🌽Chapter 26: Feeding the Future
🌍 July 15, 99 BCE – Late Summer 🔥
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🚜 Harvest Preparations
A month before the first real harvest, the valley hummed with the quiet urgency of people who knew the clock was ticking. The fields still stood green and tall, but no one was fool enough to wait until the last sheaf was cut before getting ready.
Junjie moved from work site to work site with a bundle of sketches tucked under his arm—half for planting faster next year, half for making sure no one broke their back bringing this year's grain in. "You handle the granaries," he told the villagers, "and I'll see to it the grain lasts long enough for us to enjoy it."
🏛️Granaries
So they did. Brick kilns ran hot day and night, spitting out the tiles and fired bricks for sealed granaries—one for each grain they grew: wheat, rice, oats, millet—spaced far enough apart that a fire in one wouldn't take the rest.
They built brick granaries, one for every kind of grain they'd planted. Wheat, rice, oats, millet—you name it, it had its own labeled stash. These weren't just mud huts with baskets inside either. They had tiled roofs, solid as a war helmet, and not even the sneakiest rat or hungriest crow could crack them. Ventilation? Covered. Junjie somehow produced a hyper-fine metal mesh to keep airflow up and pests out.
No one knew how he managed it—those holes were tiny, like pinheads—but he just gave his usual lopsided grin and shrugged. Truth was, Nano's nanobots could manufacture insanely precise components when Junjie provided the raw materials. It was like carrying around a handheld 3D printer, only with a serious attitude.
🏗️Bakery
The bakery plans were also taking shape, marked by a rectangle of stones and the scent of freshly cut timber.
"Better to have it ready before the flour arrives," the elders agreed, "than be stuck baking one loaf at a time when the harvest comes in."
So the villagers pooled resources and built a massive communal bakery, complete with an oven big enough to roast a dragon—or at least twenty loaves at once.
🔥Bakery in Action
When the harvest was done and the new mill had ground the first sacks of flour, the final piece of the plan came to life—the communal bakery roared into action.
Baking bread at home every single day was a time sink, and everyone knew it. The new communal bakery solved that, freeing up hours for farming, weaving, and chasing wayward chickens.
The early risers who ran it—Baiyu and Lixiang—were older women whose children had long since started their own households. They liked the rhythm, the warmth, and the smell of dough. Everyone else liked not burning their bread anymore.
Baiyu adjusted her apron as she kneaded, smiling at her companion.
"You know, I can hardly remember the last time we did this alone. Feels good, doesn't it?"
Lixiang chuckled, wiping flour from her hands.
"If you'd called me sooner, we wouldn't have had so much charred bread to deal with." She gave Baiyu a playful shove. "I'm just happy to see it done right."
Baiyu grinned.
"I always knew you'd come around. Besides, now we can bake enough to feed a village without losing half of it to the flames."
As the oven roared, villagers filed in, baskets in hand. Lixiang called to the line,
"I swear, you'd think this was a feast day. Who's next for bread?"
Junjie passed with a bundle of firewood.
"How many loaves are we up to today, ladies? Ten, twenty?"
Baiyu laughed softly.
"Try forty. And that's just for breakfast."
"We've got a system now, don't we?" Lixiang said, glancing toward the oven. "You keep the flour and other fixings coming, we'll keep the ovens full. Everyone wins."
Junjie smirked.
"If we run out of space, maybe you should get another oven. Or two."
Baiyu winked.
"Next time you bring us more flour, we'll talk."