Chapter 215 Farming Greenhouse, Plan
After the conversation about Neil's past ended, Edmund asked Rye what his plans were. Rye explained his plans.
Edmund pondered for a while about selling vegetables in winter and felt that Ray's plan was somewhat feasible.
This did not dampen Lai's enthusiasm for starting a business.
He remembered that he owned two shops next to the market, which had always been rented out.
The area is small, and the annual income is also limited; it can be used by Lai to sell vegetables.
The vegetables haven't been planted yet, and the shop isn't needed for the time being. He plans to tell Lai about the shop later.
The dark clouds have dispersed somewhat, but it's still drizzling outside.
The morning passed, and it was lunchtime.
Edmund did not stay for dinner; he rode away from the manor and told Ray to wait for his message.
Some of the problems that had troubled Ray for a long time were resolved, but new problems began to linger in his mind.
“Lord Edmund used to always invite me to stay for a meal whenever he came over. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and he looks much older now.”
Old Butler Cher sighed.
When was that?
"Ray asked."
"Many years ago, Lord Victor and Lord Edmund were childhood playmates."
In the northwest corner of the garden, there used to be a very tall and large oak tree. They built a wooden cabin on it as a secret base and would climb up to play every day.
"That sounds like a really good time."
That's right.
After seeing Edmund off, Ray and the old butler Cher returned to the villa.
Karma was preparing lunch in the kitchen, with Diana helping her.
That day, after Lyle mentioned that the Cher family could move to the first floor of the villa, Diana and Jane moved to the room to the right of Cher.
The Duncan and Rose brothers moved to the room on the left.
After discussing it with his wife, Karma, Vincent decided to stay at the gatehouse. He said the manor gate needed someone to guard it.
Vincent is very busy every day, and sometimes he works late into the night, so it's better for him to live in the doorman's room.
Considering that the couple did need some alone time, Lai didn't try to persuade them further. In any case, as long as everyone felt it was convenient for them, that was fine.
He returned to his study to work on the unfinished draft. The sudden downpour interrupted their afternoon's land clearing plan.
After listening to gossip all morning, Ryan, unsurprisingly, revealed himself once he returned to a secluded spot.
Two beautiful chandeliers were added to the study. He stood on the chandeliers and swayed back and forth on them, like he was on a swing.
"Rian, come down. The study is too dark. I need to turn on the light."
Ryan floated down from the rooftop, surrounded by a soft halo of light.
Snap—
The chandelier was turned on, and the area of the study near the door was illuminated again.
Lai walked to the window and quietly gazed at the scenery outside.
The torrential rain washed away all the dust outside, making the surrounding grass and trees even greener, instantly giving it the feel of summer.
Or rather, summer never leaves this vast city. The rain merely makes it cleaner.
“Ray, I don’t like it here. The magical elements here are too scarce and too restless.”
Not to mention Ryan, who is more sensitive to elements, even Lai felt this lack of elements.
Would this be better?
Lai took out a high-grade wood elemental stone from his spatial ring.
"Something is better than nothing."
Ryan gave his own assessment.
"You humans just love to create all this nonsense. It's already difficult enough for all living beings to survive in this world, why do you have to make things difficult for each other?"
Ray looked at Ryan.
"Because I have nothing better to do, I don't think I can give a definite answer."
Lian scoffed, his face still bearing that disdainful expression that showed he didn't care about anything.
"Get out of here quickly."
"Yes, we'll leave as soon as we rescue Neil."
"Hmph. With your current strength, this is almost an impossible task."
Ryan showed no mercy in sabotaging Ray.
"I know that, give me some time."
Ryan floated in the air several times, floating upright and then upside down.
Time waits for no one.
Ryan's erratic voice lingered in the air, and Ray sighed heavily.
"Young master, dinner is ready."
"good."
After Karma took over cooking, the staple food that Lai could eat became all kinds of bread.
The dishes are mostly stews.
After eating these foods for a while, Lai increasingly missed steamed buns, noodles, and other similar foods.
He felt he should find an opportunity to exchange culinary skills with Karma.
Although there was a heavy rain, the next few days were sunny and pleasant.
The rain didn't soak the ground; the fields dried up completely in just two days.
Ray marked out a large area, and Vincent, along with his two sons, began to drive the cattle to plow the land, following Ray's instructions.
Vincent somehow got hold of a large bottle of potion, which was said to kill the weeds when sprinkled on the grass.
I didn't think it would have any effect, but it did work and saved me a lot of trouble.
Following Lai's instructions, the old butler Cher bought more than eighty red rockbirds and temporarily kept them in the warehouse.
Most of them are female birds, and they can lay eggs when they are raised until autumn.
If they're even luckier and all the eggs survive, these bird eggs can not only supply the farm's needs, but some can even be sold.
But food for the red rockbirds became a major problem.
"It's alright, we'll plant more corn. The land behind the villa is big enough."
Lei took out the basic design drawings that he had drawn after much thought.
