When I returned to the farmhouse, I set the kettle on the stove to boil. I went hunting around in my Grandpa Joe's cupboards to see if he had any tea or coffee hidden away there. While I didn't find any coffee, I did find some loose-leaf tea. The tea leaves were black and had a delicious aroma. I found myself hoping that coffee existed in this world and wasn’t too expensive to obtain.

I hunted around through the drawers to find where Grandpa Joe kept his utensils, and I was relieved to see that he had a steel tea steeper. The kettle boiled away as I tried to find a teapot, and just as it started whistling to tell me it was done, I managed to find one. I hung the tea steeper over the side of the teapot, then filled it with boiling water. I left it to steep as I retrieved my grandpa's notebook.

The moment I opened the notebook I noticed that there was something tucked into the pages around the middle. It looked like Grandpa Joe had left me another letter. But for some reason he decided to leave it here in this notebook instead of giving it over as part of the estate. If he'd taken the time to write a letter, there had to be a reason for it. I opened the folded paper and saw the familiar handwriting.

To my dearest grandson Jackson,

If you're holding this letter in your hand then you've made the decision to take over the farm, and I couldn't be more pleased. I don't know what comes after the end of our lives, but if through any power I possess I can check in with you, seek me out on my birthday. There's a special place in the forest just near the farm where you might be able to find me.

You'll soon find that the spirits can be fickle. Some days they will go out of their way to make sure that you succeed at everything you do, but there are other days when they are mischievous and like nothing better than causing trouble.

Rest assured that whether you're having a good day or a bad day the spirits are always involved somehow. There are ways that you can keep them on your good side, like building a shrine to them on the farm and providing them with daily devotion. They really like fresh fruits and vegetables if you have any that you can spare from your harvest. You would do well to give them their share.

Without the spirits, then this farm wouldn't exist.

You know I never actually got around to giving this place a name. It was always just Joe's Farm, until it became Joe's Wasteland. Damnable old age. Take it from me, young man. Make sure that by the time you get to my age, you have a partner that loves you and a family of kids that can take care of you when you need it.

These last few years have been very lonely, and I can't help but wonder how different things would be if I had made different choices.

That admission stopped me in my tracks. Grandpa Joe had said almost word for word exactly the way that I felt before I died in my other life. It sounded like Grandpa Joe had plenty of regrets as well. I wondered if maybe he had been given the same deal that I had. Maybe there was a life somewhere out there in the multiverse that was in need of a soul. One that Grandpa Joe could just slot right into.

I kept reading as I drank my tea.

Now if you're anything like me, you've probably already started to get to work. You will have no doubt seen the farmer's insight appear in front of you, and you probably have no idea what happened.

You can thank me for that. Or curse me, if you choose. It is a gift from the harvest spirits that I have passed on to you, just as I have passed the farm on to you. Unfortunately I could not pass on any of the knowledge or power that this insight system has given me over the years, and believe me I tried.

You remember what I said about the spirits being mischievous? It sounds like they want you to prove yourself as well. I'm sorry about that. But hopefully the information contained within this notebook will give you enough to give you a bit of a head start.

There are three main things that the farmer insight system will allow you to do. Firstly, it makes it much easier to clear land for a specific type of crop using the overlay system. You can visualize exactly how much of an area you want to clear, and the farmer's insight will highlight that out in the world. You can even tell it what kind of crop you intend to plant, and as long as you have the knowledge of how that crop is to be sown, it'll show you exactly where to till the soil, and plant the seeds.

Once you acquire the knowledge of particular types of crops, you'll also be able to recall this at any moment. For example, if you want to grow cucumbers you'll need to make sure that they have full sun, are watered regularly, and it'll generally take between 3 to 5 weeks for it to provide a mature crop.

If you hold a cucumber seed in your hand and are in possession of that knowledge, it will appear and let you plan out which crops to plant when, so you can maximize your harvest every year.

I've spent most of this notebook filling out as much information as I can about all of the different crops that work well here, but you might find some other things that work even better. Like I said, I'm kind of a one man band here at the farm these days, and my memory isn't what it used to be. There's probably a lot of stuff that I've left out, and some of the information in here might not be correct. I'm sorry if I lead you up the garden path at all, but I've tried to do my best.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The other great thing that the farmer's insight will do is that it will show you the effects that a particular crop will have if you eat it. Trust me there is absolutely nothing better than being able to feed yourself with what you've grown on the farm. Especially when you know for a fact that eating a certain type of crop is going to make you stronger or faster or a little bit smarter.

Last, but not least, the insight will also show you a rough estimate of the market value of your crops. This doesn't work on everything that you can sell using the bin at the front of the farm, only produce. That doesn't stop you from loading the bin up with other things than fruits and vegetables, it's just that you won't have any idea of how much it's going to sell for until you get the breakdown the very next day.

