NOVEL NEXT Chapter 38: Chapter 38 Planting
The sun was barely cresting the horizon, casting a soft orange hue across the sprawling plains. Glyn, a farmer to the bone, stood with his thick hands on his hips, squinting across the eastern fields. The land here, fertile but unforgiving. Yesterday, the fields had been flooded with water, the surface irrigation channels working tirelessly to saturate the soil. It was a delicate, exhausting process, one that required the right timing, the right amount of water—just enough to nourish the crops, but not so much that it would flood them.
The morning air was thick with the smell of damp earth, the scent of the land awakening after the irrigation had settled. Glyn turned his head as the sound of cartwheels grew closer. A young worker, grinning through a gap in his teeth, pulled a pair of oxen-drawn carts behind him, laden with burlap sacks of seeds.
"Glyn!" the young man called, his voice cracking slightly as he waved his hand, his teeth gap shining through his crooked grin. Glyn grunted in response, taking his time to appraise the carts before him.
The young worker jumped down from his cart, eager to unload. "The usual is here," he said, tossing a sack over his shoulder and dragging it toward the fields.
Glyn, slow and steady in his movements, approached the sacks. He brushed his hand over the rough burlap and lifted the flap, revealing the pale seeds inside. His brow furrowed as he scooped a handful, his calloused fingers feeling the weight and texture of each grain.
What were they soaked in, the more i look at them... Glyn asked, his voice low and gravelly, his eyes narrowing as he inspected the seeds more closely.
The young worker, looking up at the sky. "We got 'em off some big, big barrels this seeds." He gestured vaguely with his hands, as though to explain the size of the barrels without quite knowing how.
Glyn's lips curled in a disapproving grunt. "Aye, the little must have some methods, eh?" He muttered under his breath, not convinced and his eyes never left the sacks as he began to help the young worker unload.
They were planting over 400 acres after yesterday and today, and Glyn didn't expect it to go smoothly. It never did. Over 150 workers were scattered across the fields, working in time with the sun, hands moving swiftly as they dug, sowed, and worked the earth like a living thing. As Glyn moved among them, directing the others, he noticed the young worker pausing to watch the large group.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, his eyes squinting as he took in the vast stretch of land. "The lord's got some coin it seems," the young man said, his voice laced with curiosity. He leaned against a post, watching the workers move like ants across the field.
Glyn let out a deep, exasperated sigh. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and looked out over the land, observing the rows of workers moving like a well-oiled machine. "Coin doesn't mean a thing if you don't know how to use it." His voice was heavy with years of experience, each word steeped in the wisdom of someone who had spent decades fighting the land. "He's throwing away it all away. Wheat doesn't grow well around here, and beans? They're no better."
He spat onto the ground, watching the spittle hit the earth. "Barley, though, barley will grow. But fucking bandit will ravage them if not then the English cunts will burn our fields. We might get lucky and get a decent yield from the barley, but the wheat..." He shook his head, eyes darkened with the memory of failed harvests.
The young worker, oblivious to the gravity of Glyn's words, picked his nose and chuckled. "At least you'll make some coin off of it, right?" He said, trying to find some humor in the labor.
Glyn turned and looked at him, his face unreadable. "Coin don't mean much when you've worked the land long enough to know it's not the gold that'll keep you alive—it's the land itself. But don't you worry, lad. If we're lucky, we'll see a harvest, and coin will come with it. Maybe not as much as the lord hopes, but enough to keep our heads above water."
The young man nodded, though his expression was far less convinced than his words. "Aye, well... we'll see," he muttered, and with a grunt, he went back to his work, lifting the next sack of seeds and heading toward his plot of land.
As Glyn watched the workers, his thoughts drifted to the future, to the season ahead. The sun climbed higher in the sky, and with each hour, the fields came alive with the sound of shovels, rakes, and the rustling of seeds being planted.
The land was fickle. No matter how many sacks of seed they planted, no matter how much effort they poured into irrigation, the earth would decide if they ate well or went hungry.