After watering his plants the next morning, Randall went over the list of things he needed to do on the farm. He had some firewood, though he’d certainly need a lot more to last through the rest of the year. He wouldn’t want to have to go out during winter to collect more, especially since he now knew the weather could change. He didn’t want to find out if he could push the wheelbarrow through snow, so while the possibility was a ways off, it was still a top priority.

He also needed to sort through all the canned goods in the cellar to figure out which of them were still good. Normally characters in farming games only ate to refill their stamina, so rather than starve, they simply couldn’t do as many chores if they ran out of food. But he wasn’t sure about his own situation. He’d felt pain and fatigue as a result of working too hard, so he didn’t want to find out what could happen if he stopped eating. Depending on how much of the food in the cellar was still good, he might need to store some of the crops he was growing or save money to buy food in town during the winter season.

The other thing on his mind was the cave entrance at the end of the trail that led up the mountain. There had been no indication why it was boarded up, and he wondered if perhaps there was still something useful inside. Perhaps Uncle Jack had hidden money or other valuables there. The thought of sacks of bits stored at the back of a dark tunnel filled his head. Not that he would consider stealing anything, but it could be useful if he needed to borrow some cash that he could pay back later.

He decided he would be killing two birds with one stone by going up to the cave entrance and using the scythe to clear a path back to the farm. While he was in the barn, he also grabbed a crowbar and hammer. He wanted to get a look inside the cavern that had been boarded up. With tools in hand, he crossed through the pasture and followed the trail up into the hills.

The cave entrance was as he remembered it, with boards nailed across the opening so he couldn’t see inside. Using the hammer and crowbar, he pried up two of the boards and set them to the side, pocketing the nails he’d pulled out. Light shone in through the gap he’d made, revealing an old mining helmet and pickax that had been left propped against the wall on the other side. With a bit of maneuvering, Randall was able to squeeze through the opening into the cave. The brass buttons on his overalls caught, forcing him to unfasten them so he could get loose. He fell with a thud on the rocky ground of the cavern.

He checked the helmet first, lifting it up and carrying it into the light to get a better look. A concave reflector on top had a cavity where a candle could be placed. The metal on the inside of the reflector was tarnished copper, dull green in color and not very bright. However, if he polished its surface, he had no doubt it would focus the light of the candle in a beam wherever he looked while wearing it.

The pickax, like all the other tools he’d found on the farm, wasn’t in very good condition. Its surface was pitted with rust, and the handle didn’t feel as sturdy as he’d hoped for a tool that would be slammed repeatedly into hard surfaces. He took a couple test swings at the wall of the cave, and the tool didn’t immediately fall apart. Perhaps he’d still be able to use it for a while before something broke.

Laying the helmet and pickax outside, he turned his attention to the inside of the cavern. The tunnel gradually widened before opening into what he thought might be a large room. He couldn’t see much from the little bit of light that filtered in from the small opening he’d made at the entrance. He clapped his hands together, and the sound echoed back from walls ahead of where he stood.

The most interesting thing he could see was a glittering formation that stuck up from the floor a little to the side of the tunnel he came out of when he entered the room. He crept forward slowly and crouched next to it so he wouldn’t block the small amount of light coming in from the entrance. Now that he was closer, he could make out thin channels of some kind of metal in the surface of several large rocks that must have fallen from the ceiling. He swung the hammer he’d brought and knocked off a piece that was sticking out of the side. The metal gleamed a bright orange color when he returned to the entrance and held it in direct sunlight.

“Is this a copper mine?” he asked.

He turned the small chunk of ore over in his hand, noting the light reflecting from several other places on the surface of the rock. Copper was a useful metal due to its softness and the fact it could be worked easily. It wasn’t the best material for making tools, but for fabricating simple machines, it could be invaluable. He stuffed the chunk in his pocket before squeezing back through the hole to the outside. He made sure to set the helmet and pickax aside before nailing the boards back in place. At some point, he’d want to do a more thorough investigation of the mine, but first he’d need to clean up the items he’d found inside and construct a proper door.

Having satiated his curiosity to learn what was in the cavern, Randall turned his attention to the overgrown trail. He needed to clear a section wide enough to bring the wheelbarrow out here. It would be useful in hauling firewood and also collecting more of the ore he’d found, assuming he could find a use for it.

The work was much easier than clearing the road up to his bridge had been. Then he’d needed to make it wide enough for a cart to pass through, whereas now he aimed for a path that was only a little wider than his shoulders. He’d also gotten comfortable with using the scythe, having practiced on several different areas of his farm. He would sweep the scythe through the tall grass in front of him, sheering through the stalks with little difficulty. Then he could take a couple steps forward over the fallen plants and do it again. He left the hay in the path behind him as he progressed. He’d come back later with the rake and wheelbarrow to collect it.

The sun was shining high in the sky by the time he made it back to the edge of the pasture. The trail was obvious now as it sliced through the woods up the hill behind him. Between watering the garden before he went to the mine and clearing the trail after, he was feeling fatigued and thought he should eat something before testing how easily he could maneuver the wheelbarrow over the new path he’d made.

#

Something about working outside in the fresh air made Randall’s nose turn at the odor when he went down into the cellar this time. The sickly sweet smell of decay seemed harsher to his senses than the previous times he’d been down here, and he decided the first thing he needed to do was clear out the food that had gone bad down there. He didn’t know if he could get sick because of it, but he sure didn’t want to find out the hard way.

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The first thing he wanted to take care of was the rotten potatoes and other dry goods he’d found before. While they weren’t edible to him, they could still attract vermin. The bite marks he’d noticed had to have come from somewhere. He went to the barn first to get a broom, dust pan, and shovel. There was an old, metal bucket in the kitchen he’d been using for food scraps and other garbage that he carried down with him into the cellar.

