Abandoned - Seed and Feed- Story 9 NWS

[Abandoned]

Intro


  This is the 9th story in the New World Series.  When you were at The Granary ( story 8 ) eager explorer, you saw that they had a small greenhouse for growing plants solely for the purpose of saving the seeds to plant later.  Most small towns and villages struggle to grow enough plants for food much less to save the seed.  They rely on the river boatmen to bring the seeds they need.  Some want seeds for a whole field, others want them for patches or small farmyards.  Riverboat Depot wanted to be able to supply enough seeds for the trade route customers and to give to the migrants and expeditions that leave their town.  They sent out a 2nd expedition, this one went across the river to establish a settlement to provide the depot with the needed seeds.  The settlement was named Seed & Feed.







Map seed  # 6491443991  Valley One River,  Small,  fair,  Disasters Off,  Vanilla Medium (5 families)
 
 
Mods activated for this map and load order:

Map Changing and Starting Mods:   Banished UI Maps, Banished UI Town Names, Labor Window, RK Minimized Status, CC Light Rain, override Map, Settler Deco, Kid Deco Tree Fall, Kid Tree Replacer X-Light, New Flora Edit, Kid Vegetable Start

Tweak Mods:   Better Fields, Fishing Dock +25%, Hunting Season, Increased CC, 1:1 Alternative (Voeille), Rock Respawn, Tiny Smoke.

Major or Must Have Mods:    An Empty Square, Nomads (Kid), override Uneducated, Storage Crates, Kid Workshop, Kid Abandoned Places SE, Kid Alotoseed Trader, Kid Tiny, Kid Tiny Downtown.

Supporting Mods:     Kid Deco Farm Animals, Kid Deco People, Kid Deco Wreaths, Kid Farmyard, Kid GrowHuntFish, Kid Hedgerow



  Welcome to Seed & Feed, eager explorer, my name is Ayann.   Yes, it is a beautiful autumn day and this year's seed harvesting is already underway.  The sacks of seeds will be ready as usual for the river boatmen to pick up.  We have no complaint about the service.  Come, I will show you around town, tell you how we got started, and how our seed-saving system works.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 1


  It was a short trip here from Riverboat Depot, just across the river.  Two of the river boatmen ferried us over.  There were only 16 of us, 10 adults with 6 children.  We had lots of potatoes, some hide coats and iron tools, a small flock of chickens, and a large sack of mixed vegetable seeds.



  The men quickly gathered resource and build a large barn.  There was a large herd of deer nearby and two more along the river to the east, we saw them as we came by on the riverboats.   Ottie and Magdalina built a tiny house and a tiny hunter there along the river.  Soon after they moved in, their first child was born, a boy they named Vestel. They took half the chickens and built a small coop and fenced in a small area.  They were glad to find wild sunflowers growing in the area that they could save to feed the chickens in winter.  The chickens could forage for weed seeds and insects until then.





  My husband, Alon, and I built a tiny house next to the barn and a chicken coop for the rest of the chickens.  We took the sack of mixed seeds and planted half the seeds in an 8'x10' crop field across for our house.   Soon after the seeds were planted, we had our first child, a boy we named Ruther.

  A third baby boy was born to the fisherman and his wife, Roll and Tabathari, shortly after they moved into the bait shop, they built by the fallen tree by the river.  Tabatha didn't think the fallen tree was the safest thing to fish from or for the children to play on.  They had a 4-year-old daughter, Ashanita, and a 1-year-old son, Shellin.  The newborn they named Parke.



  A wood cutter was built next to the stockpile and there was fish and wild foods cooking for supper.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 2


  Wallandolph and Eudorathy and their 3 children moved into a house near the bait shop.  Eudorathy gathered duck eggs and down from the duck pond in front of their house until Wallandolph took over harvesting some of the ducks for meat.  She then came to help with our chickens when our Ruther was born.



  Alon's good friend, Trentin, and his wife built a tiny house next to our vegetable field just down the road from the storage barn.  Their daughter, Ammi, was born just before we left Riverboat Depot but they refused to be left behind.  Their 2nd daughter, Permel, was born before the end of that first year.




  Our surplus of food was small but varied when it came time to start harvesting our mixed vegetable crop.  The vegetables were taken right to the sorting table in our back yard.  When the sorting was done, we found we had harvested beans, cabbage, potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and squash.  Some plants did not come up and others did not do well, we would have to wait until next year to see what veggies we missed.  While sorting vegetables I discovered that we missed the fact that 2 of our chickens were actually turkeys.  It snowed in autumn and we hoped we had enough sunflower seeds saved to feed the poultry over the winter.





