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  "writing": "On a farm, there is always something happening. Even when work is slow, something always has to be done, and when doing something, there is always something else that will happen as a result of that.\n\nOn Butterfly Farm, there was always something happening. Even with the grass mown, baled and wrapped and the winter rye still growing, and the farming work therefore being slow, there were things that still had to be done every day. And as a result of that, other things were always happening. The rabbits and the chickens had to be fed every morning, and as a result of that, eggs had to be gathered and hutches had to be cleaned. Choco the goat had to be milked every morning and evening, and as a result of that, milk had to be filtered and chilled, with an additional result of cheese and butter having to be made. And there was always some maintenance to do.\n\nNot everything went smooth. The fluffy purple and white vixen-taur Buddleia had started on taking apart the Deutz-Fahr combine harvester so it could be made operational again. The engine was made to run smoothly without a problem, but work on the internals of the large vehicle ran into the problem of parts being on back-order so the work stalled. The tall, freckled human woman Sasha had been working on the engine they had taken out of their 1959 Skoda 706 RT grain truck as it had been replaced with a similar but slightly younger engine, and she had used the lift pump and injection pump that had finally arrived after months of being on back-order to get it running again. That work initially went without a problem, but once the engine was running on the pallet it was sitting on, the vibrations caused it to topple and crush the oil filter. And as the engine was running, the oil was pressurized so it sprayed out in thick gushes all over the floor of the workshop and all over the lower legs of both the freckled human woman and the fluffy vulpine taur. That was a bit more than what a simple bath in the pond which now was fully stocked with fish could clean, so they had to take a couple of additional baths and do some quite rigorous scrubbing and use a generous amount of dish soap and rubbing alcohol.\n\nFortunately, a new oil filter was readily available and easy to put back in place, so the engine didn't sustain any damage. It also fit relatively easily under the double hood of the 1953 MAZ-200 truck together with its transmission, so that truck had become quite a bit more roadworthy after the transplant - doing a couple of test runs with the truck, Sasha found she could run the truck up to almost 75mph quite easily and smoothly without having to row through the gears as if she was stirring a cauldron of soup. Of course, the old two-stroke diesel engine that came out of the MAZ truck was kept and stored for later as it was still an operational and very strong and torque-y motor - but of course when Buddleia lowered it down with the engine hoist, she accidentally released the pressure too quickly so the engine clattered down and completely crushed the pallet they were intending to set it on, as well as its oil pan. Gotta be careful when working with large and heavy objects like complete truck diesel engines!\n\nProving that when something out of the ordinary happens it's never an isolated incident, were the three European hamster sisters, the Warmelinks, visiting the farm that very same evening to deliver the sofa Sasha had asked them to make in cooperation with the people from the new carpentry and woodworking shop. And of course, after a long naked evening filled with sexual shenanigans and playfulness and a nose-touching close examination of Sasha's buttocks by the end of the evening when it was time to go to bed, the mildly ribbed fabric that had been used to make the cushions for the sofa had indeed not left even the slightest imprint in the tall human woman's freckled skin, so Sasha lost her challenge and she had to accompany the trio of European hamsters back to the tiny village of Rolling Hills the next morning and subject to a full morning and half an afternoon of \"being measured for a dress\". Stark naked, of course, and with all three of the sisters groping and rubbing and fondling her all over, as well as fingering her into an orgasm each, followed by a thorough licking from each of the three hamster sisters to \"clean up\" which resulted in another three climaxes. Plus about eighty percent of the village noticed how Sasha was a bit unsteady on her feet after all that when she walked to the tavern for a stiff drink. It didn't help that Buddleia had been laughing at her the entire time and cheerfully told everyone they came across and who asked Sasha what was the matter absolutely everything that had happened in cheery detail.\n\nOh well, at least it gave Sasha the opportunity to pick up the mail from the post office and the revenue from the general store. And truth be told, the bottle-green denim dress that had been made to measure by the Warmelink sisters didn't look half bad on her, either.\n\nAside from that exuberantly sexual intermezzo and the mishaps with the truck engines, the days bubbled by calmly like a stream in spring. Animals were taken care of, milk was stored, cheese was made, butter was made as well, and maintenance was done. Winter rye kept growing, the grass kept growing, the silage bales kept fermenting. One of the two Verdant Island Lop females in the largest rabbit run gradually swelled up more and more as a litter of kittens grew inside of her, and extra hay was provided to the rabbits to let the pregnant one collect mouthful upon mouthful of it to stuff it in one of the sleeping spots in the large hutch and make a comfortable nest. It wouldn't be long anymore until a number of cute little baby bunnies would be hopping around. Inspired by the rabbits, and with Sasha's reminder of the promise she had made to their new neighbors at Cherry Blossom Farm, Buddleia had also built two more roomy rabbit hutches so the Dutch Spaniel Marian and her daughter Margot could start keeping rabbits as well. They just had not yet gotten to bring the hutches over to the other farm so far.\n\nDespite having been replanted in the midst of summer, the elderberry bushes had also taken well to their new location and had fruited and ripened fully. The result of that was that a couple of days had been spent picking and cleaning all the berries - the result of which was that even more long and extensive baths in the pond were needed because by the end of the cleaning both Sasha and Buddleia were stained a purplish red all over from the small berries. But after all that, and utilizing the cane sugar and raisins Sasha had bought from the general store in preparation, both the very large and very old two-gallon glass jars that had belonged to Sasha's grandmother were sitting out in the full sun on the small garden table that was set near the rabbit hutches in the field in front of the house, filled up with the berries, sugar and chopped-up raisins on water to steep and ferment into what Sasha was determined to continue calling \"sunny wine\" in honour of her grandmother.\n\nInventory was also taken, to make sure of what types of seed and how much of each they had in stock, as well as how much solid fertilizer. The current work might be in a lull, but that did provide plenty of time to look to the future and make plans for what to do the next upcoming season. Would they keep most of their fields as grass and turn it into silage again? What would they plant in the two fields that currently had winter rye growing in them? Come to that; what would they do with the winter rye? Buddleia had remarked that winter rye was usually grown as a cover crop and cultivated into the soil before it matured as a sort of natural fertilizer; would they do the same thing? It was possible to harvest the grains, but would it be feasible? Sasha had decided they would harvest it; for one, it would give them an opportunity to re-tie their connections with the flour mill, and for another, it would mean income, and that was still an important point to keep in mind. The silage was a great financial boost, but any extra harvests would be more than welcome.\n\nSpeaking of the silage; would they continue with it? Both Sasha and Buddleia agreed it was a very profitable route to take with the farm, at least for the coming year or two or three, especially due to how proportionally little work it took them to make and the low cost input of merely time, several dozens of liters of diesel fuel and a couple of rolls of plastic wrap. But with the elongated and indeed very large field aside the dirt road that ran behind the farm turning out to also belong to them and therefore being eligible to be cut, they did have quite a large amount of grassland to cut. Sasha did want to plow up one of the fields in the spring to reseed it with grass that would grow denser and give a higher yield, but would they keep all the other fields as grass as well? It was a bit much.