kscans

Chapter 17 - For the Improvement of Food Security, Considering an Annual Plan

With the matter of the waterway settled for now, the remaining issues were...

・Harvesting crops
・Securing and storing seeds and seed potatoes
・Restoring fields
・Creating a farming calendar
・Planting and preparations for next year
・Preparing fertilizer
・Preparing farm tools

"Hmm. I should harvest what's already ripe, but I also need to leave some for seed potatoes and seeds. Then, I need to plow the harvested areas to make them usable as fields. Oh, and I have to check the timing for sowing seeds and planting for next year. Ah, I really need a work calendar."

It was good that he could harvest the semi-wild crops, but they were currently scattered all over the village and not grouped by type. For the sake of efficiency, it would be less trouble to gather the same crops in one place. However, many of them were still growing, so he couldn't just prepare all the fields in the village at once. He could use Earth Magic to plow everything at once after all the harvesting was done, but...

"If I do that, I might miss the planting season for some things."

He seemed to recall that winter wheat was sown in September or October, but there should be other crops that wouldn't be harvested by then. Moreover, since they were currently all mixed together, he couldn't just plow everything at once.

"I guess I have no choice but to plow each spot as I finish harvesting..."

In any case, it would be safer to research the harvest and planting times for each crop and create something like a farming calendar. He had no paper, so it would have to be a stone slate.

"And it's not just crops. There are nuts and yams too."

He probably couldn't secure enough food to get through the winter with just the field crops. Animal meat was a given, but the nuts and tubers he could find in the mountains would also be essential. He had spotted a few possibilities when he hunted the Mudderboar, but he would need to frequently go outside the village to check for anything else edible.

"In that case, I'll need a weapon, huh..."

The other day, he had snuck up on the Mudderboar and finished it off with a billhook, but...

"I can't keep doing dangerous things like that. I was lucky that boar was all bark and no bite..."

He was at the bottom rung of the ladder around here. There had to be plenty of dangerous creatures stronger than him. Approaching each one to take it down was madness. He needed to train his magic and get a long-handled weapon so he could take them down from a distance.

Though Yuri was convinced he was weak, the truth was different.

Thanks to the god's grace, or rather, excessive worrying, Yuri's magic power and physical abilities easily surpassed the levels of this country's adventurers and soldiers. He was at a level where he could effortlessly kick aside any common magical beast. However, Yuri himself was unaware of this, which was why he was being overly cautious. Still, preparing for the unexpected wasn't a bad thing. It shouldn't be.

"I'll think about weapons later. For now, gathering enough food to survive the winter is the top priority. Oh, I'll need winter clothes and a futon too. Well, I'll think about that later too."

He had more and more things to think about, but for now, it was the food plan.

"The field crops alone will be nutritionally unbalanced. I'll need to secure some wild edibles as side dishes. It's the perfect season for them now, so I should gather as much as I can. I can probably manage preservation with Storage..."

Having laid out his immediate plans, he thought,

"And I'll need to make farm tools, I guess. I can probably do the plowing with Earth Magic, so I won't need a plow or a hoe. But a sickle and a senba, or a senbakoki, would be useful for harvesting. I don't know if they exist in this world, but since no one's watching, I guess it doesn't matter."

He quickly decided to make a senba. He generally knew what it was, and for the finer details, he could ask his Rural Life Guide master and probably make it with Earth Magic.

"What else? There's the matter of fertilizer..."

It was questionable whether it would be ready in time for this year. In fact, it was nine-tenths certain it wouldn't be. But thinking ahead, this was something he needed to start on soon. He could probably manage to prepare compost by piling up the weeds and shrubs he pulled out while maintaining the fields.

"There's quite a lot to do. Well, I'll just start with what I can."