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

Chapter 82 - There's great pot-ential in low tech solutions

🙞❤︎🙜

After Prince Baiyu left, we continued fletching until it was time for dinner, then we went to bed early since we would be up at dawn the next day.

When I woke up, it was still dark outside, which was the best time to plant since the hot desert sun was still tolerable. We quickly planted as many trees as we could using the [Dendrological Cultivation Chambers].

Then we went to the old [Lizardwing] habitat where we planted some seeds from the [Wild Seed Mix].

“The [Lizardwings] have scratched and pecked at a lot of the grass, so there are a few bald spots. We don’t need to till the land here before sowing a few seeds.” I demonstrate that by using the System to sow a few bare patches of ground. The seeds drilled themselves an inch into the soil. “In our farm, we don’t water the cover crops, but I think we should water these for at least a few days since it doesn’t rain as much here.”

“Teacher, are you sure these won’t die?” asked Lari.

“… Not everything we do will be successful, but I think we should still try,” I said.

“I hope they don’t die,” said Mo.

“The wild seeds are the strongest ones. Why don’t we use the [Dendrological Cultivation Chambers] on these?” asked Kharli.

“That’s a good question! I want to test if our crops will work here if they are planted normally. Once we’re done here, I’ll show you a new, alternative method to using the [Dendrological Cultivation Chambers],” I said.

We continued planting before checking on the [Lizardwing] eggs, which looked the same as they did yesterday.

“All right, let’s go back to the house. I was told that the items that I ordered have been delivered,” I said.

I walked back while the kids ran. When I arrived, I saw that outside the gate, the pots were neatly lined up, ready for us to use. My apprentices were scratching their heads and poking at them.

“But these are just regular clay pots!” Kharli picked one up and turned it upside down to see if there was anything unusual at the bottom of the pot.

“The cheap ones, too,” said Lari.

“Maybe this wasn’t what our Teacher was talking about,” said Mo.

“No, this is exactly what I was talking about,” I said. “Grab a pot and follow me.”

I led them to the eastern side of the house. There I took out a [Spade] from the System toolbelt and then used it to dig a hole in which I placed the terra-cotta pot. The top of the clay vessel protruded above the soil and I filled it with water before placing the lid on it.

“I think you guys can figure out what this is, right?” I said.

“There are holes on the lid for the rain to refill the water. It’s like the [Dendrological Cultivation Chamber]!” said Kharli.

“But it doesn’t have a wick at the bottom,” said Mo.

“How does it work?” asked Lari.

“The pot itself is not watertight. Water will seep through the sides and the bottom into the soil,” I said. “This was actually not my idea. One of the clan’s scholars told me of a method similar to my use of the [Dendrological Cultivation Chambers].”

“Hmm.” Mo gave the pot a somewhat dubious look. “I think the System’s method is better.”

“Maybe. We won’t know until we try.” She had a point. I was pretty sure that the System used magic of some sort to make the plants grow, which is why I wanted to try more mundane methods. After all, if the desert was going to be reclaimed, the clan needed non-magical methods that they could use. “Anyway, I’m told that the terra-cotta pots are quite efficient. When the soil is dry, it will draw water from the pots, but when the soil is moist, such as after a rain, the water will remain inside the pot.”

“Teacher, that makes no sense. If this method works, why haven’t they used it?” asked Kharli.

“Because of the curse,” said Lari.

“Oh.” Kharli looked pensive.

“I hope it works,” said Mo.

“I hope so, too. Let’s try using half of the pots with our wild seeds, and half of the pots with the seeds that I got from the clan,” I said.

This project would undoubtedly have the greatest chance of success if we used native plants and hardy, drought-resistant plants, so we used regular seeds from the clan like Milkweed, Coneflowers, Prairie Smoke, Asters, Bergamot, Bindweed, Reaumuria, Potaninia, Nitraria, and Wild Onions, along with the ones from the [Wild Seed Mix].

By noontime, we were all tired and went back to the house for a shower, lunch, and a change of clothes before returning to finish planting all of the seeds. At the end of the day, we were all tired but happy at the progress that we had made.

We spent two more days on it until we finished the first phase of the project.

“I can’t believe we worked so hard and got zero exp,” said Mo.

“Yes, but if we succeed, we’ll be heroes!” said Kharli.

“Everyone will call me Master Lari, the Cursebreaker,” said Lari.

Mo rolled her eyes at him. “Please ignore him, Teacher. He’s been unbearably smug ever since someone called him ‘Young Master’ that one time.”

Since we were done with the project and our daily chores, I sent the kids to do some fletching while I tweaked the house settings.

I activated climate control on the house, sealing it off from the surrounding dry, hot, and dusty land. The others who lived in the house normally preferred that I only use the heater and air conditioner, instead of turning on full climate control since it blocked the fresh air outside the house from the courtyards. However, now we were not in the forest, but in the rather inhospitable cursed lands. Therefore, we all agreed that I should make the inside of the house more comfortable. I set the humidity level to thirty percent and the temperature to 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

Next, I overhauled the walled garden.

Though Fengying appreciated the [Elegant Chinese Garden], I thought it would be good to add some fun elements to what was essentially our backyard. The Cash Shop had a lot of decorations that would be usable for us. I chose the tree house, waterslide, play tent, and swing sets and set up plenty of archery targets to encourage my apprentices to train more.

Then I went to talk to the housekeeper.