\n\nWith a week of clear, sunny and decently warm weather ahead of them, the tall freckled human woman and the fluffy purple and white vixen-taur decided to take some time and survey the farm, so they could see exactly what they had, exactly how it was shaped, and bounce ideas off of one another. After a breakfast of warm porridge, a bath in the pond, taking care of the animals and taking care of the milk and cheese, both of them took some time to relax and lay in the grass of the field in front of the house, near the rabbit hutches and runs.\n\nComfortably leaning up against the side of Buddleia's quadruped lower body, Sasha crossed her arms behind her head and stretched out, closing her eyes for a few moments and taking slow, deep breaths to draw in the fresh autumn air. Buddleia did much the same, letting her deep breaths go in low and long-drawn churring sounds while she calmly and almost absently ran a paw up and down along Sasha's side.\n   \"We not do poppies yet, yes?\" she said eventually, leaning in her upper body a bit so she could nuzzle her cheek and muzzle against the top of Sasha's head. \"Maybe sunflowers?\"\n   \"No poppies, indeed,\" Sasha nodded with a quiet smile. \"That's too much investment for us, we'll have to learn about it and acquire special equipment, and we're not at that point yet.\" She dipped her head backwards to look up at Buddleia's face with a deeper smile. \"We may even have to wait a year with sunflowers too. It very much depends on whether Dan can find us the equipment we need for that, and if the price is right. So let's first concentrate on what we can do with the equipment we have.\"\nBuddleia nodded and in the motion leaned her head upside down to give a soft lick down from Sasha's forehead and between her eyes down over her small button nose.\n   \"Yes, you right, Sasha. We have machines that work, so we work with those first, get other machines later when we can afford. Is good idea, yes.\"\n   \"Will you stop it with the slobbering, you silly fuzzbutt you,\" Sasha chortled while she pushed her glasses back up her nose after Buddleia's lick had pushed them all the way down. \"We already had our bath, you know.\"\nBuddleia giggled with several chirped staccato yips.\n   \"But is fun, Sasha!\" She leaned over her upper body even more so she could bring her head down to Sasha's head and give several more large, long licks over the human woman's face. \"You taste nice too, like cinnamon, yes! Yee hee!\"\n   \"Quit it, you nutso fuzzbutt!\" Sasha chortled, playfully pushing her hands against Buddleia's slender muzzle and fuzzy cheeks. \"We're supposed to be planning for the future, you know!\"\n   \"Okay, we plan,\" Buddleia chirped, giving a last playful lick right over Sasha's right ear. \"For when we plan, Sasha? After rye harvest, yes?\"\n   \"That's right,\" Sasha sniggered, wiggling a finger in her damp ear and teasingly wiping it on Buddleia's fur. \"If I calculated it right, we'll get another eight cuts of grass before the rye is ready for harvest, maybe nine if we leave it sitting until the end of the month. That means, from all the grass fields we currently have, we'll get close to four thousand bales, which will be over eight hundred thirty thousand in silage. That should be plenty to start looking at other and maybe even new equipment, so I'm thinking there will be quite a bit of a reorganization coming after the rye harvest.\"\n   \"What we do after rye harvest, Sasha?\" Buddleia asked with another chirp. \"Plant other grains?\"\n   \"Definitely, but not right away,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"We may need to plant grass in the fields that have the rye, because it will be too late in the season to plant anything else. I looked it up, and if we don't use the winter rye as a cover crop to cultivate it into the soil come spring, it will take until summer before it's fully ripe and harvestable in June. That's a few months after spring planting season, so any cereal crops we want to plant next year, we'll have to plant in other fields.\"\n   \"So what we reorganize then?\" Buddleia smiled.\n   \"Here, hang on,\" Sasha smiled.\n\nShe got up and walked to the small old farmhouse, returning a few moments later with a clipboard holding several sheets of lined paper and several sheets of blank printer paper. Cuddling up against the soft and fluffy side of Buddleia's quadruped lower body again, Sasha began jotting down some bullet points, saying aloud what she was thinking about and writing down.\n   \"So, we have the field on the other side of the pond and that little forest, where the right rye field wraps around at the moment. That will stay grass for the time being, until the rye is harvested, because after harvest, I want to change those fields into more logical shapes. We have the left rye field behind the house; I'm thinking we'll plant that with that grass mix I bought from Dan after harvest. Not gonna mess with that huge and long narrow field on the other side of the back road, so that'll stay grass as well for the time being. That leaves us with the fields to the left of the house; I'm thinking those will change from grass to something else before the rye harvest if we want to be in time for the spring season.\"\n   \"Is good idea, but we be limited a bit,\" Buddleia nodded. \"If we plant in spring, we do barley or oats, in March, and harvest in September. Last few years I farm actively, I do oats in one field and spring canola in other field, harvest in September and do winter canola in both fields, plant in September and harvest end of April or early June. Winter canola better too, give more yield, but you have fallow fields from June to September.\"\nSasha nodded slowly, chewing on the end of her pen.\n   \"Yeah, that kinda sucks, because that's three months of productivity wasted. We could get three cuts of grass in that time, that's three loads of silage at... let's see... seventy-seven plus eighty-one, makes... a hundred fifty eight bales all in all, at two hundred ten a pop, makes... a bit over thirty-three grand we'd be leaving in the ground. I'd rather make that money and put it into the account if I can help it.\"\n   \"Is best option though,\" Buddleia pointed out. \"Is shortest time fields lay fallow. We do barley, wheat, oats or spring canola only, we have fields fallow from September to March. I always do oats, then winter canola, then three months fallow so soil can recover for more winter canola, and every other year I leave one field fallow longer to plant oats again in spring.\"\n   \"Where did you sell the oats?\" Sasha wanted to know. \"I don't think you'd bring them to the flour mill, did you?\"\n   \"No, I sell to livestock dealer and Co-op,\" Buddleia nodded. \"Livestock dealer use for feed, I not know what Co-op does, sell on to factories I guess. And I always sell few bushels to bakery so they can make oatmeal.\"\nSasha also nodded.\n   \"I see. I'd be more tempted by barley, we can sell all of that to the flour mill. Although I have to say I'm very partial to the idea of canola. Two harvests is big, and remember we ran into miss Simones from the BGA in the tavern the other day? I talked with her for a bit, and she said they have the facility to make bio-diesel from canola. We could sell to the BGA for a good price, and even have part of the yield turned into bio-diesel for ourselves so we can fill our fuel tank with it and run our equipment on it. I feel that would offset the loss in revenue if we leave the field fallow for three months.\"\n   \"Is good idea, Sasha, yes!\" Buddleia nodded with a smile that showed the lower halves of her upper canine teeth. \"I not think of, I always sell canola to oil mill, they pay good price. But is very good if we can bring canola to BGA and get diesel back, yes! We do that, yes!\" She giggled in several staccato yips again. \"But canola all the time, when we do sunflowers? I want sunflowers, Sasha! Yee hee!\"\n   \"We'll get to that, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha chortled. \"We're talking about the left-side fields right now; we can keep those for canola, maybe oats and barley or wheat or even triticale for crop rotation now and then. That still leaves us with the right rye field and the field behind the pond; once we have that rye harvested and those fields sorted out into more logical shapes, we can put sunflowers there.\"\n   \"Okay! Is good idea!\" Buddleia nodded happily. \"Grandparents put sunflowers there too!\"\n   \"I remember you mentioned that,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"And I'm thinking we may even branch out and try other grains. Sorghum is incredibly suitable for the climate here, and if we grow sweet sorghum we may even be able to sell off the remains of the plants after harvest to a place that produces sugar and syrup, or to the BGA to make ethanol.