[The alarm went off, it was 6 AM. Jason was ready to get to work around the farm. He had 39 starting actions]

[Tess’s Almanac: 1st day of Fall! 90 days until the Fall Festival. It’s a cold one, folks! For that matter, it’s looking to be a pretty chilly fall from start to finish, possibly a record-breaker! Hopefully that trend breaks by winter, but we’ll just have to see!]

Jason rolled out of bed, shivering more than a little. He let out a long breath, and was surprised to be able to see it drifting through the air. Tess wasn’t kidding when she said that it was cold. He ordinarily didn’t have to worry about heating the house until later in the fall, sometimes not even until winter, but he considered making an exception. He slowly walked up to the window and gazed out, where a thin layer of frost covered the ground. Lady stuck her head out of the stable and snorted, creating small puffs of fog herself. Jason was fairly certain that the day would warm up as the sun rose, but until that happened, he was just going to have to muscle through.

He quickly changed into overalls with a long-sleeved shirt, then made his way downstairs to the kitchen. There, the cookbook flapped its pages in excitement, and he sat down at the table and stroked his chin.

“Let’s see… It’s a cold day. Let’s go with some pancakes!”

The cookbook flapped a few of its pages, then turned to display a number of empty pages at the end of the book.

“I know, I know. I haven’t done any experimenting in awhile.” Jason shrugged. “You do remember some of the last times I tried that, right? All the sausage I blew up.”

The cookbook slammed its cover shut, then opened to the blank pages once again.

“Yes, I know it saved my life, but that still doesn’t mean that I want to try something new right now.” Jason scowled.

The cookbook continued to display a blank page, and Jason sighed. He climbed to his feet and walked over to the pantry.

“Show me the recipe for pancakes.”

The cookbook happily flipped to the pancake recipe.

[Flour + Water + Eggs + Sugar]

Jason quickly added all of the requisite ingredients, then browsed through his pantry. It was quite full, and he soon found a few blueberries that he tossed into the pan as well. There was a flash of light, and a plate of blueberry pancakes appeared on the table.

“You’re welcome.” Jason sat down at the table and began to eat.

The cookbook slammed itself shut, and Jason shrugged.

“I did as you asked.”

The cookbook popped its front cover open once again, then slammed itself shut a second time. Jason chuckled and rolled his eyes, then finished up the meal and walked to the front of the house. Soon enough, he had on his boots, and stepped out into the frosty world.

As he walked over to Lady’s stall and took her out, he couldn’t help but noticing a loud crunching noise. He glanced down, and was more than a little delighted to find that he was walking over a layer of dead Juun bugs. The sudden cold snap, as frustrating as it was, had killed the bugs! A wide smile broke across his face, and he did a small dance, likely about as atrocious as Constable Hank’s jig, as he took Lady out to her hitching post. He poured some oats for her, then walked into his lean-to and began inspecting the planter.

All things considered, the planter seemed to be in good condition, though it did have a few patches of rust that looked like they needed cleaned up. Jason took out his can of oil and soon had it all polished up, then loaded it with sorghum seed and went back to get Lady. She nickered as she was hitched up, and Jason let out a long breath.

“Here we go, Lady.” He whispered as they rode up to the gates of the pasture. “We had a rough summer, but here’s to a wonderful fall.”

Lady nodded and stamped her feet, and with that, they were off. Jason pulled a lever to drop the planter into the ground, and they quickly began setting out the crop.

In some ways, the planter was a good deal easier to use than the harvester. In other ways, it was a great deal worse. It had a handful of disks that dug into the soil, cutting trenches for the seed to fall into. The seed then fell through long tubes and into the ground, and press wheels came up behind to close up the trench. It was a wonderful setup, and Jason rather wished that he could meet the genius that had come up with the idea. He could ride on a small platform on the back, far away from the whirling disks, with the seed box located just below him. If he did fall, he would simply land on the ground behind the planter, thus negating the danger to life and limb that the harvester posed.

So… What made it worse?

The fact that he was a great deal more likely to fall off than in the harvester.

With the blades of the wheels digging into the ground, every single rock, every single hole, every single variation in the ground made the planter leap back and forth as if it were a bucking bull or stallion. It rattled Jason to his teeth, and by the time they had made a single pass down to the end and turned around, he already ached. He had only fallen off twice, though, was which was an improvement. He was getting stronger from all the times he had planted the field, and he imagined that his grip was far more solid than it had once been. He rather wondered how it would compare to the grip of his siblings, but he had no way of knowing for sure. At least, not yet.

