Chapter 29: Act 1: Chapter 23

Thirtieth day, Seventh Moon, 240 AC

I was up before the sun, as I was most days, and like most days I stumbled my way over to the kitchen to boil some water. I missed my coffee, but the tea worked well enough and it usually got me out of my zombie state. The children were all still asleep in their beds, and Nyra still lay in bed as well. I usually let her sleep in a bit longer as I set up the kitchen for breakfast and got my wits back.

The house looked normal enough, but I didn't quite trust myself to do or judge anything before I had my tea. As the water boiled, I splashed some cool water on my face to wake myself up a bit and took a seat at the table. I doze off slightly until the sounds of boiled water drove me to stand and prepare my tea. I stoked the stove to get the fire going and took a seat and sipped at my tea.

I could feel my senses flowing back into me by the time Nyra woke and joined me at the table. We sat quietly listening to the fire crack and pop while we drained the rest of the tea.

As Nyra was boiling more water and preparing breakfast she asked, "When will the others be here to help with the harvest?"

I replied, "They should be here in another hour or so. I told them to be here just after sunrise, so that we can start harvesting the wheat as soon as possible. All the other crops are up, and with the nice weather I want to get this all done before anything happens."

She nodded as she went about preparing breakfast. I went to wake the children and started to herd them towards the kitchen. Once they were settled, I helped Nyra bring the food over to the table. A nice breakfast of eggs, bacon, beans, and toast was a good way to start a long day of harvesting. We ate quickly, trying to finish before the sun rose so that we could maximize the sunlight.

After breakfast, Nyra got the children dressed and ready for the day while I headed outside. However, when I opened the door I was faced with something truly horrible. Rain. Torrential rain.

Fuck.

It was a downpour, and from the state of the ground it looked like it rained all night. Now that I realized it was raining, I recognized the sound of the rain hitting the roof in the background.

Fuck.

With not much choice, I stripped off some of my clothes and stepped outside. The rain was cold, and I quickly became soaked through. Being cold in the rain was a mind over matter type thing because you expect to be cold and miserable in the rain, so you are. I usually kept that in mind while I worked in the rain, but I found it never helped me with that initial shock.

As I walked out into the fields I quickly became bogged down in the mud. The downpour had turned everything into a tick, deep mud that absorbed my feet. I definitely wasn't going to get a horse and reaping machine out here. The downpour had not yet flattened the crop, but I would bet that I was losing a lot of seed and that the seed that would remain be of low quality.

My mood turned foul as I walked back to the barn. Hopefully, it would let up soon and let the mud dry out so that I could start to harvest the wheat before I lost it all. With the heavy rain, the villagers that were supposed to come and help, would not show. I refused to think about what would happen if it continued to rain tomorrow.

The rest of the day was spent doing various chores around the farm, and I did my best to make sure most of those I did out of the rain. I sharpened some of my tools, did a good cleaning of my machines and did my best to prepare for the rain to stop and the harvest to resume.

The wheat that I grew here was unlike the wheat back on Earth, which had been modified by a fellow Iowan, who even won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The semi-dwarf wheat back on Earth was much more resistant to disease and grew much shorter. The reduction in height allowed for more grain per head and it was more resistant to the wind and rain.

One thing I will grant about this tall, unmodified wheat: the poems that are written about wheat make a lot more sense. On the days before harvest, the wheat truly does wave in the wind and it is certainly poetic. The poem by Katherine Lee Bates had always spoken to me, even back on Earth, but seeing a good full harvest on a gorgeous day here made it truly come alive.

O beautiful for halcyon skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the enameled plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

Till souls wax fair as earth and air

And music-hearted sea!

Trying to crossbreed wheat strains was something I had forgotten to think about before I came here, so my own attempts are modifying the wheat was miniscule at best. I was picking out characteristics in the wheat that I wanted, things like height and grain yields, but since they were the same strain there was only a little change at best. The parts of the North that I had seen all had the same strain, and while the Vale appeared to be slightly different, to my shame, I didn't take a close look when I was passing through.

The rain didn't stop for another day, and it was another week before the ground was solid enough to begin the harvest.