The only other practical piece of farming advice I'd give you right now is to make sure that you get your first crop planted as soon as possible when the season begins. There's something strange about the turn of the seasons here in the valley. Each of our seasons is three months long, and each month is made-up of twenty-eight days. That's four weeks with seven days apiece, but if you have any crops that are still in the soil and growing when a season ends they're going to wither and die.

There are some exceptions of course, like when you have a hardy crop that can survive in two different seasons, but those are fairly few and far between. The closer to the start of the season you can plant your crops, the better. And don't worry if you don't get to start planting until after the sun sets on your first day it'll still count as being planted on that day. You won't lose it.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else I can tell you just now, kiddo. I guess the torch has officially been passed to you now, and I just know that you'll do an amazing job.

If I can watch over you after I'm gone, I will. Just remember to come to the harvest spirit shrine in the forest on my birthday, okay?

Oh, and I guess you're going to need to pick a real name for the farm this time. Don't just call it something stupid like Jackson's Farm. Don’t follow in this silly old man’s shoes. Choose something that really matters to you. Something to work towards.

With all my love,

Grandpa Joe.

Ps. My birthday is the 23rd of Gardenia, if you don't remember.

“Thank you very much, Grandpa Joe. If you didn't tell me when your birthday was, I would have had no idea.”

A strange interface window materialized out of nothing and prompted me to put in a new name for the farm. I didn't really like being put on the spot, but the interface would not let me dismiss it without putting something in. So I went for something that really did mean the world to me.

I named this place Second Chance Farm.

What Grandpa Joe said about making sure that I got my first crops planted before the end of the first day made me realize that I still had a little bit more work to do before I could relax for the night. I had a look through the collection of spring seeds he'd left for me to see what options I had available.

I summoned my energy meter by thinking about it and I was a little shocked to see that it was just under a third full. I didn't even know whether I was going to have the energy to plant some crops tonight before passing out, but I needed to get this done.

There were three different varieties of spring seeds that I could try out. First there were red onions, but these weren't seeds at all. They were tiny little onion bulbs that I would need to plant and water regularly. Next up were tomatoes, and then cucumbers.

I had a bit of a look through Grandpa Joe's handbook for some information about all three types of crops, and all of these seemed to be a pretty good option to start with. He'd already explained in his letter what was required to bring a cucumber plant to harvest, but there were some notes against both tomatoes and onions that made me think about planting those first instead.

It said that tomatoes would grow pretty much anywhere. You could plant lots of seeds and basically watch which ones thrived and which ones died. He made it very clear in his notes that I should expect a percentage of the crops to wither and not grow whenever I planted them. As my abilities as a farmer grew, and I learned how to better prepare the soil and use quality fertilizer, this would happen less and less. He stressed in big bold letters that I was not to become disheartened if I lost any of my crops during my first harvest.

Apparently it happens to all farmers.

Onions were fairly easy to grow, but they do require a lot of water. As well as this, onions sold for a lower price than tomatoes, and I would need to be growing a bulk lot of onions to sell. However, onions matured more quickly than tomato plants, and I would generally have a harvest of onions within two weeks. On the flip side, the tomato plants would take two weeks to mature and would only start producing tomatoes at the end of the third week.

Whatever happens, it sounded like I was probably going to need to be frugal with my money over the next month unless I could pick up some side work from somewhere.

I liked the idea that tomatoes were hardier than the other vegetables and could live even under the shade of neglect. While I was figuring all of this out, I really needed to and make sure that I was planting crops that wouldn't die.

I took the tomato seeds out into the farm and tried to use that farmer's insight that Grandpa Joe had written about. After a couple of tries, and focusing the intention of clearing land to plant crops, the overlay grandpa had talked about appeared. Based on notes grandpa left behind I had an idea of exactly how far away from each other I needed to plant these tomato plants, and the overlay did a good job of finding and allocating the required space.

I still needed to use the scythe to clear all of the grass away from this particular area, and I watched my energy bar deplete as I swung the massive two-handed farm tool to clear the grass and weeds away.

I tilled the soil using a six-pronged rake, then I used a hoe to loosen up the soil and ready the seeds for planting. By the time I had slipped the tomato seeds into the newly prepared earth, I was sweating and almost gasping for breath. I only barely managed to get the crops watered from a rusty old watering can before my energy bar was reduced to a barely-there sliver.

I felt my limbs get heavy and worried that exhaustion was going to take me over. But I managed to get the tools back into the shed before heading back into the farmhouse for some dinner and a rest. I'd still managed to get one crop planted today, and that was a victory.