  We had enough hides and duck down to make some warm coats, our supply of hide coats was getting low.  A tiny tailor shop was built down the road, halfway between the storage barn and the ducks.  Trentin became the tailor.  He pointed out the fact that we would need more tools soon.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 3


  By early winter of that first year, a tiny smith was built by the stockpile where the needed logs and iron were close at hand.  Our few laborers had to cut trees to ensure that the smith and woodcutter would have enough logs.  The tailor had to stop work because there were not enough hides to make the coats.  The deer herds were now in the small valley behind our house.





  That valley was a good place to build a forester.  We could only spare 1 worker for the job, and that may only be until spring when we needed a farmer for the new crop field that was cleared next to the first one.  Both fields were planted by spring and many of the vegetables were already coming up.  We had to be sure we were producing enough for our needs before we started letting the vegetables go to seed.



  We were glad, that spring, when Wallandolph and Eudorathy's son, Lymani, became an adult and joined the work force.  We were badly in need of workers.  We had 1 hunter, 1 fisherman, 1 duck pond worker, 1 forester, 1 woodcutter, 1 smith, 1 tailor, 2 farmers, 1 laborer, and 1 builder.  Chicken eggs were being left ungathered for the hens to hatch.   It was a relief when a group of workers arrived from Riverboat Depot to help.  They brought more seeds.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 4


  There were 16 adults with 4 children.  We immediately assigned another hunter, forester, and 3 more builders.  A tiny house was built by the hunter's workstations.  A young single male named Marving, moved in and became our 2nd hunter.





  A young single female named Parle moved into the house that was built next to ours.  She planted Brussels Sprouts and pumpkins and would take care of the turkeys in her yard.  An apple tree was discovered there.



  A house was built for a family of 4 back by the forester's workstation.  A tiny gardener shed was built for our 2nd forester, Prenton, to keep his tools in.  A tiny storage shed was built there too; Dina had already gathered some wild foods in the area.  The couples 2 children, a boy and a girl, were both young adults living at home.  Dina and the 2 children were our 3 new builders.  We were glad that so many of the adult children were choosing to stay with their parents; our firewood supply was good but our log supply was very low.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 5


  Two more houses were built for families with adult children wanting to live at home.  One house was down by the duck pond and the other was by the woodcutter and the newly built seed trader.  We needed a trading post to store our seeds in until they were picked up by the river boatmen. 





  The last 2 families wanted to be farther from the river; they both chose to be built on the roads at the west end of the crop fields.  One family had a boy and a girl, ages 5 and 6 years old, the other family had a newborn daughter. 
 


  The old deadwood tree that served as a fishing pier proved to be too slippery and dangerous that winter.  Roll would no longer let his wife, Tabathari, take a turn fishing after she slipped and almost fell into the icy water.  The deadwood tree was replaced with a safer and sturdier tiny pier that 2 could fish from together.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 6 




  There were 4 children that would reach school age soon, so a tiny school was built across from the storage barn and next to it was built a tiny town hall.  On the other side of the school next to the crop fields we built our first seed collecting workstation. Before beginning our seed collecting and trading, we needed to know that we had everything we needed to be happy and healthy.  Our overall health was a bit low.   We took inventory and found our food variety was poor; our sorted vegetables were gone by late winter.  We took to the woods to gather what herbs and wild foods we could fine.  We only had a small amount of wild oats.  We prepared a 3rd farm field for spring planting.

  We discovered a hedgerow not far from the tailor, there was a small pond with ducks, some mushrooms, wild oats, and a small walnut tree.  We cleared some of the trees to give the spot more sun and room to grow.  We found some sunflower stalks but it appeared the birds got the seeds.  We needed those wild oats, and the sunflower seeds could help feed the chickens and turkeys, so we put up a couple of scarecrows and built a feed store there by the hedgerow.  Two more families were now raising chickens for eggs.  We learned that some of the families had been feeding the ducks; that was probably the reason why the ducks were staying here year-round.


 


Our last project of year 2 was to build a House of Healing across from the tailor, but although folks flocked to it, our overall health did not improve.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 7



  All three farm fields were planted with mixed vegetables in early spring of year 3.  Some plants were already coming up when it began to snow.  The snowfall didn't last long and no crops appeared to be damaged.  Most of the vegetables were pretty hearty except perhaps the squash and the peppers. 