On the day when the villagers finally came to help me harvest, the ground was still muddy, but it was manageable. We went as quickly as possible, trying to save as much grain as we could. The rain had ruined over quarter of the harvest. The wind and rain had weighed down the wheat so much that it bent into the ground, thereby ruining the crop. The rain had also shaken loose some grain from each stalk, and the grain that remained was in poor condition. This was not a good harvest at all.

I learned from the villagers that the other farmers were working by hand until they could get the machine in order to save as much as they could. The villagers and I worked quickly and spent long days clearing the field, working in tandem to cut, thresh and dry the wheat. It took us three long days to finish cutting everything, from sunrise to long after sundown. The villagers ended up sleeping in the barn due to the long days, and once we finished my farm we all moved to the next to repeat the process.

The other farms did not fare any better than mine; all had massive losses in their wheat harvest, but they, like me, rotate their crops and had harvested all their other foodstuffs. We would all feel the loss of our wheat, but with our diverse farms and the fact that we would get at least one more harvest in before winter should help to mitigate the damage.

Torrhen, the only farmer in the area that rejected my ideas, however had a huge loss. He mainly grew just corn and beans, and due to the shorter growth cycles of corn and beans he was in the middle of growing season. The rains had wiped out a third of his crop, and with no diversity and a smaller farm, he was in trouble. Before my move here he had been the 'wealthiest', as far as anyone in this region could be truly wealthy, mainly due to his cattle which no on else in the area had owned. He would likely be alright, but his family would definitely have to tighten their belts.

After the two hellish weeks of harvesting, I returned home and went back to finishing my farm's harvest. I still had to manage the moisture of the grain and hay to make sure that it does not spoil in storage. Nyra and Violet joined me in sifting through the grain, to help dry it and to weed out any grains that had sprouted and were useless for storage.

Once the grain had been stored, the fields had to once again be fertilized and prepared for the next planting cycle.

My mood had been fairly dark since that first rainy morning and my temper short. So, when Nyra approached me after the grain had been stored, my response didn't surprise anyone.

"Honey, you need to relax. You've been in a horrid mood for weeks. Please, just try and relax."

"I have not!" I snapped back. "This is a bloody mess! A bloody mess! So much is gone or ruined!"

Nyra replied in a soothing voice, "I know, but being like this does nothing to help. Please. Come relax and spend some time with your children."

"Being like what?! This is a huge problem!"

Nyra continued to talk in a soothing voice, "Stop trying to start a fight. I'm not against you. I want to help you; I want you to spend time with us instead of standing here brooding."

I grit my teeth and tried to calm down. Not entirely successful I said, "Yes, yes. But the wheat is ruined! Over a quarter of the field was lost to the rain, a further quarter of the remaining grains fell to the ground from the rain! A fifth of the remaining was completely sprouted, and the remaining is of so low quality I can't use it for future seed. That means we have less than half our original crop!"

She wrapped me in a hug and replied, "I know. I know, but your family is still here. And our other crops are just fine. We will be okay, and that is because of your new way of farming. You did that. You helped everyone in this area. They will be okay, because of you."

I snorted, "Not Torrhen or his family."

She rolled her eyes and replied, "Yes, but you always thought he was a bit of an ass anyways."

I shrugged, unable to deny that. She continued, "Besides, they are well off enough to live through it. And he might come to accept you now too. It will be a good lesson for him."

I let out a little chuckle at that, my mood starting to lighten. "I suppose," I said.

Nyra tugged me a bit towards the house and said, "Come. Let's lock up the barn, eat some warm dinner, curl up in front of the fire and just be happy."

A wry smile crossed my face at that. "Just be happy? That simple?"

This time she was the one to shrug. "You never know. Maybe we can just be happy with our family. Then maybe after the kids go to bed, we can just be a different kind of happy?" She said suggestively.

I perked up at that. Now that was a kind of happy I could be on board with. "Mmm, that sounds good."

She just smiled.

A/N: I uploaded a new story if anyone is interested. It's just some additional information relating to this story, that I won't be including here. It's sort of an information dump about things like farming and the economy. If that interests you, feel free to look it up on my profile. Otherwise, it's not necessary to continue to enjoy the story.