14. Breaking Ground
Breaking Ground
The ground dried out as the rain held off, and with Jeremiah's one last freeze still hanging over him, Kain went out to the garden to break the beds open.
"Time to get the soil ready," he said, to himself and the morning.
Over the fall he had smoked a great deal of fish and deer to see himself through the winter. The meat had carried him, but it had left him something else for the spring as well.
Every last scrap of wood ash had gone into a barrel out in the barn, fireplace ash with it, and now he hauled the barrel out. How many trees' worth of ash sat in there he couldn't have said, but it was a fair amount.
He rolled it over to the garden, then fetched his shovel from the side of the barn.
Mark's guide had been plain on it. Wood ash made fine fertilizer and would do a great deal for the soil.
Kain scooped it out and spread it over the six existing plots, not fussing much about evenness, and used near half the barrel laying it down over the dirt. Then he went back into the trees for the compost.
He had built a compost pile last year and gotten little use from it until now. A winter of freeze and thaw, and the bugs and worms before that, had turned the heap into a rich black dirt.
Or near enough to dirt that the name would do.
"All right." Kain drove the shovel into the heap and dug out a big shovelful. "Four parts compost to one part ash, the guide said. Let's see if I can get it close."
This part he would have to eyeball. He had no way to measure the ash he had spread or the compost he was digging, only the look of how far down the barrel had gone and four times that much off the heap, so it came down to a guess.
He carried it scoop by scoop to the garden and layered the compost over the ash, burying it. When the last of it was down, he drove the shovel into the ground and began to turn the soil.
「Soil structure improving.」
「Soil Management skill rising.」
Kain waved the notices off. The soil would be tested when the crop came up, and it would do or it wouldn't, and there was nothing in between worth fretting over.
He worked on steadily, and it was simple work, the same few motions over and over, drive the shovel in, turn the soil, move on. He went across all six plots, then doubled back and went across them again.
「Tilling skill rising.」
By the time he straightened, he had been over the whole garden four times. The soil lay dark and rich and ready for whatever went into it. One more good rain before planting would help set the new growth into it, but it would do without.
He crossed to the four new plots, the East Expansion. He had marked them out the year before and done next to nothing with them since.
He leaned on the shovel a moment and looked at the hard ground waiting for him. He hadn't marked how much work the first six had taken until now, with the raw ground in front of him showing plainly what a year of it made.
"Give it a year and these'll look about like the others." Kain drove the shovel into the ground. "Nothing for it but to start."
The ground was harder than the garden by far, matted through with grass that had held the spot for years, and rocks lay buried in it, some of which he didn't find until the shovel cracked against them.
The rocks had to come out before anything else could go in. He started with the biggest, prying them loose with the shovel and stacking them by the half-built stone wall, where they would earn their keep when he came back to it.
Some looked small until he dug at them and turned up the most of them still buried under the dirt.
His back ached as he worked the rocks loose one after another, and his arms burned with it, and he didn't stop. Ghost came out to watch and lay down in the yard a dozen feet off.
With the rocks clear he went after the scrub, a handful of bushes that had taken root in the plot. He sank the shovel into the ground beside the first and worked his way around it.
He had no idea how long its roots had been down there, but the bush fought him as he drove the shovel in again and again. He worked a full circle around it, down about eight inches, until a tangle of root showed.
The thin ones his shovel cut clean. The thick ones, an inch through in places, were the trouble, and he set his jaw and went at them hard as he could.
The shovel drove home over and over until the taproot gave at last. The bush keeled over, and he caught it and pitched it off to the side, and then he set the shovel down and took up the mattock.
The mattock ran like a pickaxe, one end an adze blade, the other a point. He brought it down with everything he had. The blow split the packed ground, and he wrenched it free and swung again.
The mattock tore through root where the shovel couldn't, but it was brutal work. Every inch of the root fought him, and by the time the first bush was out, his arms had gone to rubber.
He stood and leaned on the handle and looked down at the hole he had carved.
"One down." He wiped his brow. "On to the next."
There were five bushes in all, and he started over on the second, shovel first and then the mattock. Each one was the same slow fight as the first, hard but no worse, and he swung on through them.
When the last bush came free he set to tilling the plot. The ground gave grudgingly, grass roots laced all through it and a soil that hadn't been turned in a lifetime.
He pushed on, driving the shovel, turning what he could, and coming back over it.
He got through the one plot, the shovel only biting the top four inches of it. Not much, but enough to start. He went back over it a second time and turned the top eight.
Ghost rose, looked at him, and padded over to the ground by the wall.
Ghost dug. The wolf opened a hole about six inches down, moved along, and started a second.
Kain watched it a moment and went back to turning the soil.
The work went on the same way for days after. Kain turned the plots and Ghost dug its holes along the edge of the garden, and Kain filled them in, and Ghost dug them out again.
The wolf was doing what the wolf did.
When he finally stood back to look it over, two of the four expansion plots had been broken out and lay ready for seed. The first six sat dark and prepared beside them.
The two new plots showed lighter than the old, more stone still in them, and they had a long way to go before they matched, but that was the way of it. Along the side of the house a small herb bed had gone in, raised, about ten feet long and two across.
He leaned on the shovel and let his eyes run over the lot of it, the dark plots and the raw ones and the new bed by the house. Once Jeremiah's last freeze had come and gone, the ground would be ready for seed.