\" She scratched behind her left ear with the back of the pen for a moment. \"Although I have to admit I'm not quite sure on the procedure. From what I've read so far, we'd have to choose between grain sorghum and sweet sorghum, and we might have to harvest the sweet sorghum before the grains are ripe, so it's either one or the other we'd get as a result. I'll have to read up more on that.\"\nBuddleia nodded again and clapped her paws cheerily.\n   \"Sorghum is good! Grandparents grew sorghum in back field! Was one big field behind the house all the way to left fence! We use sorghum for crop rotation back then, is very good! We can do again to rotate crop if we also grow barley or wheat, Sasha, yes!\"\n   \"That would be a very viable option, then,\" Sasha chortled. \"And to be honest, I'm very interested in trying out spelt. That's almost an artisan crop by now, and I remember there was a farm near Fennfield that grew it for an artisan bakery in Fennfield. My gramma would get what they called a Dinkel loaf from there that we only used for Sunday breakfast and lunch as a sort of treat, and it was very tasty. I'd like to try a small field of spelt sometime to see how it goes. Oh, and we'd have to talk with the flour mill to see if they can handle it as an aside.\"\n   \"I not know of spelt, but it sound nice!\" Buddleia smiled, combing her fingers through her bristly whiskers. \"If we experiment with small field, maybe we do durum sometime too? You make pasta with durum, and pasta is yum!\"\n   \"I'm definitely not opposed to that idea,\" Sasha nodded with another chortle. \"And I think we can organize things so that we'd have a small field for experiments like that. Right! So let's talk logical shapes then. To be honest, I'm a sucker for geometric shapes, that's an influence from my grampa, because they're much easier to harvest. Even if it does mean you may give up a small amount of arable land.\" She scrambled to her feet and stretched. \"Let's take a nice little stroll and see what we have to work with here.\"\n\nBuddleia nodded with a smile that showed the entirety of her upper canine teeth and the tip of her tongue. She also got to her four feral feet and gave herself a quick, short shake before folding an arm around Sasha's waist and following the tall human woman towards the back of the farm. The rye in the back fields was a good two feet tall already, lush and dark green and calmly swaying and waving in the light breeze. Walking down the dirt road behind their farm to the right, they stopped by the end of the fence, where the narrow dirt path running from the dirt road in the back all the way to the dirt road in the front denoted the rightmost property line of Butterfly Farm.\n\nAs they walked along the fence, Sasha looked aside at the rye field and tilted her head a bit.\n   \"See, there's a thing. I didn't quite realize it in the excitement of planting our first crop, but that hill, as small and low as it is, poses a problem.\"\n   \"What problem, Sasha?\" Buddleia asked with a light shrug. \"We never have problem with field here.\"\n   \"Well, not so much a problem, as more an inconvenience and a major pain in the ass,\" Sasha said with a light chortle. \"With the way that hill slopes between that dirt path and the path near our farm, that makes it a bitch and a half to run a combine across. I don't think we'd have much of a problem harvesting the rye, a grain header is a bit more forgiving, but if we'd put sunflowers here, we'll have to use a corn header for harvesting and those are super rigid. We'd have to make very weird passes to make sure we catch everything as we go up and down that hill in whichever direction.\"\n   \"Is true, that,\" Buddleia nodded with a chirped chortle. \"Grandfather always make strange patterns with harvester to get all sunflowers, I remember.\"\n   \"Yeah, and look at that,\" Sasha pointed down the field next to the small forest and the pond. \"That little forest behind our shed juts out in a weird way right into that field. I'm not sure if it did way back when that field was still part of this farm, or if the trees got free reign to grow that way after that field was sold, but either way it means we'll have some work to do.\"\n   \"You want to cut trees?\" Buddleia said with her head a bit canted as she looked down the field.\n   \"A number of them, anyway,\" Sasha nodded. She flipped over to the sheets of blank printer paper on her clipboard and sketched some basic lines. \"If this is that field, and this is that small forest, I'm thinking we draw a line from here to here and cut down all the trees that are over that line. It'll make this field...\" She shielded her eyes with a hand and stared down the field. \"...more or less rectangular all the way down to the pond. And past the pond, from here, there's enough space to have it form an L-shape along the front fence. And from what I can see right now, there's no weird slopes or ripples down the entire length, so that would make a great sunflower field. So if we...\" She turned to her clipboard and drew a few more lines. \"Let's see, if we'd cut back those trees, and then extend that field all the way to the fence on this side by cutting into this rye field, we'd have a very long L-shape without any terrible slopes. That'll be great for sunflowers, and we can plant the rest of the rye field with grass. It's much easier to mow and bale over that little hill than it will be to run a combine over it. And that, in turn, leaves the rye field behind the house free for something else after we harvest the rye in that field.\"\nBuddleia's smile slowly grew wider as she looked at the lines Sasha sketched on the paper, and she nodded.\n   \"Is good idea, yes! Much more sunflowers, all the way to the front! I like!\" She put her right paw on Sasha's shoulder and pointed at the narrow strip of land between the dirt path and the actual wider dirt road. \"And look, Sasha! We ask Dan about that bit of field, we may get cheap, and that be good for experiments with spelt or durum, yes!\"\n   \"Now you're thinking with your head, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha chortled, playfully booping the damp, cool black pad of Buddleia's nose with a fingertip. \"And we [i]should[/i] own that bit of land, that's such a narrow strip it'd be just silly to leave it laying there between the path and the road.\" She made a note on one of the papers on her clipboard. \"Next call to Dan, I'll ask him about that. Now let's go look at what else we got.\"\n\nThey walked the other way, back along the fence separating the backside of their farm grounds from the dirt road, past the field of winter rye behind the copse of trees and along the back-side left field all the way down to where the dirt roads on that side of the farm made the weird elongated and wavy X-shape. The back-side left field, situated between the dirt path on the left of the copse of trees, the long dirt path separating both left-side fields and the fence alongside the back dirt road, was almost rectangular in shape if it wasn't for the fact it curved along with the curve of the back road. At the very left side of the farm grounds, that dirt road continued its smooth curve as it ran off into the landscape towards where the Cherry Blossom Farm was located, crossing the dirt road that ran right along the left side of the farm grounds from the main road towards the sawmill. A turn-off from that road onto the road to Cherry Blossom Farm and a turnoff from the road to Cherry Blossom Farm onto the road to the sawmill enclosed the two weirdly elongated and wavy triangles that were formed by the unusual crossing, and which had been added to the Butterfly Farm grounds by the tan Katanga lion Ag agent Daniel as he originally owned them.\n\nSasha shook her head as she looked at the strange crossing with the weird turnoffs and pointed towards a forest-covered, higher hill some way in the distance.\n   \"This is so dumb. Look, if they had made a much straighter crossing, that road could run right towards that hill and curve along it to lead to Cherry Blossom Farm, and then they could have made a much straighter turnoff from that road to this one as well over there. That would make these two weird patches of land into a much more usable and more or less rectangular shape that could be a workable field.\"\n   \"What if we make new road?\" Buddleia chirped a chortle, also pointing. \"We do what you say, make Cherry Blossom road straight from there and go along the forest hill there so it cross here much more straight, and we make straight connection between sawmill road and Cherry Blossom road there.\"\n   \"If it were up to me, I'd do that in a heartbeat,\" Sasha sniggered. \"Unfortunately, it's [i]not[/i] up to me. Dan said the roads are owned by the province, and they decide what's done with them.\"\n   \"Ask Dan to get in touch with province when you ask about that strip of field on other side!