Demi took her time with planting, laying everything out carefully, pairing up the plants who were most likely to end up good friends and beneficial to one another.
Dollop hopped along beside her, helping her move things, clearing the ground for tilling, and fertilizing the soil. They could even water the ground if they first took in some additional water.
“You really are a farmer’s best friend!” Demi praised, and Dollop turned rosy as a result, offering a happy triangle smile.
There was a lot to learn, and there were many things that she was doing for the very first time, so she appreciated the company.
It wasn’t quite as simple as clearing the ground of grass, throwing down some seeds, and making sure they were watered. The potatoes, for instance, required special handling.
She took the time to properly plant them, checking in her books several times to be sure of how it was done.
It would be so embarrassing to be known as a Harvest Goddess who can’t plant potatoes properly, she thought to herself.
After all, potatoes were something like a miracle crop, serving as a staple food for many cultures.
She was a great fan of potatoes herself.
“They’re so powerful,” she happily repeated to Dollop as they worked.
Of course Dollop agreed with her.
So she carefully cut the seed potatoes and prepared them for sowing, letting them cure for a couple of days in a warm spot in the sun.
Then she planted them. They would need to be hilled once they sprouted, and she made careful note of that. She had never grown potatoes entirely on her own before.
After planting most of her vegetables, she moved on to her herb garden. There were many herbs that she was immediately familiar with from her own world, but then there were also herbs that seemed to be entirely unique to this place.
She was not familiar with the Arcane Pea, for example, but there it was in her guidebook, looking like a vibrantly colored sweet pea plant. There was also Witch’s Catmint, Serene Vervain, Mystic Vervain, Midnight Primrose, Salamander Turmeric, and Moonrise Lavender, among others.
In fact, there were so many flowering herbs that she sometimes had to make a critical decision about whether to put them in the flower garden or the herb garden. In the end, she decided that if she planned to use them primarily for cooking or medicine, she would plant them in the herb garden, and if she meant them for looking at or making flower crafts, then they belonged in the flower garden.
Among her skills of dubious provenance was pharmacology at level 5. Although she did not yet have any skill with alchemy, she hoped that her mysterious levels in pharmacology might be of some assistance as she tried to learn.
Maybe that might help with making sunscreen too, she hoped.
She was absolutely committed to learning both kinds of alchemy, and fortunately, there were now quite a lot of useful books on the subject in the goddess’s lending library.
But before she could begin in earnest to study alchemy, she needed to at least get her garden planted.
As she planted, she discovered that some of the plants of this world had growing conditions or planting windows that were different from the ones of her own world, even if the plant itself seemed essentially identical. She always took the time to consult her books before she planted anything.
But by the end of the first week, her little garden was planted and growing well.
Of the skills that Demi had short-listed, there was one magical-sounding skill that seemed most applicable to her current activities, and it was one that Elder Ashbark and Finella could help her with, because beavers practiced their own form of it, as did almost all of the sapient peoples of this world.
It was called Earth Blessing.
At first Demi had been reluctant to use it, worried about the additional strain it might put on Hollyhope, but Glimmer had assured her that it was paramount that she gain experience as a Harvest Goddess as quickly as she could, that by doing this she was helping Hollyhope rather than hindering her. Besides, the chicken had noted somewhat vaguely, use of this blessing was unlikely to affect Hollyhope’s reserves at all.
That was enough for Demi. She did really want to use magic after all.
And it ended up being...well...magical.
The first time she had stood among the plants in her garden and spoken the words, “Oh great mother, we thank you for this blessing,” she had gotten tingly all over and shivered. The plants in the garden had shimmered in an encouraging way, sparkling green and gold, and then they had grown substantially bigger.
It was as if she’d suddenly fast-forwarded through two weeks of growing time on a time-lapse camera.
It was so surprising and exciting that it made her do a dance of glee in her bare feet, jigging about the garden, turning and laughing with Finella as they celebrated her success, with Dollop bouncing around them.
Having done it once, she of course immediately did it again. And again. And again. And again.
She could apparently do it essentially limitlessly. It did not appear to be draining her energy reserves at all. In fact, she seemed to be actively gaining a lot of experience each time she did it.
I mean, this the most harvest-goddess-like activity that I can imagine, Demi had decided almost immediately.
The first time through, Demi only remembered to hill the potatoes one additional time, but on subsequent turns, she took the time to hill the potatoes, to thin the carrots, to weed the garden, and do all of the other things a responsible gardener did, even as she gardened on fast-forward.
Despite her missteps, her first harvest was quite substantial, and even the parsnips were grown and ready to be pulled by the tenth day after her arrival.
As she admired the bevy of her fruitful harvest, Glimmer had sashayed up and made this suggestion.
“Everything you don’t plan to use immediately or give to friends, you should throw into the pool,” he said, as if this were a very obvious and sensible pronouncement.
“Why on earth would I do that?” Demi had asked, putting her hands on her hips, mildly affronted. “That’s littering, not to mention a waste of food!”
Glimmer clicked his tongue (an amazing feat for any chicken) and shook his head. “Oh, my little goddess, you misunderstand. Of course you shouldn’t throw things into random streams, but this is your holy spring! Anything you throw into that pool immediately gets converted into magical power and experience for you.”
That had stopped Demi cold, and her eyes had widened.
“That sounds dangerous! I’ve been letting Tina and Finella play by the water! What if they had been accidentally turned into experience?” she demanded, ready to shake Glimmer for withholding this vital information.
“Ahhh, don’t worry, my little goddess,” he assured her, fluttering his long eyelashes. “Of course it doesn’t convert people or animals. But it will convert many other things, most especially the produce from your farm and the forage from the surrounding areas.”
Demi let out a great sigh of relief, visibly slumping. The idea that either Tina or Finella might have been accidentally gobbled up by her spring was honestly terrifying, and seemed to better fit the MO of a horror world, rather than a whimsical farming world.
But Glimmer’s advice turned out to be sound. The first time she threw a parsnip into the pool, she had been a little skeptical, but then it had shimmered for a moment before completely disappearing, and she felt a small tingle again. When she looked, her magic-related stats had indeed gone up.
From then on it was something of a positive feedback loop. She grew things in her garden with the use of the blessing spell, which increased her levels, then put most of her harvest into the spring to raise her magic power and experience.
She carried on this way for eight days straight, and only then did she decide that the time had come to investigate her other skills a little.
She had already harvested a good quantity of medicinal herbs and alchemic ingredients from her garden, but there were others that were only found in the wild.
The Rosebrook had already made its way deep into the surrounding forest, so the dryads told Demi that the forest had recovered enough for sustainable harvesting. Finella and Tina both volunteered themselves to be her guides in the woodland.
At first Demi had found the offer charming, but not necessarily efficient, but then it turned out that Tina was an excellent guide, despite being so young, because she was a dryad. And although she had not been born locally, Finella also had already learned a great deal about the useful plant life in the area. Much of what was used for human medicine and alchemy was also used in beaver medicine and ritual magic.
And so the five of them spent several days gathering in the adjacent woodlands: Demi, Finella, Tina, Dollop, and Glimmer. At first, Demi had been somewhat surprised by the fact that Glimmer wanted to tour the forest with them (from a perch on her shoulder, naturally), but he had simply announced again that it was his duty, his joie de vivre, to act as her holy beast advisor and companion.
(It also turned out that he enjoyed many kinds of forest berries, especially when they were freshly picked.)