"If I can't find a reliable craftsman, I need to build a greenhouse and an expert in building fireplaces."
"good."
Cher couldn't understand Rye's greenhouse design drawings, but he could find a craftsman for Rye who could.
Instead of plastic, Ray chose to use glass as a substitute for the light-transmitting parts.
This operation cannot achieve complete light coverage, and the fragility of the glass and the losses during the process must also be considered.
This means that the area of a single greenhouse cannot be too large.
In addition, the winters in the royal city are said to be warmer, but even so, Lei could not give up on the part of the design that would heat up the greenhouse.
Besides the earthen kang (heated brick bed), he was also considering the fireplace, which is a common feature in almost every household here.
The working principle of a kang (heated brick bed) is to use fire and the chimney to allow the heat emitted from the fire to circulate throughout the entire kang.
This process is achieved through the rugged flue at the bottom of the kang (heated brick bed), and the heat is retained for a long time, lasting for several hours.
Unfortunately, although Ray had seen the construction process, he could not replicate it, as it was nearly twenty years ago.
He was still young then, in the third or fourth grade of elementary school, and full of innocent imagination about the world.
Who could have imagined that a zombie horde would suddenly break out, and who could have imagined that he would come to this strange world?
As a second choice, Ray thought of a fireplace.
Almost the entire continent relies on fireplaces for heating in winter.
It also relies on burning wood, and how it retains heat is unknown, but the fireplaces here are indeed very well made.
Leaning against the fireplace in the living room, Ray, Neil, and Tata spent one cold winter after another in the small mountain village.
They sat by the fireplace, warming themselves by the glowing embers, hiding sweet potatoes and potatoes, as well as bird eggs wrapped in oiled paper.
How warm the fireplace was back then, and how sweet the sweet potatoes were.
He believed that the artisans in the royal city would be able to realize his vision for greenhouse insulation.
"You guys keep working. If you need more people, you can hire a few more. I'll go to the greenhouse."
After giving Cher the instructions, Ray left.
He has many seeds, all of which are excellent varieties. He needs time to select which ones are suitable for planting here, have greater economic value, and are more likely to attract the attention of nobles.
fruit.
This was the first thought that popped into Ray's head.
Compared to various vegetables, fruits are more often seen in living rooms and gatherings.
Winter fruits are already hard to find, and even in modern society, they are very expensive.
If he could provide fresh, delicious fruit, not the kind that is preserved in the fall using various methods, it would surely create a craze in the capital.
What should I plant...?
Lei felt a sense of unease.
It needs to be easy to plant and also have a certain yield.
Strawberries! Creamy white strawberries!
Suddenly, Ray had a flash of inspiration.
Apples are common in winter, pears are also available, and sugarcane can be preserved until then.
But these plantings are costly and take a long time, and he doesn't have that much time to spare.
Strawberry cultivation is not very convenient, but the yield is guaranteed to be high enough to meet the quantity requirements, making it a fruit whose effects are easy to see.
Lei has never seen those white strawberries on the market before.
He could ask Edmund if this novel fruit was on the tables of the nobility.
As for white strawberries, the only method he could think of was to continuously breed them until he found seeds with stable traits.
Wood magic perfectly met Lai's needs in this regard.
In the normal strawberry cultivation process, if there are a few strawberry plants with white characteristics, they can be used as the female and male parents.
He is confident that he can achieve small-scale planting of white strawberries in the next planting season.
Then, they use some harmless tricks to promote the "miraculous effects" of white strawberries.
It will become the most popular, rarest, and most talked-about fruit on the tables of the nobility.
Lai pulled a bag of seeds from the Elf Kingdom from the large box that Seya had given him.
He had eaten strawberries grown in the Elf Kingdom; they were large, sweet, and not too sour.
I don't know if this is the nature of the species itself, or if it's due to the strong wood element in the Elf Kingdom.
If possible, he wouldn't mind finding some elemental stones of average quality and placing them in the greenhouse to increase the concentration of magical elements here.
Lei had some ideas about the future direction of planting.
Before the greenhouse is completed, he can conduct some trial planting and breeding in this sunroom.
Winter is still a long way off, but summer and autumn vegetables are not to be missed.
These vegetables can not only be sold, but also supply the farm's daily food needs, saving a little money on grocery shopping.
Daily expenses didn't take up the majority of the budget, and Lai didn't care. For him, the daily supplies for the manor were just a side benefit of growing vegetables.
It would be great if we could obtain exclusive supply rights from the Arcanis family.
Ray sighed as he thought about this.
In the Great Forest of Eton, with Tata and Seya by our side, we traveled every day, wary of the dangers around us and the monsters that might suddenly appear from nowhere.
With these distractions, I only thought about getting to the royal city as quickly as possible each day, which diverted a lot of my attention.
But once they arrived in the capital, facing complete darkness and suddenly finding themselves with nothing to do, they were filled with many more worries.
He had to find something to do and quickly figure out a way to get information about Neil.
Lei made up his mind.
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