\" Buddleia chirped another chortle. \"He say they have no use for all land out here, maybe they have no use for roads either, so we get to decide how the roads run because we have much use for the land here, yes!\"\n   \"Worth a shot,\" Sasha sniggered again. \"And if we'd get to do that, I'm gonna name these damn roads too.\" She pointed again, at the dirt road that ran along the front side of their farm grounds, the one that ran along the left side towards the sawmill, and the one that came from the direction of Cherry Blossom Farm and past the backside of their farm after crossing the road leading to the sawmill. \"See, I'd make that Butterfly Road, and that Sawmill Road. Over there where Butterfly Road connects to Sawmill Road, I'd make that a straight connection, or maybe a small one of those triangle connections. That road there, I would make that Cherry Blossom Road, and I'd make another straight or small triangular connection where Butterfly Road connects to it, and the same over there, where it connects to Sawmill Road. And that would make a much neater connection for the road behind our farm too, and I'd call that Waving Grain Road, which I'd also connect either straight or with a small triangle to Sawmill Road. And then boom, we'd end up with a very usable field between all those roads on the side of our farm.\"\nBuddleia chirped a number of short, staccato yips and pushed her paw against Sasha's shoulder.\n   \"Draw it on your paper, Sasha! Make good plan to show province, yes! You totally convince them!\"\nSasha gave her head an amused shake and shrugged with a laugh.\n   \"Haha! Sure, why the hell not, it'll be good for a laugh anyway.\"\n\nLeaning against the fence, the freckled human woman flipped to another sheet of blank printer paper and started sketching more lines. Part of the left side of their farm grounds, part of the front, the roads that ran in front and to the side, and the new layout of the other roads more or less as she had described them earlier. She even scribbled the names she had suggested between the lines that represented the roads. When she was done, she pushed herself off of the fence and held out the clipboard to Buddleia with a grin.\n   \"There, whaddaya think of that, babe?\"\n   \"Look so much better!\" Buddleia chirped, clapping her paws again. \"We should do, Sasha! Is so much more handy and logical!\"\n   \"Well, like I said, it's not up to me, it's up to the Arfajia Province council,\" Sasha chortled. \"But hell, I could always show this to Dan, maybe he could work it out neater on the computer and present it to the council and see what they say. I mean, hell, he's already planning to foist them into improving the roads around here.\"\n   \"Yes! We should totally do, Sasha!\" Buddleia nodded cheerily. \"We can have better field on this side!\"\n   \"Speaking of,\" Sasha chortled. \"I'd need a drone or something to look at it from above, but I do believe that we're bigger than I had initially thought. Look, with that rocky shelf over there, I think we could easily make a path from the driveway, past that rocky shelf and all the way to the end here. That would divide that front field into two much more manageable fields, and we could give Choco a much larger pen at the front over there too, give her that whole part between the fence and the new path, because this front field is much bigger than it looks. And then we can also connect the two paths with that path we made along the front of the bale shelter on that rocky shelf.\"\n   \"Yes! We do that too! Is very good idea, Sasha!\" Buddleia nodded again. \"And is easy! We run plow to make path, then cultivator to smooth, then run trucks up and down to compact! We do in one day, easy!\"\n   \"Looks like we have a plan for tomorrow,\" Sasha chortled. \"I gotta say though, before we do that, we'll have to get rid of that plow we have now and get another one.\"\n   \"Why?\" Buddleia chirped a chortle. \"Is nothing wrong with plow, Sasha.\"\n   \"I know, but I just can't get used to the diagonal offset of that thing,\" Sasha chortled with a mild grin. \"It's [i]such[/i] a pain in the ass to use, and it only has a, what, two, two and a half meter spread? Plowing those fields for the rye was such a goddam struggle. If we wanna make a decently straight path, I'd much rather swap it for a straight ripper, at least that I can work with and make decently straight lines.\"\nBuddleia poked out her tongue and chittered a yipped giggle.\n   \"Okay, is fair I guess. That old plow is bit difficult to manage, and you have to turn it at end of every furrow, is wasted extra time.\"\n   \"Not to mention that with a straight ripper, you can plow at ten miles per hour rather than three,\" Sasha sniggered. \"We'd be done three times as fast, leaving us more time to do cultivating and sowing and whatnot. Come to that, I'd also rather change that old disc harrow for a wider cultivator, because that thing also only has a two and a half meter spread.\" She playfully poked Buddleia in the chest with a finger. \"So if you're not emotionally attached to those things because they used to belong to your grandfolks, I'll ask Dan if we can trade them in for some better and wider equipment.\"\nBuddleia chirped another chortle and batted a paw at Sasha's hand.\n   \"Is okay, grandparents changed equipment too, is progress. We do too if Dan has good equipment we can use, yes.\"\n   \"Right, then for now, let's get back to what we were actually doing,\" Sasha chortled. She pointed at the front-side left field, which had a decent patch of spruce trees and bushes at the side where it bordered the road, forming so much of a natural fence a regular fence had not been put in place there. \"That there is a problem as well, and it's related directly to what I said earlier about the geometric shapes.\"\n   \"You wanna cut down trees?\" Buddleia said. \"But I like the trees, they be there since before I born, some even before grandparents were born.\"\n   \"No, I'm thinking something else,\" Sasha smiled, walking a little way up the path separating the front and the rear left field. \"See, if we would plow up this field to grow canola, we could go in a straight line from here right in front of that patch of trees, leaving the trees where they are. The only thing is that it would leave this triangular patch of land here, and once we make that other path there, another triangular patch of land on that side. We could plow that up as well to add to the arable field, but I'm thinking we keep it straight and make this field a perfect rectangle. Then we can use those triangular patches of unused land to... hell, I dunno. Maybe build a small shelter to keep the plow and cultivator under on this side of the farm, or we could even plant some more trees here and just let them grow.\"\n   \"I like that, yes,\" Buddleia nodded with a smile. \"More trees always good! But what we plant here, Sasha? More spruce? Forests is almost exclusively spruce already, is bit much.\"\n   \"Yeah, and if we're gonna do those super trees Dan mentioned in those spots of land between those road crossings, it'd be better to use something different here as well,\" Sasha nodded. \"Something that grows a little quickly, something we could maybe use for materials later.\" She ran a finger along her nose. \"Matter of fact, I'm considering cedar. Those look real nice, and they smell real nice too, plus the lumber retains that smell, it would make for some awesome furniture later in the future.\"\n   \"Cedar is nice, yes,\" Buddleia nodded with another smile. \"But they grow in cold places, I not know if they suitable for here?\"\n   \"If they can stand the cold, they should grow even quicker in the warm weather here,\" Sasha chortled. \"But in a way you're right, we'd best consider carefully what kind of cedar to plant here. Heh, another thing to ask Dan, he seems to know a good deal about almost everything.\"\n   \"That why he the Ag agent!\" Buddleia chittered. \"He clever fellow, he know lots!\" She playfully started poking Sasha's shoulder with both index fingers repeatedly. \"Call him, Sasha! Call him and ask! Go go go!\"\n   \"Knock it off, you crazy fuzzbutt you!\" Sasha laughed, pushing Buddleia's paws away. \"I'm calling him already, sheesh!\"\n\nShe had indeed brought her phone along with the clipboard. Leaning against the fence again, she swiped to her contacts list and hit the one for the Co-op and setting the loudspeaker function when it started ringing.\n   \"Sasha, good afternoon!\" answered the voice of the Katanga lion man Daniel. \"You sensed I have a deal for you, didn't you!\"\n   \"Uhh, sure, let's go with that,\" Sasha sniggered. \"So lay it on me, Dan; whaddaya got?\"\n   \"You still make hay, yeah? And you use that tiny two meter tedder? I got a better one, a Kuhn, triple-foldable and an eight and a half meter spread. Best thing, it only needs forty horses to run it.