HMP: The Life

Day 1: Now I Know Why Jack Turns Blue

So as the title says, “Now I know why Jack turns Blue” I almost did from over working, in the snow, which caused my fatigue to increase faster which made things alot harder. Today was a super long day at the farm. As per usualy on most Harvest Moon days. I got up at 6am and swallowed a stack of pancakes hole while standing at the kitchen table. After that was finished I went outside with the farm owner as he showed me the ropes of what I need to do while he is away for the next 5 weeks. Little did I know that I would be roped into doing a crapload of extra stuff, which in the end will make my farm chores a bit easier during my stay.

First we started by checking in on the the dogs. They have 3, named Turk, Curly and Red. But they are so freaking insane and crazy I just call them Larry, Moe and Curly, after the 3 stooges. After letting them out I had to shovel up their piles of poop from during the night and make sure the wood pellet stove in the shed was ok and topped up the wood pellets in the hopper. Never had to do that on any HM game I’ve ever played. The owners use wood pellet stoves instead of traditional wood stove for heating so I didn’t have to go into the mountain to chop up stumps for lumber. Luckily the farm is fully upgraded so I don’t need the stockpiled lumber for upgrades to the farm house or barns.

NExt we went to feed the horses. Unlike on HM where the horse just fends for itself we went into the storage shed where all the bails of hay are stored to keep dry. Each horse gets a good chunk of a bail each morning and same again at night. After checking on the water for them and feeding them we moved onto the chickens. I asked the owner about brushing the horses and he replied “Only if they look like they need it” Guess those horses wont have alot of hearts…no point in entering them in the local horse race I guess…bummer. But I digress..back to the chickens.

We went into the chicken coop, I am surprised that Jack never held his bandana over his nose when he goes in to collect the eggs. My goodness, the stink of ammonia in there literally burns your eyes! I collected the eggs as fast as I could into the basket. 14 today from 10 chickens..figure that one out using HM math haha. Luckily I didnt have to pick each one up, cause they were freaking out and looked like they wanted to kill me. Another thing that HM doesn’t take into account is the fact that you have to hand wash each and every egg you collect. Cause 90% of them are covered in crap or dry sawdust shavings….yummy..

After that it was about 8am and we went to work on the work truck, I bet Jack would want one of these! Its a flat-bed Ford Super Duty 4×4. pretty cool, its even got a huge snowplow on the front of it for the driveway. jack doesn;t realize how easy he has it, he doesnt have to shovel snow in the winter. At about 10am, after building some wooden side boards for the truck I got a call from my boss that the snow stopped and we had to go shovel. After about 2 hours I was back at the farm. At that point we started working on the fence where the dogs keep escaping. Unlike in HM they can actually get OFF the farm if they want to.

By that time it was off to another farm which was selling us some hay bails which we needed to stock up on for winter since there’s no grass to cut down. Oh and you know how on Hm when you just use your sickle and cut the grass and it disappears? Hah, I wish it was that easy, luckily the farmer did alot of work by bailing it, but damn, those things are heavey! I dont know how Jack manages to carry more then one all by himself..they weigh approx 70 lbs [31kg] We managed to get 119 on the truck we built the boards for. By the time we started loading up it was 2pm. By 4:30pm we were on our way back. After unloading all 119 bails it was close to 6pm. At this point had I been a HM character would have passed out and turned blue. Luckily I had a couple Bodgidizer XL with me [2 cans of Red Bull] Finally after doing all of that all I had to do was feed the dogs and finally sit down at 7:30pm to type this blog.

As long as it doesn’t snow tomorrow I will be sleeping past 6am because of my fatigue level. If it does snow I will have to go out around 5:30am to go shovel snow in town with my boss. If not it starts again, just without all the loading bails of hay and working on trucks. Below are some photo’s of the loaded truck. In the 2nd photo you can see the farm owner and the guy we were getting the hay from standing behind it to get an idea of how much we loaded into this thing.

HMP the Life continues tomorrow for Day 2! Be sure to check back in for the next exciting installment.

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