At that thought, his heart was filled with dread, and he momentarily lost his focus. The planter hit a small log at that exact moment, and he was thrown to the side with uncaring force. His breath left his body with a dull whomp as he landed, and he slowly climbed to his feet and raced after Lady. Luckily, though she didn’t even notice his being bucked off, she was trained well enough that she continued straight. A few moments later, he had hopped back onto the planter, and his thoughts returned to his family.

When would they arrive? The letter had made it seem like they were coming relatively soon, but it was hard to know for sure. Would they be angry with him? Were they secretly happy to see him? His mother had never exactly been the most expressive when it came to emotions, so it was entirely possible that she was happy to see him and just didn’t know how to say down. Of course, that may have just been wistful thinking on his part, but he knew that he couldn’t really know for sure until they got there… Which was a terrifying thought in and of itself.

He was forced to put the thought out of his mind as the planter hit another bump and bucked him off, and he once again had to race after the thing. This time, he focused a bit harder on the task at hand, and all things considered, that proved to be the best option. He soon even forgot about the chill, and by the time that lunch came around, he was even sweating more than a little.

They took a long break for lunch, much more than Jason ordinarily allowed. He and Tess had stayed up fairly late the night before, just talking as they walked about the town, and he was really starting to feel the exhaustion as the day wore on. He nearly fell asleep while he ate a lunch of roast beef and tomatoes, then walked out onto the porch, leaned back his chair, and kicked his feet up on the railing that ran around the porch. He didn’t know exactly how long he stayed there, but eventually Lady started nickering at a warrior coming up from the south, and Jason was forced to get back to work. He waved at the warrior, then slowly walked back out to his field, hitched up Lady to the planter, and forced himself back into motion.

The second half of the field was even more brutal than the first. At a glance, it looked like several patches of ground had started to become unworked, likely as a result of the Juun bugs. As long as something stayed growing in the ground, and new seed was planted within a few days after the harvest, there was no need to till up the ground after the initial plowing. That said, it looked like the previous season had been enough to cause several large sections to harden, and Jason sighed. Taking out the plow was never fun, especially when he just had to plow up a few small areas of the plot. Still, if that was what he had to do, it was what he would do. He would wait until after the first harvest of sorghum, of course, but that was easy enough to manage.

When he put the planter away for the evening, he was roundly exhausted. Still, though, he had a smile on his face. He put Lady in her stable, then walked up to the fence and leaned against the railing, sighing deeply.

“Now that’s what a field should look like.” He whispered softly to no one. The ground was soft and rich, covered in tiny stripes that indicated the path of the planter. There were no Juun bugs, no monstertraps. It was a simple, pristine expanse of ground, just like he might dream about. He watched it for a few minutes, just to make sure it wasn’t going to run away and he wasn’t going to wake up, and then he turned away in satisfaction.

As he did so, though, something smacked into his face. It wasn’t large, perhaps the length of his finger, and fell to the ground with a telltale buzz. Jason’s smile vanished, and he knelt down to see a Juun bug lying on the ground, buzzing and flapping its wings in annoyance. It looked up at Jason with a hungry, angry sort of look, and Jason stomped on it just as quickly as he could. Even as he did it, though, he could hear the distant drone of more of the insects.

“No.” He groaned softly. “No, please no.”

There was no answer, the bugs certainly didn’t want to do anything except eat, and he sighed deeply.

“Look. There’s no reason to worry.” He nodded firmly. “We just sprayed the field yesterday. I don’t know how long it’ll stick around, but it drove off the Juun bugs then, and it’ll do it again. Maybe I have to pay Jeremiah to treat it again in a few weeks, but as long as I can get a single harvest…”

His voice trailed off, and he turned and gazed off into the setting sun. There was a low buzz, and a cloud of insects shot momentarily across the disk of the sun. His heart fell, and he slowly turned away.

Jeremiah’s spray would work. Maybe Jason wouldn’t completely get rid of the bugs, but he would be able to keep away the majority. There was no use borrowing trouble. He would sit back, he would wait, and everything would be okay.

It was a new season, it was a better season, and if it started to prove otherwise, Jason was going to do everything in his power to make it better.