\"\n   \"Hmm. Sounds nice, but that's too much for us, Dan. We do still make a bit of hay, but only for Choco and the bunnies, so the small tedder is plenty for what we need. Now if you'd have a windrower with those kind of specs, [i]that[/i] I would be very much interested in, but that tedder is a bit too big for what we're doing.\"\n   \"Fair enough. I just thought I'd give you first dibs, as it came in yesterday.\"\n   \"Appreciate it, Dan. And we are in fact looking to replace some equipment, plus I need some info.\"\n   \"Keep talking, Sasha. What do you need, what can I do for you?\"\n   \"First off, I'm looking for a different plow. A straight subsoiler ripper, with a spread larger than two and a half meters. And I'm looking for a different cultivator as well. Either with discs or with tines, but also a good deal wider than two and a half meters. And for both, no more than a hundred horsepower requirement to run them. I have our old plow and disc harrow to trade in for them, too. Second-hand would be preferable, but we have the funds now to get something new if need be.\"\n   \"Okay, alright, I can do that. That's pretty much deliverable from stock, and we do have second-hand stock sitting here. For starters, how about an Agrisem Four-M ripper? The four-M does in fact stand for four meters, so it's a four meter spread, on a straight bar with a three-point hitch and eight ripper spoons. Needs a minimum of eighty horsepower to pull. If you trade in your old plow, I can let you have it for seven hundred seventy-five.\"\n   \"Done deal, that's perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Can you do me a similar solid for a cultivator?\"\n   \"I think so. I have one sitting here that folds out into a very wide V-shape, for a total spread of ten meters. Solid steel support wheels up front, pintle hitch, two folding bars with rows of discs. Needs a hundred horses minimum to pull it. I wish I could tell you what brand it is, but it's like Ukranian or something, and that alphabet pretty much looks like garbledegook to me. But either way, with the trade-in of your old cultivator, I can do eleven hundred on that one, and no warranty on the hydraulic rams, but they seem to be in good shape.\"\n   \"Great, I'll take that too, the Fiat and the Massey are both well over a hundred so we should be able to pull it no problem. Any word yet on a slurry spreader, a Fortshritt combine and... what else did I ask you to look out for?\"\n   \"A planter for sunflower seed. And no, like I said, those Fortshritt combines are way too reliable so it's very tricky to find them on the used market, and I haven't found a planter yet either, but I may have a lead on a slurry spreader. Give me some time on that, I'll know more by the end of the week.\"\n   \"Excellent. Now for the info I need. Would you happen to know what type of cedar tree would be best to plant in this valley? Since, you know, they're pretty much cold-weather trees and all that.\"\n   \"Cedar, huh? Yeah, there's one actually, called the Deodar Cedar. Originally from the Himalayas, but of all the cedar types, it's the most tolerant to heat and drought conditions, and it loves the sun. Grows pretty quickly too, and it's very ornamental because the branches droop a bit, like a weeping willow more or less. Plus it also smells amazing, so it's actually a very popular tree for parks and gardens and what have you the world over.\"\n   \"Sounds awesome. Does it make for good lumber?\"\n   \"That depends on what you want to use it for. It's actually historically known to be great wood since it's rot-resistant and very durable, so in like the Indies and thereabouts, they built amazing temples and what have you out of that wood, and also houseboats, bridges and even early train cars. And the grain is very fine and dense so you can polish it up a treat. But it's also a bit brittle, so it wouldn't make for good furniture like chairs. Tables, maybe, or cabinets, but not chairs or bookcases or stuff like that where you need a decent load-bearing capacity.\"\n   \"Jeezus balls Dan, is all that knowledge in that cranium of yours, or do you have the Wiki open on your screen?\"\n   \"Haha! To be honest, yes, I do have the Wiki open. I knew of some of it, but all those lumber details came from the Wiki.\"\n   \"Alright, well, either way it pretty much answers my questions. Next question; can you provide saplings of that deodoodeleedoo tree?\"\n   \"Ah. Now that will require a new page opened on my computer. Give me a moment, Sasha. Hmmm, hum te dum de dum... where would it be... Forestry... papapapapap... in here maybe? Uhmmm, humm... ah, there we are. Yes, Sasha, I can order it from the nursery I get forestry crates from. They come in crates of twenty or fifty, and of course, the crates of fifty are more expensive but a much better value. You're looking at nine hundred for a crate of twenty, seventeen hundred for a crate of fifty.\"\n   \"Hmm, okay. If you order now and tell them to step on it, how soon can they be there?\"\n   \"Let me seeeee... Well, I can overnight them, and as that nursery is between here and Arfafield, if I order now and overnight it, they'd be here early afternoon tomorrow. That does add a hundred bucks to the price, though.\"\n   \"At eighteen hundred for fifty, that's still a decent deal. Go on and get me a crate of fifty, Dan, and we'll swing by tomorrow to pick up the stuff. It'll take us some time to load up the old plow and cultivator anyway, and then that four-hour drive, so we should arrive in the early afternoon as well.\"\n   \"You got it, Sasha. Order is done, estimated delivery time; tomorrow between one and two-thirty in the afternoon. I'll put out that ripper and the cultivator as well and tell the guys to point a pressure washer and grease gun at them for you so they'll be all ready to go. Anything else I can help you with?\"\n   \"Ma-a-aybe. See, we were doing a bit of a survey here to see how to best divvy up the fields for the next planting season, and of course that weird-ass double road crossing came up. As a bit of a joke, I drew up a rough plan on how I would run those roads in a much more logical manner, and I even included actual names for the roads. When we drop by tomorrow, do you think you could take that sketch I made and work it out on the computer into something that looks better and more official, and maybe present it to the province council? See what they think, and maybe see if they could give us permission to reroute the roads in the manner I drew up? It would free up some space and make the ground next to our farm so much more usable to actually work it and grow something there.\"\n   \"Hahaha! That's awesome, Sasha! Yeah, sure, bring that sketch, I'll be glad to work it out for you and bug the province council with it. Who knows, they may actually say yes, especially if they don't have to do the work themselves. And you're right, it would clean up that crazy stupid double crossing next to your place there.\"\n   \"Excellent, thanks a bundle, Dan. Oh, and by the way, is that offer for the nineteen eighteen land prices still good?\"\n   \"Sure, that didn't change after you bought that patch of land that used to belong to your farm back then, it's still valid for all eight of the rectangles around the one your farm is in.\"\n   \"Fantastic, in that case you can also draw up another deed. You know that dirt path that outlines the right property line of our farm? Between that and the two dirt roads, there's a quite narrow strip of land, and it's just silly to let that sit there unused, so we want to add it to our farm grounds.\"\n   \"Great! That's wonderful, Sasha! I know exactly what piece of land you're talking about, so sure, I'll draw up a deed for it and have that ready when you drop by tomorrow as well. At those old prices, you'd be looking at... let's see... four point one acres, three sixty-two an acre, so that would make... fourteen hundred and eighty-four dollars and twenty cents for that strip of land.\"\n   \"Four damn acres of land for less than a crate of trees, we're lucky to have you and your shrewd wheeler-dealering, Dan,\" Sasha sniggered, looking down at her phone as it dinged. \"Oh, but I'm gonna hang you now, I have another call coming in. Draw up that deed, keep me posted on news from that university and a combine, and well see you tomorrow afternoon then!\"\n   \"Gotcha Sasha, see you tomorrow.\"\nSasha rang off and swiped to the new incoming call, smiling as she saw it was from their new neighbors at Cherry Blossom Farm.\n   \"Marian, hi! Sorry for the pause, I was just talking to the Co-op. How's it going? Are you guys settling in okay?\"\n   \"Ah, that's fine, Sasha, no worries. We're, uh, we're doing fine, actually. We're all settled in, and we started work on clearing space for our new fowl pens. But, uh, we did a bunch of work, but we need some help now. Is that okay to ask?\"\n   \"Of course! We were just doing a bit of surveying, because there's not much else to do at the moment here. What can we help you with, honey?