’re very unlucky,” said Mo.

I finished filling the container and climbed down the ladder. Everyone, even Fengying and Deming, crowded around the middle part of the machine and watched in fascination as it made loud grinding noises as the gears started turning.

The weird thing was that even though the machine’s parts started moving, none of the rice could be seen inside. I thought it was quite possible that the machine was just a fake, and the System was the one that did all the work.

“Kids, let’s go back to the house and soak in the hot springs to recover some energy.”

***

The next day, I personally harvested the black rice since it seemed like I was the only one who really wanted it. When I showed it to Deming, he said that it was “Purple Orchid Rice, low grade.”

That was extremely strange because the rice was definitely black. I shouldn’t have doubted him, however, since after I sent the rice to the mill, the result was a dark purple rice.

Once all of the exotic varieties had been harvested, it was time for the main event, the white rice. My apprentices were quite excited by this and set to it with a will.

“The exp, give me the exp,” chanted Mo as she swung her scythe.

“I think we’re harvesting more compared to the red rice,” said Lari.

It was true. These plants were definitely giving us more seeds, and hence more exp compared to the red and black rice.

“I’m close, I’m so close! One more! That’s it!” Kharli was so excited that she flung her scythe away when fireworks erupted all around her. Thankfully, it didn’t hit anyone. “I leveled up!”

As a good and responsible teacher, I allowed her to jump and dance around to celebrate until the fireworks died down. Then I scolded her. “Safety first. Don’t ever throw a sharp object like that ever again.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Okay. Continue.”

In the end, we managed to harvest a total of seven sacks of white rice until we all ran out of energy.

We still had a week left, and, based on the amount of work we had done today, we would need all of it. I was even worried that we would run out of time before we finished harvesting everything.