Chapter 352: A Fair Deal for the Lords’ Harvest

The meeting spot for the Lords’ Alliance was, as usual, set in Territory Five.

Once everyone had arrived Xia Qing shared the good news. “Luo has agreed to let us store our vegetables and grains in Territory One’s Food Depot. The prices and requirements will match those of the Safe Zone storage, but here’s the best part — we’ll be allowed to collect food from there once a week.”

The lords had worried they’d have to pay above Safe Zone prices just to store their food in Territory One, so now they couldn’t stop grinning.

Xia Qing continued, “The storage shelves in Territory One are two meters long, one meter wide, and two meters high, with five levels. We need to figure out exactly how many shelves we’ll need in total; I have to report the number to Captain Hu when I get back.”

Each storage rack in the Food Depot costs 150 credits per month, so everyone needed to estimate carefully and make good use of the space.

Kuang Qingwei, ever the canny middleman, whipped out his phone and started calculating. “The racks are standard size—each level holds six bags of grain, so one rack fits thirty bags. Work out how many bags of grain you’ll need to store.”

Shizhong asked, “We’re only allowed to store wheat, rice, mung beans, and corn, right? No one should have much wheat left, and a hundred rice stalks won’t add up to much either, so that leaves mung beans and corn as our main crops. Kuang, how much does each standard bag hold?”

Kuang Qingwei turned to Qi. “Qi, all I know is a standard grain bag fits 120 jin of wheat. But mung beans and corn are heavier than wheat, right?”

Qi Fu, the seasoned farming expert, set everyone straight. “Nope, wheat’s the heaviest. A bag that holds 120 jin of wheat fits about 115 jin of corn, 100 jin of mung beans, and only 90 jin of rice.”

Seeing everyone’s surprise Qi Fu chuckled. “Before the disaster my wife and I worked shipping grain and vegetables—we’d use bags just like these all the time.”

“So rice is actually the lightest?” Zhao Ze’s mother asked, genuinely curious.

Qi Fu explained, “Rice in its husk is lighter. Once it’s milled into white rice, a bag can hold nearly 130 jin. Of course by then it’s a processed product, so you’d need smaller retail bags—ten, twenty, or fifty jin each.”

Kuang Qingwei jotted the weights down. “Using the numbers from Qi, everyone do the math for your own grain.”

Even though the second crop of mung beans hadn’t dried yet, they’d all had experience with planting and harvesting the first batch. Everyone quickly figured out likely yields, using early-crop corn numbers to estimate for the late-planted corn too.

The lords soon reported their figures.

For this summer’s planting they’d all started with the same amount of corn seed—two jin from Luo Pei and another two they’d traded with the Territory Management Department.

With every territory starting out even, the yields didn’t vary much: Qi Fu harvested five bags, while Xia Qing and Shizhong got four each, Kuang Qingwei three and Zhao Ze’s mother two.

When it came to mung beans, though, numbers varied a lot more. That’s because each territory had planted different acreages, depending on how much of their first crop they’d managed to save for seed.

Qi Fu once again led the pack, storing ten bags of mung beans; Kuang Qingwei had seven, Shizhong four, Zhao Ze’s mother three, and Xia Qing just one.

Add in the wheat and rice from all five territories, and their total came to fifty-two bags—not even enough to fill two racks.

Xia Qing, who’d built her own storage room and knew a thing or two about temperature and humidity controls, suggested, “Since the Food Depot is protected from the Devastation Element and keeps everything at a constant climate, let’s not waste shelf space. We still have eight bags’ worth of room—let’s use it for dried vegetables, pumpkin slices, jerky, whatever. I don’t have much of my own, so mine can stay at home. How about the rest of you?”

As soon as wild vegetable chips were mentioned, Zhao Ze’s mother straightened up with pride—she’d dried plenty. The other three territories had their share too, so they decided that each would take two bag slots for their veggie products.

Next up was the question of the vegetable racks.

Though every territory had grown their share of veggies, most had focused on tomatoes, cucumbers, chili peppers, eggplants and string beans. Those were all past their season—so the harvested vegetables were either dried or had been traded to the Patrol Team.

After some discussion they settled on only needing half a rack for vegetables, just enough to hold root veggies to be kept for seed: radishes, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, and ginger. Since the five lords all planned to stay through the winter and grow greenhouse crops, fresh veggies wouldn’t be an issue.

Seeds were pretty scarce, so each of them only had a couple radishes and a dozen or so onions for saving. Even if they included tomato and cucumber seed stock, half a rack was still plenty. With the leftover room, they’d stash some sweet potatoes.

Everyone pinned their hopes on Xia Qing’s sweet potatoes and wanted to trade a few pieces from her for seed.

Xia Qing shook her head, not interested in trading right now. “The supply list Captain Zhong distributed for lord exchanges has sweet potatoes from several territories up for trade. I’m betting that next spring the Territory Management Department will sell seed stock or slips at a fair price. Prices will probably drop a lot, so just wait till then if you want to swap with me.”

No one objected to Xia Qing’s logic. Qi Fu added, “With Third Brother’s Soil Pesticide, sweet potato crops are easy to manage and high-yielding. Everyone should plant more sweet potatoes next year.”

Kuang Qingwei made his intentions clear. “Exactly. I want to grow more sweet potatoes next year—they can be turned into all kinds of food and sell well. Sis, make sure I get some of your seed potatoes.”

“Me too.” Shizhong and the others chimed in.

Xia Qing’s sweet potatoes came in Green Lantern and Yellow Lantern varieties. The management department was sure to sell only Yellow Lantern, and though Green Lantern seeds were pricey, they carried less risk of mutation from the Devastation Element and fetched higher prices at market.

Xia Qing promised, “If the sweet potatoes we take from the depot next spring are still fresh, I can give each of you two Green Lantern sweet potatoes and two to four Yellow Lantern sweet potatoes.”

She’d already told everyone in the Lords’ channel that she’d only managed to propagate a couple dozen sweet potato plants, so the promise to trade that many came as a pleasant surprise.

Qi Fu was the only one who’d been inside the Section Three greenhouse and knew how many sweet potatoes Xia Qing had actually planted. Even he was over the moon.

He did a quick mental calculation on how many slips six sweet potatoes could produce by spring and how many plants could be grown from cuttings in summer. Any real farmer would be delighted.

However many sweet potatoes Xia Qing had, that was her business. The fact she was willing to share was enough for Qi Fu to be grateful.

Once Kuang Qingwei finished working out how many credits each lord should pay based on their share of the food stored, the main business of the meeting wrapped up.

Qi Fu smiled. “Knowing our grain’s safely stowed away really puts my mind at ease.”

All around, people agreed. Everyone shared in the joy and thanked Xia Qing for bringing the group together.

Xia Qing was just as happy. With her crops safely tucked away in Territory One’s depot, no one would suspect she still had food in her own territory. That meant her place was even safer than before.

If people thought her stores were empty, all the better. Truth was, in her basement storage she still had some grain left—plus chestnuts, hickory nuts, pine nuts, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, jerky…

What’s better than quietly stashing food?

Simple—stashing even more food than anyone thinks!

With grain storage sorted, everyone started chatting about fertilizer and planting—exactly what Xia Qing cared most about today.