\"\n   \"Ah, well, we cut a bunch of trees and we did a lot of mowing. You mentioned it would be best to put that grass into wrapped bales to make silage, and you said you have a baler and a wrapper?\"\n   \"We do indeed! Do you want to borrow them, or would you rather have us do the work so you can do other work?\"\n   \"If, uh, if it's not inconvenient, I would prefer if you could do it. And, uh, could you bring that big truck as well? We cut up the trees we felled and it's quite a stack, if we could borrow your truck, we could bring them to the sawmill and have them turned into the materials we need to build the pens. Is that okay?\"\n   \"Of course, honey, that's no problem at all! Give us some time to load up, and we'll be right over. Should be no more than an hour and we'll be there.\"\n   \"Ah, thank you so much, Sasha, that will be such a big help. We'll, uh, we'll see you then.\"\n   \"Count on it, Marian. See you in a bit.\"\n\nSasha rang off again and tapped out her phone with a smile. Buddleia also showed both her upper and lower canine teeth and a good portion of her dark pink tongue in a broad smile, her ears still perked and swiveled forwards as she had been listening to the conversation as well.\n   \"They do so good! Much work already! Of course we help!\"\n   \"You bet we do, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"Let's go put these papers away and get loaded up to go over to our neighbors, huh?\"\n   \"Yes! Be so nice to see them again! They so cute!\" Buddleia chirped a chortle.\n\nWith a chortle of her own, Sasha pushed herself off of the fence again and led the way up the dirt path between the front and rear left-side fields. She stepped into the small farmhouse for a moment to put away her clipboard and jotted down a last few quick notes before walking back out to the large shed. Using the pallet forks on the frontloader of the Massey Ferguson tractor, they carefully set the bale wrapper on the flat deck of the MAZ-200 truck after filling the holders with fresh new rolls of plastic wrap. While Sasha started strapping down the wrapper, Buddleia removed the seat from the Massey Ferguson tractor so she could drive it, and hitched the baler to the back of it after she had also put the two rabbit hutches she had built for their new neighbors on the back of the MAZ truck.\n\nWithin half an hour, Sasha was driving the old lavender truck down the path between the left fields and onto the dirt road leading to Cherry Blossom Farm, followed by Buddleia in the MF tractor with the baler behind it. As the tractor only did 35mph at best, and the truck now managed to get up close to 75mph, the tall human woman reached Cherry Blossom Farm in only another half hour, well before Buddleia in the tractor. She smiled as she drove up the driveway; it split about two-thirds down into two slightly narrower driveways that ran up to the front left and front right corner of the main farmyard, surrounding a triangle of land that had three rows of cherry trees along the inside perimeter - it was nice to see that none of those trees had been cut down, even though there was a fairly sizeable heap of logs laying in the packed dirt area where the very old two-story barn that Buddleia had taken down had been.\n\nSomewhat unusually, as Sasha pulled into the farmyard, she found it to be empty. Of course, the green and dark gray Nissan D21 Navara and the dark brown Range Rover were parked near the farmhouse, and a sun-baked orange Kubota mini excavator was sitting near the heap of logs, but there was no sign of the white and orange Dutch Spaniel Marian nor her daughter Margot.\n\nHopping out of the truck, Sasha looked around on the farmyard with a bit of wonder while she slowly walked up to the farmhouse. Just as she was about to knock on the door, she halted and tilted her head a bit at the sound of giggles and running coming from somewhere behind the house. With a light shrug and a small smile, the lanky human woman stepped around the left side of the house to see what was behind it. And again, she suddenly halted as she rounded the back corner of the house, her lips slowly curling into a wider smile and eventually a light grin.\n\nWith the house being situated at the very back of the farmyard, the backside of it was very near a narrow, elongated forest of spruce, pine and beech trees that ran along the backside of the farmyard and off into both directions. A fairly large divot had already been cut into the side of that forest by the previous farmer to create a decently-sized back garden with a large grass lawn and some flowering bushes behind the house. And on that lawn, Sasha found the two white and orange Dutch Spaniels, in a quite unusual scene.\n\nFor one, they were both stark naked. For another, they were running in circles across the lawn, waving their arms at one another, Margot every now and then hopping aside to dodge her mother as Marian made a grab for her, then making a lunge for Marian who in turn dodged and resumed the chase, both of them giggling like a pair of schoolgirls and throwing playful threats such as \"toldya, you can't catch me!\" and \"I'll get you yet!\" at each other while they ran after one another in circles and made grabs for each other's backsides.\n\nSasha actually had to put a hand over her mouth to stifle and muffle a giggle of her own as she started to realize what she was looking at. Those two playful dog ladies... they were actually chasing each other's tail! Oh golly but that was just too funny and absolutely adorable! Shaking her head cheerfully, Sasha very quietly retreated and walked back to the old MAZ truck, opening the driver door and closing it again with a loud slam before once again walking back around the left side of the farmhouse while calling out aloud. Good thing she had opted to only put on her pink sun hat with the two ribbons before driving over, so she was just as naked as the two Spaniel women which should soften the blow of embarrassment a bit.\n   \"Hellooo! Anyone home? I'm here!\"\n\nThe tall human woman's much more noisy approach had worked. As she again stepped around the rear left corner of the farmhouse, both white and orange Dutch Spaniel women were hastily trotting up to the open back door. Marian actually bumped into the back of her daughter as Margot almost stopped dead when Sasha appeared around the corner of the house in only her glasses and sun hat.\n   \"Oh! Hey! Dressed for the occasion, that's neat.\" She shook herself briefly after the collision with her mother and brushed a few locks of her brown hair from her face while canting her head and looking Sasha up and down. \"Holy shit, you look pretty, woman. Look at all those freckles! That's the most goddam freckles I've seen on anyone, ever!\" A playful grin curled her lips and bared her upper canine teeth partially. \"So do you always visit your neighbors in the buff?\"\n   \"When they're as cute as you and your mother, hell yeah I do,\" Sasha sniggered. \"And I did mention that this is the way we do our work on the farm, didn't I?\"\n   \"You did at that, but this ain't work on your farm, so what's your excuse?\" Margot grinned.\n   \"My excuse is that we dressed in the usual way we do our work on the farm, did our work, we got a call, we loaded up some equipment and promptly made our way over without bothering or even remembering to put on anything more than a hat,\" Sasha chortled. \"And besides...\" She motioned at the two naked white and orange canine women with an airy wave. \"Not like I'm all that underdressed in this present company, am I? Hell, with this hat on, I'm actually overdressed it looks like.\"\n   \"Ah, well, uh... This is... a bit embarrassing,\" Marian said, kind of half hiding behind her daughter and blushing a bit.\n   \"Oh hell no, not at all, this is just natural, honey,\" Sasha smiled with a light chortle. \"I know from lots of experience that it feels the very best to do farming while dressed like this, and hey, it's the way we're born, right?\" She walked over to the two canine women and folded an arm around Marian's shoulders, smiling deeper. \"And neither of you have anything to be ashamed for, honey. You're both beautiful, and such beauty definitely deserves to be fully shown off. Plus there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a bit of fun every now and then to take a break and relax from all the hard work a farm brings with it, and the work is so much nicer when you can do it utterly free and unabashed and unhampered by the restriction of clothing.\"\n   \"Toldya, mom,\" Margot sniggered, poking out her tongue at her mother. \"This is the way everyone in this country goes around, and it's perfectly natural and normal. We don't have to hide it whenever someone comes by for a visit.