  One of the families living by the new farm field built a cleaning shed to gather plant debris that could be used to make compost.  Their thinking was in order to grow the peppers long enough to set seeds, the peppers would need to be grown in a greenhouse.   We would see when autumn came how well the vegetable in our first farm field did at setting seeds, the vegetables would not be harvested for food, only for the seeds that formed.  We hoped to have several sacks of mixed seeds for the river boatman to pick up.  We later hoped to have individual vegetables growing in their own fields to provide sacks of seeds for those who wanted seeds for more than just a farmyard or patch.



  The first seed harvesting went as expected.  The cabbage and beans which came up first after planting produced seeds that dried in the field in the late summer sun.  The summer squash also grew quickly but had to be cut open for the seeds to be exposed to the sun for drying.  Many of the pepper plants did not do well from the start being planting during the cold wet spring.  The peppers did not grow long enough to set useable seeds before the cooler fall weather set in.  We would definitely need a greenhouse for growing peppers if we wanted to provide Riverboat Depot with pepper seeds.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 8


The potatoes and pumpkins were the last plants in the field.  The potatoes only had to be dug up and put in sacks.  They would be cut into pieces with eyes before they were planted.  The pumpkins being bigger than the squash took longer to grow and some were still being harvested when the first snow fell in late autumn, the thick skin protected the seeds.  The seeds were removed from the pumpkins and spread out to dry in the collecting shed before being put in sacks with the other seeds.   Six sacks of seeds were taken to the trading post.





  Not far from the trading post, by the bait shop, a compost bin was built.  There was some plant debris already in the supply shed that was built next to the bin, but not enough to make the compost with.  We did have a large surplus of duck down and also plenty of fish that could be composted until we had more plant debris to use.



  The growing house was built closer to the duck pond where it would be fully exposed to the winter sun.  Our first thought was to immediately start growing peppers but our 2nd thought was to transplant some of the wild oats into the grow house.  Our overall health was still a bit low; we needed grain.  The oats won out.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 9


  We expected the migrants that arrived in spring of year 4 but we did not expect quite so many of them.  Anell, the new seed merchant, came to port from Riverboat Depot and told us to expect a group of workers.  He was very happy to get the first sacks of seeds and asked if there was anything we needed in exchange.  One of the regular river boatmen would have to bring non-seed items, a tally sheet was being kept for us.  Those sacks of seeds were valued at 100 trade goods each.

  The new workers came shortly after Anell left.  They were given the choice of going to The Granary or coming here.  We were glad they chose to come to us.  There were 22 of them, 17 adults and 5 children.  Again, there were adult children in the group but none were old enough to marry.  We were again glad that most chose to stay with their parents.



  One family of 4 built a caretaker's house by the new chapel and cemetery just back of the main storage barn.  Another family of 4 built a tiny house by the compost bin.  An older couple built a house by the center farm field, their adult son built a tiny house nearby.  He wanted to plant a farmyard and raise turkeys.  Two tiny houses were built just inland from the hunters by the river.  A couple with a 2-year-old occupied one house, and a young single girl the other.  The open area behind and next to those houses was where we planned to grow our seed fields. 









  House building was moving right along with more builders, but so was the year.  It was late summer before the couple with 2 adult children moved into their new house back in the forest along with another forester workstation and another tiny gardener shed, we now had 2 more foresters and our wood supply would greatly improve.  There was more building to be done.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 10




  The last couple and their young child moved into their lighthouse built out on the point.  They saw a need for one and Andell, the seed merchant, said the light would be appreciated when the days got shorter and the nights longer.   He returned in summer with a message about the pepper seeds we did not include in the mix seed sacks.  It seemed those seeds would not be needed, there would be little demand for folks wanting to grow them here in the north.  Instead, he brought us 2 small sacks, one of corn seeds and one of carrots seeds.  Corn here in the north was grown as a vegetable or as feed for cows and chickens.  We would do better growing corn and carrots rather than the peppers. 



  By that time we had already built another seed collector shed and another growing house, both in the riverfront area, the seed collector by the original growing house and the new growing house by the compost bin.  We decided one would grow our oats for the time being and one would be used to grow carrots.  Our soil was quite rocky and growing long straight carrots would not be easy, we needed sturdy carrots to produce good seeds.  Growing them in compost in the growing house was the perfect solution.  The corn was planted with some sunseeds in the hedgerow by the new houses by the hunters.



  By autumn, carrot planting and seed collecting was well underway.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 11


  Our seed collecting at year 4's harvest time produced 22 sacks of seeds, we had several sacks that contained the seeds for only one vegetable rather than a mix.  We decided that the following spring we would use one of those single-crop sacks in the 8'x12' farm field we had ready; we would plant beans for more seeds.   The bean planting was well underway when we decided to plant another field with pumpkin seeds.  We feared we may have gotten too late a start planting the pumpkins but when the weather warmed, the pumpkins caught up with the beans.





