The Expanding Homestead (2)
Similar incidents kept happening. After Maksim traded a beehive along with soap, herbs, and dried tea leaves, villagers began showing up every few hours, offering exchanges thinly disguised as gifts.
“Wow, these are all gone too?” Patrick clicked his tongue at the sight of his now-empty shelves. Every medicinal herb he had gathered in the forest, every emergency remedy he had prepared, every rare mushroom or herb he had set aside, and even the medicinal wines he had made—all of it had been swept clean.
“Soap… I’ll need oil if I want to make more.”
He had given away everything except the single laundry bar and face soap he kept for himself.
Baa— Quack quack quack—
Yet the empty storeroom did not leave him feeling empty inside.
‘Let’s see. One goat, three ducks, and a few more chickens.’
In the blink of an eye, all sorts of animals had begun roaming the garden. Behind the chicken coop stood the beehive Maksim had given him, and beside it lay an assortment of farming tools. There were even two fine traps, a set of kitchen knives, cotton cloth, and a handcart.
Of course, Patrick had nothing left to offer the villagers who arrived late. He considered sending them away, saying he had little to trade, but their goods tempted him. In the end, he put his head to work and came up with a solution.
“I’ve run out of herbs and emergency medicines, so I don’t have much I can give you. And it wouldn’t be fair to hand out only soap.”
“I-is that so?”
“So, is there anything you’ve been wanting to learn?”
“Pardon? Learn something?”
“Reading or arithmetic, for instance. If you’d like, I could teach you how to keep ledgers the way merchants do, or how to write formal letters to nobles.”
“Um, Teacher, does that mean I could learn letters like the children?”
One villager scratched his head. “Thanks to you, my boy can read just fine, but it’s a bit embarrassing for his father to still be illiterate…”
“Oh, of course! Absolutely!”
Villagers who wanted to learn reading and arithmetic continued to appear after that.
“Heh heh. I’d like to learn how to write the kind of letters nobles use, if that’s possible, Teacher.”
Even the Village Chief came asking to be taught.
“But you already know how to read and write, Chief.”
“Only enough to get by. I’m ashamed to say I can’t compose anything proper enough to send to important people.”
The Village Chief explained that he wanted to learn the formal style used by officials and how to draft documents.
“That way, if something happens in our village, I can send a letter straight to the lord, can’t I?”
“Do you really need to be so formal? The lord didn’t seem like the type to care about such things…”
Patrick’s words made the Village Chief nod.
“Our lord is indeed a fair and just man. Still, for news from a small village like ours to reach his ears, it must pass through many officials. They may not be corrupt, but they’ll rewrite anything that doesn’t match their preferred format.”
‘True. Even the best words can change completely after passing through three people.’
By the time the Village Chief’s letter reached the lord, after being handled by multiple officials, barely a fraction of the original meaning would remain.
“So if I send it in proper form from the start, the officials won’t need to touch it as much, right?”
“That makes sense.”
And so Patrick found himself teaching children by day and adults by night. However, since everyone was busy before the rainy season, they decided to wait until the rains arrived and farming and fishing became difficult.
‘I’ll need to prepare teaching materials too. The next month is going to be busy.’
Patrick was scribbling a schedule onto a wooden board when a sudden thought struck him.
‘What about my garden?’
A wave of dismay washed over him. Even under the care of a novice farmer, the garden crops had grown well—so well that the amount he harvested now far exceeded what he could possibly eat. Potatoes and other long-keeping vegetables weren’t a problem, but leafy greens like lettuce and chicory, or soft fruits like cucumbers and eggplants, had a limit no matter how much he consumed.
And so began the battle of processing and preserving the harvest.
“At least I have plenty of salt.”
He preferred sweet things over salty, but there was no way to pickle vegetables in sugar or honey.
‘They say even kimchi was just salted before chili powder arrived.’
It felt strange to be preparing for winter when summer had not even arrived yet. Patrick, still carrying the sensibilities of a twenty-first-century modern person, thought of side dishes as something bought year-round from a store and seasonal ingredients as rare treats to enjoy while they lasted. But in this world, with its crude distribution networks and lack of proper storage technology, filling the storeroom during harvest season was a matter of survival through the winter.
“Radish and cabbage can go into dongchimi. Cucumbers and onions… maybe pickles?”
Looking at the baskets overflowing with harvested vegetables, he felt both pride and dread. Still, he couldn’t just wait around. He collected unused jars and pots from every household and ended up with quite a collection. Taking a deep breath, he began chopping.
Radishes went in thick chunks, and the napa cabbage was roughly hacked apart. Cucumbers were scrubbed with salt and sprinkled, while onions were washed and quartered.
“These should be fine once they’re salted and sugared.”
He vaguely remembered hearing that pears were good to add, but he had none, so there was nothing to be done. He would simply have to use plenty of sugar.
‘Sweet is sweet, right?’
