Truly Creating Farms

"...Fine, I agree."

'Great, one last thing though, promise it on your life.'

"Why?"

'Well, I am not certain about whether a partly pure being can lie or not, and from the fact that you weren't caught, I am leaning more towards the fact that you can lie pretty easily, so I just wanted you to promise on your life that you won't. It's mostly just to give me some closure.'

"...F, fine, I promise on my life that I will not ever erase any knowledge you hold."

After it said that, a chain seemed to form around the system's being not in any way putting pressure on it but simply staying there. When I asked it about it though, it just said that it saw nothing, and while I was very inclined not to believe him, his tone seemed genuine, not that that was an indicator that it was telling the truth.

From there, I was suddenly transported back to reality, still remembering everything that had happened within the system space. Hence, it seemed that the system had kept its promise, which honestly surprised me as I was expecting it just to erase my mind anyway. And although I spent what felt like a very long time within the system space, it turned out that only two hours had passed.

At first, I was expecting for everybody to be trying to make sure that I was alive, surprisingly though that hadn't happened, and the 'adults' were just continuing to work on removing the stones from the river except for Gabriel and another person who was fishing, while the children were either doing their own thing or playing soccer.

One would assume that I would feel sad or offended that they disregarded my safety. Still, for some reason, I was sort of relieved that they were able to continue with their day without me, no longer being completely dependent on me.

Regardless, now that I had the info from the system, I suddenly knew that my boat needed at least 5ft of water to float. As for why it didn't just tell me that and instead chose to put it directly into my memories, I didn't know. It didn't really matter much to me though, as I had gotten the information regardless.

The only problem was that after removing the stones, the river was only 3ft deep, meaning that everyone would have a pretty hard time digging the remaining two feet, not so much because they were too short to do so because from a basic estimate, they appeared to range in height from 5ft 2in all the way up to 6ft 1in, but because the shovel used would have to stay entirely underwater making it very ineffective basically.

I knew that there was very little left to do from here, though, as I really couldn't think of anything else to do to help improve the settlement apart from starting a Suri Bug farm and a sweet potatoes one as well. So I decided to spend whatever time was left for the river modifications to be finished just building more boats.

April 29th, 0001:

In the past 29 days, a lot had happened, mostly relating to the farm, as I had already planted all of the 362 orange seeds we had (we had 39 oranges, and they had about 10 seeds per). But more importantly, I had been able to plant all 54 avocado seeds we had and 2 coconut seeds.

As for how we cleared the land, we had already cleared a portion of it, just using it for fueling the fires we made every day, but we did have to take a few days to clear out the area. On the bright side, though, we now had so much wood available that we would not have to worry about wasting any for a while.

Also, although at first I was scared that we might not have been able to water all of the plants, nature was able to make up for my unpreparedness and, as usual, it rained almost every night and occasionally in the day as well as it already had been for a while, I suppose that I just hadn't noticed much because I had gotten used to it by now.

Regarding the sweet potatoes farm, I hadn't quite started it because although using the trays that used to be for the orange seeds; I was able to grow some sweet potatoes slips, those were still beginning the process of growing roots and had yet to be moved into the soil, at least not yet.

The Suri farm was in some ways the same, except for the fact that it took up a lot less space but had still yet to give any pretty understandable products. The farm itself was just a big 12ft by 12ft area with rock walls that were 1ft tall. It took so long to set up the area because it took a while to find rocks the size I needed.

As for setting up the farm itself, it was effortless since bugs were known for laying tons of eggs and having short lifespans. Furthermore, the Suri bug was actually just the larva of a common amazon rainforest pest known as the Rhynchophorus palmarum, making it super easy to find and catch in the wild.

The problem was mainly just getting a female, and since I had no idea how to identify the one, I ended up just catching ten and hoping for the best. The plan was to feed them every day though a removable compartment of the box that otherwise only had small holes to let in oxygen and feed them for six to eight weeks until either they died or I could see larva inside their container.

Sadly I hadn't yet seen any meaning that none had probably laid eggs yet. The good thing though was that only four weeks had passed, so I still had another four to go before I would have to try again. Once I got larva, I would just kill all of the Rhynchophorus palmarum as they were just a pest and pretty much just have to wait 5 weeks before all 693 were ready to eat (The average number of eggs a female Rhynchophorus palmarum lays).

That was for the future though, as now that and I couldn't wait to take the two boats on a test ride to finally get the plan to start building a new settlement in motion. Everyone else, excluding the children, had finally cleared out the four-mile-long river.