Chapter 585: The First Seed
The Potentials had gotten varying [Surveying] skills, and many hands made light work. The grid for New Orthus sprang up with minimal problems, and the more important work of marking out farms and plots started, and quickly got to the stage where we could start the farming process.
The math on how large each plot should be was fascinating. Assuming wheat - the dominant crop of the region - one acre was about 4 million calories, and a person needed about 750,000 calories a year, children fewer.
Except things went wrong. Crops died, didn’t sprout, were eaten by insects and pests, floods washed them away, poor harvest… a thousand different hostile factors I was more than familiar with threatened the harvest. Then fields couldn’t be forced to grow wheat year after year - the crops had to be rotated. Roots, fruits, leaves, and legumes kept fields healthy and productive - except the one acre to 4 million calories was assuming peak efficiency in the first place.
Then people needed a place to live. We couldn’t live in the bunker for years, let alone the multi-generational plan Skye was developing, nor did people want to live in the temporary barracks that were next on the list. Then we had to consider growing families, raw size logistics - prime-numbered acres were absurd to work with - the lack of good skills, and suddenly plot sizes bloomed to forty acres each.
Cripes. I’d intellectually known the difference between gardening and farming, but seeing the huge swath of land laid out for us and being told ‘you need to work all of it’ was a different story. There was nothing to do but roll up my tunic and get my hands dirty. Thank the System for all the stats I had - it would make it far, far easier on me. I had renewed sympathy for all the farmers who did the whole thing by hand with no System assistance. Whoof.
I’d told Surveyor to find me before she dropped her skill. I fully intended to reclaim my home and rebuild from the very literal ashes, and I wanted our claim and the location of our now-destroyed home marked out. Petty and selfish of me, but like… that was our home, and I suspected Iona was chomping at the bit even harder than I was to get rebuilding. We couldn’t direct rebuild though. First, we needed a smaller ‘cottage’ in the middle of our fields, and would probably spend a few years growing whatever we could in the ‘easy’ field, versus the harder, rocky, mountainous terrain of our old home.
One day, civilization would be rebuilt, and we’d move back home. Until then, it was time to grab a straw hat and a hoe, and live the farmer life. Shame tons of wildlife had died or were dying, and we couldn’t simply hunt for our dinner.
Fenrir had flown off, looking for food, and I wished him luck. Part of me was speculating on a ‘second wave’ of fights and battles as various ancient creatures and lurking horrors ran out of food and started ranging out to find a bite to eat.
Many of us were chomping at the bit to get started, all this line stuff could happen later, and Skye bowed to the demand. Once the first farm grids were outlined, most of us began.