Chapter 8
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Translator: volt
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Potatoes
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Our farm spans about 3 acres.
And out of that, the 19th-century-style green-roofed country house, garden, and driveway—built with loving care by my mother, inspired by her cherished memories with Anne of Green Gables—take up roughly 0.8 acres.
The exterior and roofing materials are, of course, all wood.
Which means the siding peels or gets damaged often, requiring frequent repairs.
And frequent repairs mean the storage shed is always stocked with lumber, bricks, and other materials.
I decided to classify all the items blessed by this farm's resource cheat into two main categories.
First: "consumables" that fully restock to their original quantity by midnight.
For example, the scant roll of aluminum foil in the kitchen runs out before you can even wrap a single egg, but after time passes, it's replenished to its full amount.
Firewood, gasoline, over-the-counter meds, and all sorts of other goods fall into this category.
Second: "durables" that get repaired from damage or breakage by midnight.
For instance, pulling the chainsaw out of the shed and using it won't spawn a brand-new one at midnight. But if it gets jammed in a tree and breaks, it gets restored good as new back in the shed by then.
Cars, the forklift, all sorts of farming equipment, tools, and even weapons belong here.
What I was curious about was this:
How are the building materials for house repairs treated? Which category?
The answer: "consumables."
You can pull them from the shed endlessly—unlimited construction supplies!
Red cedar planks for the roof, bricks for the walls, siding, and chimney, plus white and green paint to protect the wood—everything!
"Is there anyone among you who knows masonry?"
"... "
"... "
"I figured as much. Then just use the red bricks we have here."
According to Eleanor, the previous settlement had even built their fireplaces out of wood, but those harsh conditions are a thing of the past now.
So with the lumber I chainsawed into shape, plus bricks, red cedar, white paint, and green paint... oh...
"The settlement looks so bright and cheerful!"
"...Indeed."
It felt remarkably close to the vibe of the 1979 Anne of Green Gables anime.
Mom, rejoice. Your dream has come true here.
Anyway, construction on the settlement is proceeding smoothly.
Remember how I said our farm is about 3 acres? The house takes up around 0.8 of that.
Then there's the cold storage, equipment shed, small chicken coop, and a slice of the gentle hillside—bringing the total to about 1 acre.
So what's on the remaining 1.3 acres?
Well, a vineyard made up of three 0.4-acre smart greenhouses. I have to emphasize "smart" greenhouses, or Dad's retirement savings poured into them will weep.
Two of them are dedicated to Shine Muscat grapes, while the third has been expanded recently to grow a variety of new breeds.
In other words...
This year's grape yield all comes down to those two 0.4-acre smart greenhouses.
0.4 acres x 2 = 0.8 acres.
0.8 acres.
And from that, roughly 10,000 bunches of grapes emerge...
"All done! Everyone, take a break!"
"I-it's done?"
"Uwaaaah!"
"We're gonna live!"
Thirty free laborers...! What would've taken days normally gets done in just half a day when you throw enough manpower at it...!
We successfully harvested 10,000 bunches of grapes!
Great. Now, what to do with all that...
I'll think about it later.
No answers right now. Even if all 33 of us here ate one bunch a day, it'd take a year and eight months to finish them.
Whether we dry them into raisins or whatever, that's not for now.
What to think about now...
Food we can eat right away!
With that thought, I turned my eyes toward the cold storage piled high with Shine Muscats.
And nearby... I spotted sacks of potatoes.
Dozens of those potatoes—that's our food from here on out.
No choice. We're not rice farming here, and the polished rice from home just yields dirt if planted. The vegetable patch has tomatoes and cabbage, but not enough to be a staple.
'Okay, remember, remember what Mr. Choi from next door said about growing potatoes...!'
I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down everything that came to mind. Even the tiniest details were hard-won knowledge from decades—centuries, even—of trial and error.
A single misstep could multiply or tank the yield several times over.
"Soft light sprouting, then disinfect the knife and cut, curing... Good. That's not bad."
Thank goodness the precious knowledge from Mr. Choi, my weekend farm, and farming YouTube channels was still fresh in my head.
Wow, Mr. Choi, thank you.
I'll erect a statue called something like "Potato Saint" for you someday.
Overexcited for no reason, I hoisted a fifty-kilo sack of potatoes and dragged it toward the English settlers. Seeing me sweat buckets, Eleanor—who'd been hauling lumber—freaked out and helped split the load.
"Why drag this all the way yourself? You okay?"
"...I'm fine."
Damn mystique. Can't even scratch a mosquito bite in front of them. I lightly wiped the sweat from my face and flashed Eleanor a mysterious smile with a nod of thanks.
We finally reached the edge of the settlers' village, panting and collapsing in exhaustion.
"Ugh... Wh-what is this? It looks like a monster."
Only then did Eleanor peer inside and grimace. I'd thought, "Monster? Come on," but when I looked into the sack myself... yeah... I frowned too.
Neglected potatoes with long sprouts really did resemble tentacle monsters more than I'd imagined.
Still, I hurriedly picked out one with shorter sprouts and held it up to Eleanor. She flinched instinctively but leaned in at my gesture.
"See? It's a potato."
"Po... tato?"
Huh? She still doesn't know?
It's been nearly a century since Columbus reached America—how do they not know potatoes yet?
"Is it... a lump of dirt? Or animal dung? Kindling?"
"...We're going to eat it."
"... "
No good.
I won't stand for that "Th-this...? For e-eating...?" face.
Forcing a shrug, I pulled a boiled potato from my pocket back home and took a bite.