My daily schedule was extremely full. I was too busy with the prince and the new clay pot project earlier to take care of the details of the household that needed my attention, so I spent two hours going over our supplies, budget, and miscellaneous matters. In addition, Fengying handed me a copy of the clan members’ observation notebook. They had taken meticulous care to write down the daily weather conditions, especially the rainfall, and the notebook had a complete daily log of the height and condition of each tree that we had planted last time. When I was done perusing that, Fengying pressed me to hire additional staff since our current accommodations were double the size of the old one. I gave her permission to hire a few more.

While we were talking about how many maids were needed to keep the house and grounds tidy, I realized that once we had gotten used to all this space, I would probably have to expand the farmhouse when we got back to the forest.

Lastly, we hashed out the details of all the trips I would be making this winter.

“Deming is looking forward to using that big kitchen in the hotel you built in the Emerald Cove,” she said.

“Oh yeah, we had to leave in a hurry last time, right?” I remembered that we hadn’t really been able to spend much time there. “There’s actually another hotel I could build…”

After we finished the discussion, I joined my apprentices and spent the rest of the day Smithing.

Disaster struck three days later when Lari, Kharli, and Mo woke up with their arms so sore that they could hardly lift a glass to drink water.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were too tired? Ah… Never mind, it’s my fault for not noticing you were overworking yourselves,” I said.

“I just wanted more exp…” said Mo.

“Me, too.”

“And me.”

The three of them looked so woebegone that I couldn’t bring myself to scold them. “All right, let’s just take it easy for a few days.”

With that, our schedule of doing Fletching four hours twice a day was reduced to one hour twice a day. In the meantime, we had plenty of free time which we used to practice archery, and I also got a few games from the Cash Shop for us to play, like a giant connect four, tower blocks, and ring toss.

When I called the kids over to play, they ignored everything in favor of the connect four game. After I explained the rules to them, they played for hours, ignoring everything except lunchtime.

“You suck! I’m the winner!” crowed Lari when he won three games in a row against Kharli.

“Argh, why do you keep winning?” she complained.

“Let me try,” said Mo.

“I’m going to beat you too,” said Lari.

By lunchtime, they had cajoled me to produce three more connect four games for the others to use, and even the clan members started playing it. I suppose there wasn’t much to do in this place, so the game was taking my household by storm.

The clan members tended to become a little bit rowdy whenever they played.

“What is taking you so long? Play a piece already!” said a young male with brown hair and yellow eyes.

“Stop rushing me,” said his opponent, a smaller male with the same coloring.

“If you don’t play a piece, I’ll do it for you.”

“Do you see this fist?”

“Yes. That’s why they call you tiny.”

I covered my mouth to hide my smile when the two young members of the White Tiger clan started wrestling in the outer courtyard. The bigger one eventually pinned the smaller one to the ground with an armlock, and the oldest of the clan members, who was standing next to me watching the commotion, shook his head and said, “I apologize. This is what happens when there are no females around.”

“I’m female.”

“I meant older females from the clan,” he corrected himself.

“Come to think of it, why are there no females here?”

“There’s a superstition that pregnant females will miscarry if they stay here too long.”

“What about those who aren’t pregnant?”

“… Some people believe the curse could cause them to become infertile.”

I didn’t comment since it was none of my business, but that seemed like bullshit to me. If there really was a curse of infertility here, then surely it would affect both males and females.

We watched as the two males who had been fighting made up and started playing connect four again.

“It’s alright. It’s nice to see everyone being energetic,” I said.

The presence of the clan members, who tended to arrive in the morning and leave on that same day, had made the house quite lively. For some reason, I had always thought that there were only a few people in the White Tiger clan. The last few days have proven me wrong since Fengying had shown me a list of all the people who were coming to observe. There were hundreds of names!

“Boys, come, finish your game. We have to leave before dark,” said the elder to his young charges.

“Yes, sir,” they chorused.

The smaller one took his revenge by winning the connect four game, then they all left after saying their goodbyes to us.

“You’re doing a wonderful thing here, and we're grateful to you,” said the elder.

“Yes, thank you for what you’re doing here,” said the one who had won the wrestling match.

The younger one simply bowed deeply to me and my apprentices.

When they had left, Lari said, “They all just come and go without doing anything.”

“Because they’re only here as observers. I don’t want them to do anything anyway. Would you like that Elder to give the orders here?” I said.

“No way!” he said.

“They’re just learning our methods. I heard half a dozen people started their own projects in different areas of the desert,” I said.

“They should at least pay us some gold…” said Lari.

“Do you need me to give you another lecture about tax credits?” I asked him.

“Shut up! You don’t want to get her started,” said Kharli to Lari.

I smiled. “When you’re an adult you’ll understand how important financial literacy is.”

The three of them groaned.

I was about to launch another lecture about money and accounting when a System popup appeared.

[Emergency Quest: Find the Lost Lizardwings

Lizardwings Found: 0/6

Countdown: 01 hour 59 minutes]

Nooooo! I thought it was strange that the eggs had hatched after three days, but I never would’ve thought that it was because of this quest.

Emergency quests were the worst. They took a lot of time, and the reward was probably not worth it. Most of this type of quest involved farm animals who were lost, sick, or injured, and the reward was simply a healthy animal and maybe a little Farming exp.

Of course, in the game, a player could simply ignore the quest and allow it to lapse, which killed the animal. The vast majority of the game’s livestock wasn’t worth much, after all. However, though ignoring the quest was fine in Adventure Incarnate since only pixels were involved, I felt it would be immoral to do that in real life.

“Wait. Something just happened. The [Lizardwings] need rescuing,” I said to my apprentices.

“Teacher, how do you know that?” asked Lari.

“I just know,” I said.

Kharli looked up at the sky. “Oh no. We’d better hurry because it’s getting dark.”

Ugh. I had a very bad feeling about this.