He had to make three trips to the compost heap before he’d cleared out the remains of the spoiled food. By the time he returned from the third one, the smell was significantly improved in the confined space. With the dry goods removed, he turned his attention to the glass jars, bottles, and cans on the shelves.

Those items packaged in metal cans seemed to have survived the best. A few had rusted to the point he didn’t know if their contents would be safe, and these he threw out. Two cans had swelled in the middle, and they also had to be tossed. Of the twenty cans that were left when he finished, half no longer had labels that were readable. He could judge a bit based on size whether they were some kind of prepared food like soups or potted meat. However, most were the tall, narrow size of can that could be just about anything. He set aside all the mystery containers in case he got really desperate for something to eat.

The bottles were easier to tell both what was inside them and whether or not they were still good. Those whose caps had been breached had mostly evaporated away. He found seven larger bottles with a sticky purple syrup at the bottom he assumed must have been some type of wine. These he carried up to be washed in the stream outside in case the bottles could be salvaged. He had the feeling he’d need as many containers as he could find if he decided to try his hand at canning and preserving food at some later date. The rest of the bottles appeared to still be sealed, so he wiped them off with a wet rag and lined them up on the shelf again.

Finally, he got to the glass jars which he’d looked through earlier. He removed those whose contents had turned brown, carrying them outside in a box he’d found in the attic. Like the bottles, they could be cleaned and reused. Then he went through what was left, checking the seals on each one and discarding those where the lids had popped up, even if the contents didn’t look bad. If they hadn’t stayed airtight, then they could be contaminated. He wouldn’t take a chance on discovering whether or not he could contract dysentery.

Those jars that appeared to still be tightly sealed, he sorted into sections on the shelves based on what they contained. Jams and jellies went on the lowest shelf, since he wouldn’t need to access those on a regular basis. Canned fruits were on the shelf above those, then vegetables in the middle, and sauces on the top. That way, the things he would use most often were now in easy reach.

With everything sorted, he grabbed a jar of tomato juice and some of the smaller jars of various vegetables. He carried them all upstairs and lit a fire inside the stove. While it was heating up, he found a large pot and emptied the contents of each of the jars into it. He set the full pan on the stove and went up to the attic to find a large, empty box.

He filled the box with the rest of the jars of food he’d decided were no longer edible and carried it out to his empty composting pile. He maneuvered the wheelbarrow through the pasture to the end of the trail he’d cut earlier and piled as much grass as he could into it. This he used as the base for a new round of composting, onto which he poured the contents of all the old jars. He’d add more to it later, but he went inside to see about cooking a fresh batch of vegetable soup.

He sat down at the small table in his kitchen with an exhausted sigh. While he waited for the soup to heat up, he flipped through the book on fishing he’d borrowed from the library. So far he’d only visited the harbor and spots next to the bridges on the two streams that flowed across the island. The book listed several kinds of fish he hadn’t seen yet, many of which were much larger than the trout and sardines he’d been able to catch. Unfortunately, they would require better equipment than the basic starter rod he’d been able to purchase.

One thing he noticed was that a favorite bait to use for the larger fish was crab or crayfish meat. He could collect them with simple traps, and detailed drawings of how to make them had been included as an appendix at the back of the book. He would need many long strips of wood and twine to hold them together. Once the traps were made, he could bait them with a dead fish to entice the crabs to crawl inside. He studied the designs in detail while he ate his lunch.

Afterwards, he took his dirty dishes and the boxes of empty jars out to the stream, along with a container that held dry dish detergent. He used a long brush to scour the inside of each jar, making sure to remove anything caked onto the glass until they were all spotless. A steady flow of soap suds slipped out to the center of the stream, where it was carried away to the sea. They would need to be sterilized in hot water, but that could wait until he planned to fill them with fresh food he wanted to preserve. For now, he lined them up on an empty section of shelves in the cellar.

With the newfound energy he’d gotten from eating lunch, he made several trips up the path to the mine. He raked up the grass clippings and transported them to the compost pile whenever the wheelbarrow was full. It took him the rest of the afternoon, but he could now travel the entire way to the mine with little difficulty pushing the wheelbarrow. On his last trip, he collected fallen branches of a wide variety of sizes and left them with the ones he’d already cleared out of his field after the storm at the start of the summer.

#

Even having something to reference, Randall had a tough time figuring out how exactly to make the crab trap. There had been some for sale at the general store, but he didn’t have the money to buy them. That’s why he was sitting on the floor of the barn with a pile of long, straight sticks taken from among those he’d collected along the trail earlier that day.

The first step was to make a flat base for the trap. He chose a dozen sticks that were each about two feet long and lined them up beside each other. Then he put four smaller sticks across them for support. He used twine he’d found in a drawer beneath the workbench to lash the longer branches one by one to the cross piece. The work was slow as he figured out how best to tie them together.

When he finished, the base of the trap was about a foot wide and two feet long. Once it was done, he bent some green branches to act as arches against which he could brace the sides and top of the trap. He used more long, thin pieces of wood to cover the arches. He closed off one end with more sticks before fashioning a door and attaching it the open end with loops of twine acting as a hinge. In the end, his trap looked a bit like the mailboxes he’d regularly seen along country roads back home. Except it was made of wicker, and the door was weighted to fall open whenever he dropped it into the water.

In order to test the trap, he’d need some kind of bait, so he gathered a few worms and his fishing rod. He walked east to where the stream ran into the ocean and waited for about twenty minutes before catching a sardine. He left the baited trap in the water and tied a rope between its top and a stick he pushed down into the sand. He’d have to come back the next day and see if any crabs had been caught.

* * *