Solo [ED] A Helping Flipper

Miha learns what a farm is and how hard it is working on one all in the same day.

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While Sylira is by far the most civilized region of Mizahar, countless surprises and encounters await the traveler in its rural wilderness. Called the Wildlands, Syliran's wilderness is comprised of gradual rolling hills in the south that become deep wilderness in the north. Ruins abound throughout the wildlands, and only the well-marked roads are safe.

[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Miha on May 31st, 2020, 12:45 am

Spring 16th 520 AV

Farms. Miha had heard of them before, but she'd never seen one in person. Zeltiva had no farms, Svefra pods had no farms, and she'd certainly never worked on one. The "small" farm at the Empyreal Demesne was 20 acres - seemed pretty huge to the seal, but what did she know? She had already spent around 20 chimes just staring at all the land. Instead of forests or cliffs like she normally spotted on the coastline, it was gardens and pens for animals. Her mind was blown. It made sense, of course, because she had eaten things other than fish before and they had to come from somewhere. It just seemed like so, so much work for the one farmer. That was why she was here, after all.

The Kelvic had to find the farmer, first. She met Dawson earlier that morning when she was asking around for chores to do to keep herself occupied - and to help around, of course. It turned out that just swimming around in the bay dredging up trash wasn't a very helpful or useful (yet, she reminded herself). Dawson needed a hand with the farm today, and she had two of 'em. Being so aquatically-inclined, Miha knew that this would be a good chance to learn something new and useful. She didn't really know how she would apply what she learned while helping out on the farm to anything else in her life, but she was sure it'd help out.

There was the issue of what to do. Since Miha hadn't ever seen a farm, she hadn't ever seen farm chores, and she had no idea how these little plants were supposed to sprout up from the ground. What did they need? How did they grow? How long did it take? Now, the seal didn't expect things to just pop up instantly, but she wasn't sure what to expect on that front. She had a suspicion that it would take a few seasons, but even that she wasn't sure of.

She hadn't even gotten started on the animals. She'd seen goats and chickens and horses before, but never up close. They were kinda strange to her. Zeltiva didn't really have animals. Most of their food was shipped in. Someone might have a goat or something, but never much more than that. Sometimes horses would be around, too, but those were rare. These animals had plenty of space to roam. They looked comfortable. They were noisy, too, and they smalled way different than the sea. Miha meandered over to the pens and watched the animals live. The chickens pecked the ground and wandered in an out of their henhouse. The goats and horses chewed the long grass that was available to them. They looked like happy animals, but the Kelvic couldn't really tell with land creatures.

Soon enough, Dawson spotted Miha as she stood awkwardly in front of the livestock. "Come to help?" He asked.

Miha tore her eyes off the animals and looked at Dawson. "Yep. I've never even seen a farm before, though, so I don't know how much help I'll be." Dawson laughed and laughed at her about that.
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[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Miha on August 30th, 2020, 1:45 am

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"If you can walk, you can help." He said. Oh Gods. She was in for a workout, wasn't she? He brought her over to a small toolshed and pulled out an interesting looking stick with a metal bit on the end. It didn't look like anything the seal had seen before, but that was the course today was going, anyway. He handed her the tool, and then grabbed one for himself. "We're gonna do some weeding!" He said, like it was the most exciting thing in the world. Maybe it was! "Because we haven't had winter, the weeds grow up crazy all over the fields. Usually the snows and frosts will keep them in check." He leaned on the metal-bit-stick-tool. "That's why we're using the hoe. To make up for the fact that our gardens are overrun with weeds." Hoe? Isn't that a rude—- never mind. "See the vegetable garden? That's nothing I planted." She looked over where he pointed and she saw just how crowded with unwelcome greenery it was. He meandered over to the garden - it was big to Miha, but he kept calling it a garden. That made her think it was a lot smaller comparatively than she was used to.

He gave her a demonstration. First, he held the hoe and then, slowly, but not too slowly, he slid it over the soil. It made the soil underneath look smooth, and it chopped up all the weeds on the way. "All you want to do is get the top layer...separate the leaves and stems from their roots. That kills them."