One should not expect fine details from someone hopeless at cooking.
“Teacher, the water’s boiling!”
“Got it.”
The children, who had been playing in the dirt of the harvested potato rows, came running to report that the water over the outdoor fire was bubbling.
Tap tap tap tap—
Patrick’s knife moved faster, matching his hurried heart.
“I still need to slice the eggplant and pumpkin… Ah, why did I bother pulling up the sweet potato vines? They could’ve waited until after the rainy season…”
The sweet potatoes were far from ready, but their leaves had grown enough that he had snapped off some stems while he was at it—a mistake, clearly. The mountain of vegetables looked like it might not be finished in a single day.
“Am I preparing too much for one person?”
Even more wild greens sat piled beside the vegetables. He had gathered plenty of shepherd’s purse, late-season rapeseed leaves, prickly sowthistle, bamboo shoots scattered everywhere, and mushrooms.
‘No. When winter comes, there’ll be nothing else to eat. I have to do what I can while I can. There’s no fresh delivery here.’
The novice worker’s enthusiasm surged.
“The water’s boiling, I said!”
“I heard you!”
He blanched the pumpkin and eggplant that were already prepared in salted boiling water. He had heard that some greens were boiled or blanched before drying while others were simply lightly salted, but he had no way of knowing which was which.
‘When you don’t know what you’re doing, just cook it first.’
At least that would disinfect them, he thought, and began humming as he worked. He felt rather like an experienced outdoorsman—though the dongchimi was so salty one could finish an entire bowl of rice with a single radish slice, and some of the greens had turned dark or tough from over-blanching. Still, one out of every three attempts had succeeded, which wasn’t bad for a beginner.
“The real problem is the pickles…”
He had no soy sauce made from beans. They grew and ate beans of various kinds, so why had he never thought to make soy sauce or doenjang from them?
‘Well, fish sauce is easier to make here, so it can’t be helped.’
Fortunately, he had plenty of fish sauce, which offered both saltiness and umami. Patrick, who had been obsessed with Southeast Asian food in his previous life, was quite familiar with it. That strange savory depth, different from regular soy sauce!
‘Anyway, it’s still a kind of soy sauce, so it should work for pickles, right?’
All he had to do was simmer fish sauce with various vegetables and fruits, sugar, and dried anchovies, let it cool, and pour it over the vegetables. Making it in large batches was a hassle, but once done, it was a classic rice thief that meant no more worries about side dishes.
“Huh?”
Patrick, who had been happily stirring the fish sauce, suddenly froze.
“Does it need vinegar?”
A crisis of a lifetime had arrived. To add vinegar to the pickles or not to add vinegar!
‘I think it tasted sour…’
Onion pickles and garlic pickles had definitely been tangy. ‘But egg pickles weren’t sour… Are egg pickles even considered pickles?’ If anything pickled in soy sauce counted as a pickle, then what were cucumber pickles? Weren’t they just salted?
Once the doubt began, questions kept piling up. Once again, Patrick was hopeless at cooking. He had used fish sauce without hesitation, yet now he agonized endlessly over vinegar.
“What’s the problem this time?”
“Are you going to keep talking to me like that?”
As always, Ben came over to pick a fight.
“I’m making pickles and I’m stuck on whether to add vinegar or not.”
“Pickles?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm. My mom puts vinegar in when she makes pickles.”
“But my mom just salts the vegetables sometimes!”
The children’s opinions were divided. Though a few of them looked like they didn’t even know what pickles were.
‘If everyone says something different, doesn’t that mean it doesn’t really matter?’
Patrick made his decision and brought out the jug of grape vinegar he had received from Ben’s father.
“I’m adding it.”
“How much are you putting in? That stuff’s strong.”
“Strong or not, it’s still vinegar, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“I’m making a big batch, so I have to use a lot anyway.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to measure it?”
“Real masters don’t fuss over little things like that.”
“Are you really a master, Teacher? Why?”
“Stop questioning everything. When an adult says something, you should just accept it!”
After shutting Ben up with an old-man remark, Patrick began pouring in vinegar and sugar as he pleased. Jars that had once held medicinal herbs now filled the storeroom again, this time with various pickles whose results could not be guaranteed.
Plip, plip, shhhhhh—
The rain began to pour.
“They said it would come in a month.”
Contrary to the Village Chief’s words, the rain had arrived a full half-month early. Still, thanks to his quick work, he had harvested all the crops that needed gathering before the rainy season and filled the storeroom to the brim. His heart, at least, felt abundant.
“For about a week, the children won’t come, and night classes haven’t started yet, so…”
They said the first week of the rainy season brought especially heavy downpours. The wind and rain made it difficult for anyone to travel all the way to Patrick’s house, far from the village.
While sipping warm coffee and gazing blankly at the falling rain, Patrick suddenly realized something.
“……Does that mean I’m free?”
It was the beginning of a vacation with no one to disturb him.