\"\n   \"Not when it's me and my wife, anyway,\" Sasha chortled. \"I do still advice at least shorts and a shirt for when you go to the sawmill or into town or to the Co-op. But hey, we've had someone from the sawmill and the Ag agent and one of the mechanics from the Co-op visit our farm some time ago, and we were naked at those times too, because they came to our place. And sure, they made a mention of it, but that was it, so there's really no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed.\"\n   \"Ah, uhm... that's... nice to know,\" Marian said, still blushing but slowly smiling and getting a bit more at ease from the comforting gesture of Sasha's arm around her shoulders. \"And, uh... well, it's also good to know that... well, we should be prepared for this kind of sight greeting us should we come visit your farm sometime.\"\n   \"Oh yes, whether you call first or drop by unexpectedly, either way you will find Leia and me doing our work as naked as this when you visit,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"And of course, you're both always welcome to drop by for a visit any time you like. Just remember that once a week, usually on Friday, we won't be there because we're taking that four-hour drive to the village to pick up our mail and revenue, and we usually spend the whole day in the village before undertaking that four-hour drive back to the farm because it's such a ridiculously long drive.\"\n   \"Ah, yes... that makes sense,\" Marian nodded, her blush receding but a trace of it still lingering around the dark, damp pad of her nose. \"Say, uh... perhaps we could, like... share or alternate that journey? I've gotten a post box at the post office as well, so maybe, ah, we could sometimes pick up each other's things as well? Since, uh, since one of us will be there anyway?\"\n   \"We'd have to go together at least once to let missus Dobbart and missus Stebbins know we might do that so they're aware of it as well, but yeah, we can totally do that,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"It's hardly any effort, and it'll be a good help, right? Just the thing neighbors would do for one another.\"\n   \"You're a very kind lady,\" Margot smiled. \"Hey, but, ain't your wife with you?\"\n   \"She'll be here any minute now,\" Sasha smiled. \"I drove the truck here, but she's in a tractor so it'll take her a bit longer. But hey!\" She put a hand on Marian's shoulder and her other hand on Margot's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. \"Speaking of the truck, I got some things for you on and in there, so come have a look!\"\n\nBoth Spaniel women smiled and followed Sasha around the left side of the house. They both tilted their head curiously as the human woman led the way over to the old lavender truck, and Sasha smiled as she started undoing the straps holding down the bale wrapper and the two rabbit hutches.\n   \"Here we go! Leia used to build lots of rabbit hutches when she was young, she built two very nice ones for the rabbits we have, and a few days ago she built these two as well. We didn't paint them yet because all we have is that lilac-colored paint and you may want to paint them in a different color, but either way, these are for you so you can start keeping rabbits as well.\"\n   \"Holy shit these look nice,\" Margot said with an appreciative nod. \"Really well-constructed, your wife really knows what she's doing it looks like.\" She turned to Marian. \"So you decided we should keep bunnies as well, huh ma?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, when Sasha first came over to introduce herself, we talked about how to set up our farm here,\" Marian nodded. \"I mentioned we might want to look into something small we could rear ourselves for some fresh meat other than poultry, and she suggested keeping rabbits because they do that as well.\"\n   \"Yeah, it'll take some time, but it'll be worth it,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"We've had ours for weeks now, almost two months even, and we only now have the first litter on the way.\" She let go a short laugh. \"And that was even unplanned, because we never put either of our males with our females, we were still waiting it out for a bit. But apparently a wild rabbit got into the run with our females, so, yeah, first litter on the way.\"\n   \"That's nice though, bunnies are cute, I like the idea of keeping some, even if the end goal is to wring their necks and put them on our plates,\" Margot chortled. \"Why two hutches, though? I mean, look at these, they're big! You can easily keep, what, five, six rabbits in one of these?\"\n   \"We figured to give you the opportunity to do it the same way we do,\" Sasha smiled. \"We keep our males and females separated, so we won't get overrun with tons of rabbits. Much better for their health too, if you don't keep breeding them time and time again, over and over again after each litter.\"\n   \"Good thinking,\" Margot nodded. \"And hey, thanks! These are really nice, and I really like the idea of keeping bunnies.\"\n   \"You're very welcome, dear, and just wait till you see the kind of rabbits you'll get from the butchery in the village,\" Sasha chortled. \"Even the most seasoned tough brute of a lumberjack would go 'awwwww!' at the sight of them.\" She looked around as she was about to hop off the back of the truck and chortled again, pointing up the road. \"And there's my wife trundling down the road, so we'll be complete in a minute! And in the meantime...\" She hopped off the back of the truck, opened the passenger door and leaned in to take a few things which she presented to Marian. \"Here's a few more housewarming gifts. This is fresh jam Leia made from the plums of our plum tree, this is a bottle of fresh milk we squeezed out of our goat this morning, and this is one of our signature cheeses we started making with that milk, enriched with roasted beech nuts from the trees all around our house and a pinch of pink salt.\"\n   \"Oh my gosh, Sasha, thank you so much!\" Marian almost yelped. \"That's so sweet of you! It looks delicious!\"\n   \"Yeah, I never had goat milk before, but I had some goat cheese once or twice, so I'm curious how it'll taste,\" Margot nodded. \"Hey, thanks a bunch again, Sasha, we really appreciate it.\"\nBoth of them gave Sasha a hug, much to the glee of Buddleia who just pulled up and got out of the tractor.\n   \"Yay, you nakie too! And you cuddle! I just in time! Yee hee!\"\nMarian very nearly jumped back and blushed a bit again, but Margot kept an arm around Sasha's waist while she turned to look at Buddleia with a cheerful grin.\n   \"And you're dressed for the occasion too I see, neat! Though of course that lower end of ya will always be naked anyway.\" She looked at Sasha and chortled. \"Is she always like that, Sasha?\"\n   \"Hell yeah, she's very free and open and playful,\" Sasha nodded with a chortle. \"I guess that's what growing up all alone on a farm a million miles in the middle of goddam nowhere does to you.\"\n   \"Sounds like we have something to look forward to, ma!\" Margot chuckled with a grin and a wink at her mother.\nMarian concentrated on adjusting her glasses with one paw while holding the bottle of milk, jar of jam and the cheese in her other arm, blushing again at Sasha's next remark.\n   \"Oh, but the two of you are very open and definitely very playful already, I noticed.\"\n   \"You play games? Yay, good! Playing is lots fun, yes!\" Buddleia chirped a chortle.\n   \"Ah... well... I'd better put this away inside,\" Marian said softly. \"Uhm, would you like a cup of tea?\"\n   \"That sounds wonderful, honey, then we can have a calm sit-down and you can tell us what you want us to do and where,\" Sasha smiled.\n   \"Right, come on in!\" Margot smiled, letting go of Sasha and leading the way to the front door. \"This house is a bit bigger than our old place, so we had lots of space for our furniture and then some space to spare, so I'm sure you can find a comfy place to sit too, Leia.\"\n\nShe opened the front door and saw everyone inside. The door opened into a small but roomy entrance hall, from where several doors and a flight of stairs led to other parts of the house. To the right, a door led into the living room, which was at the far right side of the house and partially at the front, with a walled-off kitchen protruding into it from the back, and a fireplace against the far right wall. There was indeed a modest amount of furniture, a table or two, some cabinets and book cases in varnished oak, and a four-seat sofa and two armchairs with a velour-like upholstery in tints of brown and gold, and it was all quite spread out in the spacious room.\n\nWhile Marian stepped through a door into the kitchen, Margot flopped down on the sofa and took a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table, lighting one and presenting Sasha and Buddleia with one, which Sasha accepted while sitting down in one of the armchairs while Buddleia lay down next to the chair on the chest and tummy of her quadruped lower body on the circular rug the chair was sitting on. Moments later, Marian reappeared from the kitchen as well, carrying a tray with a tea set and a plate of simple cookies which she set on the coffee table, pouring cups of tea for everyone and also lighting a cigarette from the packet Margot had used.