  We lost some of the bean plants to a herd of deer.  They did not bother the pumpkin plants but some of the smaller pumpkins were bitten into.  The deer ran off when the hunters were near or the farmers returned to the fields to work.  Later in the year we built a fence along the far end of those fields.




  We planted some of the corn seeds over by the feed store.  There were a lot more sunflowers now that sprouted from dropped seeds.  One of the seed collectors began sacking corn, sunseeds, and wild oat as animal feed.  We took some of those feed sacks to the trading post and when Andell returned, he thought there was sure to be a market for the feed mix.  He also accepted some of the sacks of compost we had waiting; we thought those wanting to grow carrots would appreciate them.  He thought we may be right about that.



  By early autumn the bean seeds were drying in the field and the pumpkins were being harvested to dry the seeds in the collection shed.  The bean seeds were being put in sacks and taken to the trading post.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 12




  By the end of the year we had 37 sacks of carrots, beans, pumpkins, mixed seeds, and feed waiting at the trading post to be picked up.  By early spring of year 6 we had another 8'x12' field ready to plant with potatoes.  An 8'x10' field was ready to plant with cabbage, and another field the same size was being cleared of stone but would probably not be planted until the following year.  We thought the seeds from the slightly small fields would all be harvested by 1 farmer instead of having to assign another one.



  There would be a few less bean and pumpkin seeds to harvest this year because planting was underway when an early spring snowfall occurred.  The newly sprouted plants were sure to be damaged.  The bean plants that were planted earliest suffered the most damage, the pumpkin and potato plants not nearly as much.  Only 2 of the 3 mixed vegetable fields suffered noticeable damage.





  It snowed again in late autumn before all the seeds were gathered.  We still did not have young singles at an age to pair up but we built 2 tiny farmhouses by the 5 seed fields.  A 9-year-old male moved into one house and an 11-year-old female into the other.  Having farmers closer to the fields should at least speed up seed harvesting in autumn.  Our total seed harvest that year was only a bit less than the year before.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 13




  By the end of year 6, Seed & Feed had its first newlywed couple.  Elinettie turned 15 and moved in with Marving, the hunter, over by the seed fields. They both arrived with the first families that came from Riverboat Depot, so they knew each other all their lives.  By spring they had their first child, but Elinettie was out planting the cabbages.  The squash seeds were being planted in the field next to the cabbages.  We now had a field for each of the seed that we were given in the vegetable seed mix except for the peppers.  We had beans, pumpkin, potatoes, cabbage, and squash.  We had oats and carrots in the grow houses producing seeds, and some seeds were being saved from the Brussels sprouts in the turkey farmyard.





  In spring of year 7, we only planted 2 fields with the mix vegetables, one for our use and one for producing seeds.  The 3rd field was planted with corn seeds to be used with the sunseeds in the feed mix.  Folks along the northern trade route were very happy to get our feed mix, many of them had chickens, sheep, goats, or milk cows.  To show their appreciation for our seed mix, we were given a cow or calf by some of the families.  We really appreciated having milk for the children.



  Yes, eager explorer, Andell delivered the animals in his riverboat.  Being across the river from Riverboat Depot, we aren't actually part of the trade route.  Our only contact with river boatmen has been Andell the seed merchant but we have no complaint.  We are pretty self-sufficient, there is nothing we need.  Andell comes regularly early in the year and again in autumn so customers will have the seeds in plenty of time for spring planting.  He returns the empty seed sacks they give him, and he often has a small item or two that we could use, a cook pot, piece of rope, a bit of wool, or a wheel of cheese.  He and the other river boatmen are keeping an eye out for any vegetables we could include with the ones we are growing for seeds.  We are quite happy with the riverboat service.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 14




  No, eager explorer, as I said, there just really is nothing we need other than maybe a little fruit or nuts.  We only have the one apple tree but there are plenty of wild berries in our sizeable forest northwest of town.  I know we are owed quite a bit but we are happy to be providing seeds for those who need them.  We have plenty of room for more vegetable seed fields northeast of town.  We have plenty of room to expand the town to the southwest.





  Perhaps some time in the future we may need stone, iron, or tools, but for now we have everything and more than we need.  Seed & Feed has a population of 74 happy healthy citizens, 46 adults, 7 students, and 21 young children. 



  So, we do thank Riverboat Depot for sending the 2 groups of workers to us, and for keeping an eye out for other vegetables we could try growing for the seeds.  Thanks for stopping by eager explorer.  We enjoyed the visit.


The End