◇ ◆ ◇
That very evening the last frost came, the one Jeremiah had been calling for. Kain woke to a cold house and his own breath showing in the grey morning light.
He had let the fire go out the night before on the strength of the warm spell, and climbing out of bed into the chill, he wished he hadn't.
He dressed and got himself ready and went out into the yard. The sun was well up and the cold was breaking fast, the frost already going to wet on the grass.
Jeremiah came by on the road in his wagon.
"You're good to go," he called. "That was the last of it, sure as anything. No more frost till fall, or I'm a whelp."
Kain raised a hand. He went back into the house, took up the seed order that had been waiting by the back door, and opened it.
The packets spilled out across the table, and he lined them up. Eight plots stood ready, and he meant to use every one.
He set Mark's guide out beside the seeds.
"All right. Let's see." He smoothed the guide flat and found the Year Two section, the few lines of it in Mark's hand. Potatoes and onions. The new plots first.
Mark had said more than the page held, once, on some road with the wagons creaking along behind them. Potatoes first in rough ground, he'd told Kain. They're hardy, they don't ask much, and their roots do the work of breaking the bed up for whatever comes after.
Start a hard plot with potatoes and it forgives you the rest.
He worked down the rest of the packets. Most went by the book, so deep, so far apart, the kind of thing he no longer had to fight to keep straight in his head.
The white pumpkin seeds he set off to the side, to go in last.
He started with the seed potatoes, since they sounded the simplest of it. He took the hoe out to the two new plots and drew a corner of the blade across the prepared ground, cutting trench after trench down the length of them.
Then he knelt and began dropping the potato eyes in.
Potatoes had no seeds as such. Near as he could tell, a potato just budded all over its skin, and the buds went by eyes, though why they got the name he couldn't have said.
What he had was a sack of cut chunks, each one with an eye or more to it, and he laid them out with the eyes turned up, near a foot between one and the next.
He used the whole sack getting through both plots, then drew the hoe back across the rows to pull the mounded dirt down over the trenches, and soon every row lay covered.
「Garden Plot 7 planted.」
「Garden Plot 8 planted.」
He looked over the rows. Last year he had planted by poking seeds into the dirt with a finger and hoping. This year he planted like a man who had read the book.
There was a long way to go yet, and he went over to Plot 3.
Plot 3 sat nearest the corner of the house, off toward the barn. He cut his trenches across it the same way, and these were the onions. The trenches dredged easy in the worked soil, and he knelt and went along them sowing the seed.
He worked the dirt with his fingers. It was nothing like the work his hands had known before the farm.
The earth under them was rich and thick, and when he turned a clod a worm showed and twisted away. Centipedes and millipedes went scattering. Grubs squirmed, trying to dig back down to their sleep, and birds dropped out of the trees to snatch the ones the turning had brought up.
He sowed the last of the row, then went back along it pushing the dirt over the seed by hand. He could have gone quicker with the hoe, but he wanted this part done with his own hands.
The Martinson place ran clean and efficient, more a ranch than a farm. Kain's was a rough thing set beside it, and would stay rough a good while yet, and for the moment that suited him fine.
He finished the onions and went back to the house for more seed. The tomatoes went in as starts, and after them the beans and the cabbages and the peppers.
When those were in, he came back for the packet of white pumpkin seeds.
Pumpkins were a crop for the fall, and he put them in the spring ground anyway. They were a thing his brother would have grown, a rare sort that came on slow and wanted careful watering and a deal of patience.
He raised three small mounds and pressed two seeds into each.
If two of the seeds took, he would be content, and if only one took, that would be enough. Whatever they gave back was beside the point of them. He had planted them for his brother, and he had planted them for himself.
When the pumpkins were in he straightened, stretched the kinks out of his back, and went over to the herb bed.
The herbs were still half a mystery to him, though he had got the hang of plenty else. He could make sense of some of the diagrams in Mark's guide now, and he had asked Sam about the rest.
He had bought a mixed packet rather than this herb and that, a dozen-odd kinds together, which suited him well enough. He held the packet low to the bed and tipped it out, some seeds large and some small, scattering them across the surface.
Then he raked the bed over light, and went to the barn for hay, and spread that over the top, working it down into the soil with his fingers to hold the moisture and keep the bed even.
He went to the well and drew up a bucket, washed the soil off his hands in it, then watered the herb bed down lightly. He did the same across the main garden, not soaking it, only wetting it enough to wake the seed.
After all the rain, it wanted little more than that.
The sun was low by the time the last of it was watered in. Kain's trousers were caked with dirt and his hands black with it, so he drew up another bucket and washed himself down, then went in and made a quick supper and carried it back out to sit by the garden.
He ate without a word and looked out over the worked beds.
Ghost came over and lay down at the corner of the garden where it had once left its rabbit kills. It set not one paw on the tilled dirt. It looked at Kain, then at the garden, then back at Kain.
Over by the barn Roan moved back and forth in his stall, never one to stand still for long. The stars were coming out over the trees.
Nothing showed in the beds yet, and nothing would for a good while. The seed would want days to break the surface and weeks past that to come to anything, and there was no end of work between here and then.
He took a last look at the dark, turned ground, and went inside.