Then, with the most casual expression I could muster, I offered her another one. Eleanor, still suspicious, nibbled hers—and her face relaxed.
"It tastes... pretty good?"
"This is our new bread from now on. It'll grow better than wheat."
"This thing?"
"Yes."
Only then did surprise register on her face as she examined the dirt-covered potato with curiosity.
"So how do you eat these sprouts...?"
"Oh, no, you can't eat those. They're poisonous."
"... "
"Don't eat the leaves or stems either. Just this root bulb."
She looked even more creeped out at that, but no helping it. Better than hiding it and mass-producing poisoning victims later.
Anyway, they looked unappetizing, and for planting later, we'd need to trim most of the bad sprouts anyway.
I pulled out my Swiss Army knife and trimmed the long sprouts. Eleanor watched and pitched in.
"How long should the sprouts be left?"
"About a centimeter."
"...Pardon?"
"Uh, er, like... thumbnail? Half a thumbnail?"
"Two lines to one barleycorn, or about half a digit?"
"Uh... yeah?"
"I'm asking if it's two lines to one barleycorn, or 0.5 digits."
...What alien language is this?
"How many inches is that?"
"Four lines make one barleycorn. Three barleycorns make one inch."
"Got it. Now I underst—"
"And one digit is three-quarters of an inch."
"... "
"So two lines to one barleycorn..."
"Just cut it to about this much."
"...Yes."
Soon, other settlers gathered around and helped out, finishing the sprout-trimming quicker than expected.
Normally, you'd do "soft light sprouting"—exposing them indirectly to sunlight in partial shade to grow short sprouts—but since we couldn't, they grew long, hence the extra work.
...Yeah. I never imagined I'd time-slip 400 years back and deal with this crap.
Suppressing a sigh, I called out to the villagers.
"Alright, everyone, bring your knives. We've got work to do first."
Potato farming, simply put, involves cutting sprouted potatoes into pieces, burying them, and letting the sprouts grow.
The tubers develop from there, and you harvest after about 100 days.
But hacking them with a plain knife risks rot from germs entering the cuts, so you must disinfect the knife in bleach solution.
I dipped the settlers' knives in a 500:1 bleach dilution, then handed them back. Then I began teaching them potato planting one by one.
"Here, cut them into quarters, centered on the top where most sprouts are. Then bring them to me.
But for the small ones, no need to quarter them. Like this one—about 30 or 40 grams... wait, how much is this?"
"Did you say 30 drams?"
"No, grams—no, what's a dram? Eleanor? Care to explain?"
"One ounce is 16 drams."
"Ah, right."
"Though sometimes one ounce is 8 drams. For weighing medicines..."
"... "
"Anyway, one ounce is 16 drams, one pound is 16 ounces or 7,000 grains."
"... "
I closed my eyes, hit by that familiar sense of bullshit.
Ah, this is it.
How much is a geun? 600 grams for meat, sometimes 500, 375 for fruit, meds are 1 geun per 40 nyang and 1 nyang is 4 don and 1 don is about 15 grams so meds 1 geun is roughly... crap, forgot. Chili powder's down to 540g per geun these days, wild ginseng as precious meds is 300g per geun...
That familiar bullshit taste.
Eyes half-closed, I thought:
Ah, base-3 and base-4? Sounds like ass even just hearing it. Did the English secretly have 12 fingers?
Someday, the metric system would smash these stupid units like a white knight on horseback. With that daydream, I shut my mouth.
"Anyway, yes. Roughly a bit more than one ounce per piece."
"Understood."
"And bring them over once cut."
And so we gathered the potatoes—sprouts trimmed to "two lines to one barleycorn length," cut into pieces weighing "roughly one ounce to 22 drams."
Ready to plant these chunks now?
No.
There are reasons for cutting whole potatoes into chunks instead of planting them intact.
One is efficiency: quartering one potato gives you four seed pieces.
Another: stressing the seed potato with cuts makes sprouts grow faster.
Various other reasons, but mainly those two. Cutting saves time and space hugely.
But potatoes are vulnerable to pests and disease. We disinfected knives earlier against viruses; plant them raw like this, and rot risk skyrockets.
Hence, the "curing" process: leave them 4-5 days in a well-ventilated spot so cut surfaces heal naturally, preventing disease.
Then cure in shady breezy spot, pile into ridges, and plant.
"How wide and long? A few links or feet...?"
"Stack them with about this spacing."
"How much is 'this'...?"
"Roughly this much."
"And spacing for planting potatoes...?"
"About that far apart."
Ha, hahaha, you primitive pre-moderns. I've finally "mastered" it.
Just gesture "this much, that much" in daily life—that's why their units are such bullshit. No wonder.
My bad for being a frail modernite obsessed with millimeter-spec'd screws.
Anyway, fall potatoes in Korea go in 5 cm deep due to their shitty monsoons, but ignore that—plant spring-style at 10 cm deep.
Wait 100 days, harvest, and food worries are over. No selling needed, just occasional fertilizer and neglect.
...There. Done.
Food secured, safety too—no more worries for me.
Sad to be separated from family and suddenly dropped 400 years back, but if I can live happily here debt-free...
"Oh, but what do we do with all those grapes?"
...Ah.
"...You shouldn't have brought that up."
"Pardon?"
Tears welled up suddenly, so I gazed at the sky for a moment.
The sky... is clear.
My vineyard, where I poured my entire twenties.
...Yielding 10,000 bunches of Shine Muscat.
Ha, what the hell do I do with them.