"Ooh. That doesn't look too hard." She tried it herself. There was a lot of room for error, and after a few tries she had managed to clear out a nice little section of the garden. Sometimes she had to go over an area twice.

"Come find me when you're done. Then I'll show you how to prep the land for planting." That sounded exciting. "Sure thing."

Dawson left to go tend to another garden that he called the medicinal garden - Miha had no idea what went into a medicinal garden, but she knew what medicine was so she could only guess it was stuff that healers would use. With the spring sun bearing down on her as she hoed, Miha worked up a sweat. The seal couldn't wait to go inside and have some nice iced tea or cookies from Mosa, but she had to do this. It was important that they had food at some point during the rest of the year! She could survive off of fish alone but that was boring. She wanted real food, real vegetables and fruits. She couldn't wait to find out what things like berries tasted like.

.
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[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Miha on August 30th, 2020, 1:47 am

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Miha continued to hoe, slowly, slowly making progress. At least she had a tool. The Kelvic couldn't imagine how painstaking it'd be to do this without the thing that cut the weeds. Would she have had to pull them up by hand? Her hands ached and back ached at the thought. She'd already cleared out a nice section, but the vegetable garden seemed even bigger now that she was doing manual labor. She was used to the sun bearing down on her, at least. Lift, pull, scrape. Lift, pull, scrape. After a good while - the seal had no idea how much time had passed - she was done. The land was clear, except for the defeated corpses of the weeds, and Miha leaned on her hoe, pretty happy with herself. She thought she did an okay job. Sometimes she had to stop for a tick and slap away bugs that tried to crawl on her or fly around her. And even further still, sometimes she had to nudge away big, fat, happy looking spiders that had made their webs in all of the weeded mess. In the end, she got the job done. It wasn't really complicated enough for her to do badly, anyway, but damn was she tired! That was a workout, on her arms especially.

She carried the hoe with her to find Dawson. Just like he said, he was not too far and at the medicinal garden. He was on his knees with various pouches of seeds, and he was putting them into the dirt. Miha had gathered enough that seeds turned into plants. The seal walked up to him and squatted down next to where he was working. "Need any help?" He nodded. "After we're done planting the herbs, we're going to be planting the vegetables, and both tasks are easier when you've got two people."[/b] He handed Miha one of the pouches and gestured to an area nearby. The dirt was pretty loose and moist - he must have done a few more steps than just weeding in the time it took her to weed that whole area.

"So, before ya want to plant anything, you want to till the soil. Not too much, mind you, because that'll mess up the soil. Make it prone to erosion. And then you want to water it..." He paused as he poked a hole in the dirt with a small tool, planted a seed, and then covered it up. "And then you plant. And water again." He gestured to some empty buckets near him. "I haven't set up the irrigation yet, but that'll help out a ton. There's a creek and a well dug up nearby, so I've just been watering by hand. I wanted to get the seeds in the ground before the window passed."
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[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Miha on August 30th, 2020, 1:48 am

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Ah, fun, lugging buckets and digging up the soil was what was in store for her next. She was just happy the excitement hadn't worn off yet and she kept working. "What you should do is push down with a seed dibber, like this," He demonstrated what he had done earlier, "And then plant the seed inside. Cover it with soil and it's planted. This one is called Pot Marigold. It's apparently good for cuts, though I don't know much more about it than that. It was requested by Darcee." She inspected the hole he made to see how deep it should go. Then He handed Miha a few seeds and watched as she followed suit. She made a hole and dropped some seeds in, and then covered the hole with the soil. She repeated it a few times. Hole, drop, cover. Hole, drop, cover. After the farmer was sure she'd gotten a hang of it, he handed her the pouch of seeds and went over to another patch of the medicinal garden with a different one. The bugs were everywhere while she worked in this section of the garden. Random beetles and things with wings kept trying to crawl on her, land on her, sometimes even bite her. She just kept swishing them away. In the time that Miha had finished planting the section of Pot Marigold, Dawson had finished up the rest of the plot. He was fast! She supposed it came from his years of practice. She'd only had bells of it. Miha brushed her hands together and stood up. After working in the gardens all day, she was sweaty and dirty, but her work wasn't over yet.

