Homesteading in a fantasy world

Last night went a bit longer than I would have liked, but it was also nice to catch up on everything. Goose was quite happy to see me, and he already had quite a lot of feathers on him. I am guessing that in a month or so he will be ready to fly, although who knows what the weather will be like by that time.

I had to tell the war stories that happened, but what surprised me was the response to them. In this world, it seems war was quite commonplace, especially battles between monsters, so it was all taken a lot easier and with a lot more jubilance than I would have guessed.

The next day came quickly, and I was quite pleased by being able to cook with proper utensils. Flame-cooked meat, raw roots and stew can get kind of tiresome.

While the potatoes boiled, I had time to start working with the cuttings I have gotten. I started by preparing the ends, then trimming away unnecessary branches while putting some wax on those locations so the tree will heal.

By the time I finished my apprentices were also up and during breakfast, we continued our talks about what they had been up to. I was quite pleased to learn that they have finished the two buildings that I wanted them to make. They also spun a lot of string but there was still a lot of raw material to get through. They have been busy. But after a bit of prodding, I was also able to get them to admit that they had gone to the dungeon.

What came as a surprise was, they all went. I gave them a stern talking to, especially to Arthur, but I was pleased that they did not go onto the second floor. At least they had that much wisdom. The story they told me was filled with heroics and tragedy if it was told by children but for them, it was just an adventure.

Next came the most nerve-wracking part for them. We went to inspect the expanded woodshed. I was happy that they had already brought in all the firewood filling it up. A good choice by them.

They seem to quite like my praise for their forward thinking. The construction itself seemed fine. Although I did show them some places to improve and while I explained I looked at their faces. They were eagerly listening. Good.

The roof was done with wood shingles. After hearing their explanation of why they had chosen that I was impressed and praised them for thinking of a solution and knowing their limitations. This roof was completely fine and after I inspected it and gave them the thumbs up, they relaxed in relief.

While a stone roof was better, a wood one was still good and after many years when it will finally need to be changed, I can make a stone one myself.

The smithy was not where I would have liked it to be, but I also know that this one was just a temporary one, so it was fine. But here I had a lot more criticisms to give, especially their location for the forge which was close to one of the walls.

I quickly explain to them what they had done wrong and that they had forgotten something extremely important. I’ll let them figure it out while I continued inspecting the rest of the building. Otherwise, it was a fine construction. At least they did a good job of copying the other building.

This place would be a nightmare to work within with the thin walls. If I didn’t have the temperature core trait that will make work here in the winter a lot more tolerable, this would have been a pointless building.

It seemed that they still couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I decided to start bringing in the anvils and other equipment needed for smithing. I moved the forge to a lot more central location away from the flammable walls and that’s when Emma finally figured out what they had done wrong.

There was no ventilation for the smoke to get out and once she had said it out loud the brothers face palmed over their stupidity. I told them to figure out how to fix the problem, but before they start doing anything, to come and tell me what they are going to do to fix the problem. I stayed for a bit and observed their arguing/planning, but it seemed that they would take some time before thinking of anything useful.

There are also some important things for me to do, most notably I had to deal with the cuttings I had gotten and the oak saplings. To fix this problem the first thing I started to do was to make some wooden containers so I can store them inside the main house to keep them warm over the winter.

While I made the containers my apprentices visited me multiple times until I finally gave them the go-ahead on their fifth plan on how to fix the problem that they had overlooked.

During my work, I also had quite a lot of other companions, mainly puppies. I continued their training, and they seem to be listening quite well to the commands I taught them. It is time to expand their training before the winter truly starts. But the question of the winter has been quite worrisome in my mind as it seemed that this one might not be a pleasant one.

I finished making the containers and planting the cuttings in them. After bringing them inside I dug up the oak saplings to join the others as well in the main house.

It was time to figure out if I can use my true nature connection to see how bad the winter might be. I explained to my apprentices that I will need some time alone to meditate, but before that I also planted the seeds that I got from the goblins for one of the trades.

I now have even more that were given to me before I started going back. Some of the seeds would need to be kept until spring but a lot of them need to be planted now. For that, I used some of the vegetable field. This will give them a good starting point.

My meditation took quite a long time and then I finally got out of it, it was already close to dinner time. I looked at the sky with a worried look and walked to the main house deep in thought.

Everyone around the table at first were quite happy to see me and wanted to show me what they had done to fix the smithy, but when they saw my face, their expressions changed to one of caution.

“I was able to get some idea of what the winter will bring, and it will be a bad one. It will be a really harsh winter and one of the main reasons for that will be its length.”

This news felt like a mountain falling. It was extremely bad news. We will most likely survive but others will not be so lucky especially when they are low on food already. With this long of a winter, a lot of people will starve, even more than expected. When it rains it pours. It's just bad news on top of bad news.

This made the mood quite sombre, so to take our minds off of it we went to see how they did with the ventilation. I was able to give them quite good marks and that helped alleviate the dark mood a bit that we were all in.

While in bed I wanted to make some plans for the future. We needed to start winter-proofing our barn and house to make them a bit better. I was now extremely glad that there was so much more firewood, although we might need to cut down on our visits to the sauna. But we will still do one tomorrow. If I hadn’t meditated, we would have done one today, but it doesn’t matter too much if it's today or tomorrow.

I will need to fix my weapons and armour and that needs to be done relatively soon as I don’t want too much snow to hamper my clearing out the village. I will also need to visit to see if anything has happened there as it has been quite some time since I last visited. Who knows what might have happened there?

Even with all of those things, I will have a lot of free time during winter. I can do some animal training and if the weather permits perhaps even outside. The winter will also be a good time to train winter hunting and as I learned from the goblins some beasts roam quite a lot during winter to find food. Some fights might come up because of that requiring me to protect my farm.

The dungeon will also be a good way to change the scenery but as I have finished the entire thing it’s not that pressing. Especially now because I think my combat skills can’t get much better with the weak monsters there. And I will in no way attack the monster inside the core room. That is its last defence and I have a feeling attacking it will hamper its development.

Tomorrow I should also ask my apprentices if they can think of any problems that might come up. Hopefully, there won't be any but knowing ahead of time we can at least think of a solution.