Chapter 276: Chapter 249 – Making use of Every Bit of Land

"While some lands are naturally far more fertile than others, nature always finds its way. Even in the harshest deserts, plants grow anyway, sometimes in what felt like a violation of common sense.

 

People who live in these harsh lands have since then found creative ways to make use of these plants, be they as foodstuffs or for other uses. The best example of this can be seen in south-eastern Alcidea, in the harsh wastelands of the dwarven Kingdom Down Under, where the locals had grown and made use of all sorts of crops that could tolerate the harsh lands as well as themselves." - Alena Zikorskiy, Botanist and Herbalist.

After they had a good night's rest in town, and left towards the Kingdom's interior the next day, Cal saw a sight she had not expected outside the port city itself. Many had described the Kingdom Down Under as a wasteland up top, but what she saw was instead thriving farms and orchards, plantations and paddies.

 

Nearly every bit of cultivable land in the region was made use of to grow crops, depending on the land's nature. In the best lands they grew wheat and rye, barley and sorghum, soybeans and tomatoes, cucumbers and orchards of fruits.

 

Rice was the main crop in the wetlands, as they were cleverly converted into paddies and were densely planted with rice shoots. In the sparser lands, potatoes, chili peppers, and cabbages were grown instead, as they made the most use of the land present.

 

In the sandiest areas, crops that tolerate the sand well like palm and coconut, carrots and radishes, corn and onions. Some fields were even filled with varieties of cacti, which was decidedly an odd sight to Cal and her group. They had never seen cacti cultivated en masse like that before.

 

Out of curiosity, they visited one such plantation. The locals who worked the aboveground farms were predominantly therians as well, those that resembled bulls and rhinoceroses, or deers and pigs.

 

One such man, a tall bull therian that towered over all of them in height and packed with muscles all over, greeted them when they visited the cacti plantation, and was all too happy to explain the purpose of his work to visitors.

 

He showed them to a basket of freshly harvested fruits from one of the cactus varieties they grew there. The fruit had many thorns on it, but the therian man easily removed them by rolling the fruit between his gloved hands.

 

The fruit itself was bright reddish-purple, like a pear in shape, though noticeably softer. Since the therian man invited them to, Cal and her group took a bite. The fruit was sweet-sour in flavor, if a touch on the lightly flavored side. It positively gushed with fruit juice as their teeth sunk into its flesh. Quite a refreshing fruit, to say the least.

 

After they tried the fruit, the therian man led them to a building where other parts of the cactus were prepared for consumption. There they saw how workers diligently de-thorned and peeled the skin off cacti which formed into flat pads, and set the inner parts aside.

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Those inner parts were then further processed. They were rinsed in clean water, then pickled in a mixture of what smelled like salt and honey water as well as some aromatic herbs. Sealed in large urns, they were left to pickle for weeks before consumption.

 

Their host said that such pickled cactus could remain edible for up to half a year to a year, and made for good food preserves. He then offered slices of the finished product to Cal and her group to try out.

 

The slices were thick, as thick as her fingers, but nearly translucent, with a light pale green color. She took a bite, and found that at its core, it had a strong sourness, with a hint of astringency, that was cut by the sweet-salty taste of the liquid it was pickled in, and also somewhat imparted by the aroma of herbs. Its texture was the most unusual part, crunchy, yet extremely fibrous at the same time. Some in her party, like Willa, Kyara, and Ashani had not seemed to like it that much, but the rest found it quite agreeable.

 

Since it was getting late in the day after they were done with their tour of the cacti plantation, they decided to stay at a nearby village, which fortunately had a large inn that welcomed travelers in it.

 

They also dined at the inn for their dinner, and found themselves served with a plethora of vegetarian dishes. Cal was not too surprised, as the majority of the farmers and inhabitants of the area were herbivorous therian breeds. She did ask Willa, Ashani, and Kyara if they would be fine, but all three said that skipping meat in their meals every once in a while wouldn't hurt them.

 

Satisfied with that, they dined on the vegetarian fare the inn provided. Cucumbers were smashed and cracked and left to marinate in a sauce of vinegar and chili oils, giving them a strong sour and spicy taste. It worked well as an appetizer.

 

The main dish was an admixture of several kinds of mushrooms, potatoes and cabbages, cakes make out of soybean, hearts of palms, spears of a fibrous white vegetable, and plenty of onion and garlic for taste, all spiced quite liberally with the fermented, spicy bean paste the locals seemed to love. The spice was done well, as it imparted its heat and flavors without overwhelming the natural flavors of the vegetables themselves.

 

For dessert, the proprietor brought them whole green coconuts that had been sliced off at the top. The coconut water inside had been mixed with crushed ice and a drizzle of honey, while the tender coconut flesh was carefully scraped off the shell and mixed into it as well. It was a very refreshing drink, interspersed with bits of tender coconut flesh that disintegrated on the tongue.

 

The food was so good that not even the carnivores in the party complained one bit about it, and they all happily ate their fill.

 

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