Miha took the hoes that had been lying next to the plot at the request of Dawson. She brought them over to the toolshet while he carried the buckets and set them next to the well. The farmer joined her at the toolshed and rolled out a strange looking contraption. It was pieces of metal joined together at an angle with a pair of metal wheels. Dawson wheeled it over to the vegetable plot while Miha followed. "This is a plow...normally, you'd have an animal pulling something like it, but since we don't have any working animals, you have to do it by hand. It breaks up the roots and plants left over after weeding and loosens up the soil. We do it in rows for the vegetables." Miha hadn't even noticed the rows, but now when she looked back she could see them.

Dawson did the first row. It seemed to take ages as he slowly, slowly pushed the plow and its metal bits through the dirt, churning the soil as he went. It was clearly a hard job, telling by the look on his face and the tension in his muscles. After a while the first row was done, churned up nicely, and he turned the plow around so Miha could do a few more of the rows. They were going to take turns, but he didn't have Miha come over, he came over to her.

Dawson pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. "Before we finish that up...I think it's time for a break, don't you?"

"Absolutely. I was getting thirsty...do you think there's more iced tea?" She asked as they walked towards the kitchen of the castle. As if on queue, out came Mosa, a pitcher in hand. She set it on one of the tables on the patio and brought out two cups to go with it. "Thank you, Mosa!" The old lady smiled at her and walked off. Dawson and Miha sat quietly as they drank the refreshing beverage. Miha wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to talk, anyway. She was tired from all the work and she wasn't even done for the day!
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[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Miha on August 30th, 2020, 1:49 am

.
"After we plow, I'll let you go. We're growing corn, squash, beans, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots...all sorts of things. I can get someone else to help me with that tomorrow. You can come back if you want, though." Dawson said, breaking the silence. Miha nodded and took another big sip of tea. She wanted to help, but she didn't know if there was a way that would be better for her particular talents. After all, she was a sea mammal.

"Is there anything else I can do? Do you need anything from the water? I'm a seal, after all." She asked. It was worth a shot!

"It's funny you ask that...we could actually use some seaweed. Whenever you're out and about swimming or whatever it is you do tomorrow, you can collect some seaweed - it's great fertilizer. Sometimes we just wash the seaweed and put it right on top of the garden. Slowly it'll get pulled down by worms and decompose and fertilize without a lot of work on our part. Tomorrow we'll probably hang it up to dry so we can grind it into powder and make it into a nice fertilizer slurry."

"How much seaweed do you need?" Miha asked, already adding up in her head how much she'd need to grab.

Dawson laughed and said, "As much as you can bring us!" After a few more chimes, both he and the Kelvic had finished up their drinks. Miha stood up and was about to bring in the cups and the pitcher before Mosa stopped her. "You can come inside when you've cleaned up," she said with a wink as she grabbed the dishes from her.

It was a pleasant walk back to the farm, and Miha assumed position behind the plow. As soon as she started to push, she realized it was significantly harder than Dawson had made it look, and he made it look hard. She puuuushed and the ground turned up. She puuuuuushed a bit more, and ever so slowly, she made her way down the row. After what felt like bells and bells of pushing, she finally finished that small portion. It was Dawson's turn, and she moved it, slowly, into place. The whole day had been quite a workout. She was going to sleep like a baby when night came. She watched Dawson finish the row and then took her turn - it wasn't quite so bad the second time, and the break between rows certainly helped. The cold seawater tomorrow would be so nice on her sore muscles.
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[ED] A Helping Flipper

Postby Alric Lysane on February 14th, 2022, 6:20 pm



Hi Hi!

When you return please update your ledger and I will post up your grade :D

~ No Worries

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