\n\nCalmly sipping their tea, they sat and casually talked for a while about random subjects concerning both their farms. Marian mentioned she had no idea what to do with the dozen cherry trees in the triangle of ground between the farmyard and the two arms of the driveway, and Sasha advised to harvest the cherries once they were ripe, sell a bunch of them to Mr. and Mrs. Greene from the greengrocery store, and talk to Mrs. Stebbins from the general store to acquire a bag of sugar and a ton of empty glass jars to turn the rest of the cherries into jam which she was certain Mrs. Stebbins would be happy to sell for them. Buddleia also said she'd be happy to help them harvest the cherries, as one stomp of her against the trunks of the trees would have all the ripe cherries tumble down in once, and she advised to talk with the Ocicat woman Sonya Jonker from the crafts store about weaving them several large wicker baskets to collect the cherries in. Margot mentioned they had found the farmhouse had a fairly large cellar which even had a walled-off part that was kept dark and cool, which prompted Sasha to promise they'd bring over a couple of the large wood shelving racks Buddleia had built to put in that part of the cellar so the cherries and all the jars could be stored there and kept for a good amount of time. She also offered to sell a couple of the smaller stainless steel under-counter freezers for the same price she had paid for them at the auction in Arfafield, so those could be put in the cellar as well and used to keep more produce for an indefinite amount of time, as she had bought more of them than she could use herself.\n\nEventually, after a second cup of tea, a cookie or two and another cigarette, all four of them got up to have a look around the farm at the work that needed to be done. The calm talk had also completely alleviated Marian's initial embarrassment over having been caught naked with her daughter, as the casual tone of the conversation had clearly shown just how normal and natural that state of dress was for all of them. Having put the tea set away and rinsed the cups, the Dutch Spaniel woman joined her daughter and Sasha and Buddleia in walking around the farm, pointing out the work they had already done.\n\nTo the left of the driveway had been two large fields that were completely overgrown with grass, which had been neatly mowed and was laying in narrow rows. A narrow dirt path led from the left rear corner of the farmyard past the back garden and through the strip of forest to several more fields behind the elongated forest of which the grass that had overtaken them was also laying in neat narrow and continuous rows from left to right across all three of the fields. It was clear that the logs had come from the left-side path through the forest having been widened, and a second path on the right having been cut through the strip of forest as well, plus a sizeable patch of trees that had been cleared from the edge of the rightmost field to enlarge it.\n\nWalking back and forth slowly while looking at the narrow swaths of mowed grass and the tree stumps still sticking up from the ground, Sasha eventually gave a nod of her head and turned to the two canine women with a smile.\n   \"Alright, here's what I'm thinking we should do. Margot, you're strong, so you and Leia load up those logs on the back of our truck, okay? When you bring them over to the sawmill, ask Fred or Frank to saw them into planks and beams and slats; they'll advise you on the best sizes to waste as little of the wood as possible, and the leftovers will be chipped so you will also receive a bit of money for that. You can wait for the sawing to be done, it only takes a couple of hours, and they'll load up the materials on our truck so you can bring them back here. I'd put them in that little shelter you have built to keep them dry, because there's a few days of rain in the forecast for next week.\"\n   \"Gotcha, Sasha,\" Margot nodded, grinning cheerily. \"I take it we should probably put on some clothes before driving off to the sawmill, huh?\"\n   \"That's probably a good idea, yeah,\" Sasha chortled. \"Although they really won't bat an eye if you show up in your bare butt, so I'd say it's up to you. In the meantime, Marian, I saw you have some small collapsible chairs in the backyard. Fishing chairs or something?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, picnic chairs actually, but yes,\" Marian nodded.\n   \"Good, take one of those and put it in our Massey tractor, we took out the seat of that so Leia can drive it,\" Sasha smiled. \"You run that tractor over those rows of grass with the baler behind it. It's easy, I'll show you, just set it to four to five miles an hour, lower the pickup of the baler, engage the PTO, and off you go, you can just keep driving because the bales will fall out the back. I'll hitch the wrapper to our old Hanomag tractor you guys bought and follow you to wrap the bales you make. With it being a drive of two hours to the sawmill, and two hours back, plus an hour or two or maybe a bit more to wait for the logs to be sawn up, we should about be done by the time Leia and Margot get back here. They can help us move and stack the bales. I'm thinking we'll stack them where those logs are now, that's an even spot of ground and it'll be out of the way.\"\n   \"That sounds good to me, yes,\" Marian nodded again. \"What should we do with the bales after that?\"\n   \"Nothing,\" Sasha chortled. \"Just let them sit there and do their thing, they'll start fermenting all on their own. We let ours sit for thirty days, and they're all done by the end of it. The only thing you should do is tally-mark them every day so you can keep track of the number of days. Well, and it's good to check them every so often with a PH meter, a moisture meter and a thermometer, but I'm guessing you don't have any of those, and it's no real use for you to buy them because you'll only make silage this one time, yeah?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, we only needed to get the fields cleared of the tall grass,\" Marian nodded with a smile. \"We weren't planning on doing this kind of work every time. What, uh, where do we bring those bales when they're done?\"\n   \"The BGA, they'll pay you two hundred ten bucks apiece for them,\" Sasha smiled. \"You've been to the livestock dealer, yeah? If you drive there, you'll see a shortcut through the forest that's behind there. Take that shortcut, and at the end of it, you can make a left to head to the village, or make a right; do that, turn right and you'll drive down a small road between the forest and the side of the BGA yard and end up on the gravel road that runs in front of the BGA. That yard is full of these round buildings with dome tops, but drive over to the one square building that's there, announce yourself at the reception and tell them you have a load of silage bales, and they'll show you where to go and unload. You can borrow our truck to transport the bales, but who knows, maybe you already may have a truck of your own by next month.\"\n   \"Ah, actually, we will, yes,\" Marian nodded with a wider smile. \"We're in the process of buying a very old Volvo truck, the Co-op found it for us and they're giving it a refresh for us to make it reliable. We need a truck with an enclosed box for the large cages when we bring our birds to market, you know, and this one has a bed with hoops over it and a tarp curtain, so we can have the back enclosed for our birds or open for other cargo.\"\n   \"That's great,\" Sasha smiled. \"That will transport those bales for you just fine. Still, do let us know if you need help loading them, okay? It can be done by hand, Leia and I do that too, but it's quite heavy work, and you have to be careful not to poke holes in the wrap.\"\n   \"We will, Sasha, thank you so much,\" Marian smiled.\n   \"And we better get started with those logs,\" Margot chuckled.\n   \"One more thing for you, though,\" Sasha chortled. \"When you're at the sawmill waiting for those logs to be cut up, talk to Fred or Frank about renting their stump grinder. They'll bring it here and grind down all those stumps for you so they'll be out of the way.\"\n   \"Right! Good shout, I'll make sure to do that,\" Margot nodded, turning to Buddleia with a grinned smile. \"Well Leia, I guess it's you and me for the time being, huh? Let's see just how strong you are!\"\n   \"Yes! We load all logs easy!\" Buddleia nodded with a smile that showed her upper canine teeth and the front part of her dark pink tongue.\n\nAll four of them walked back through the strip of forest and past the house to the farmyard. The two rabbit hutches were taken off the back of the old MAZ truck and set in the backyard for the time being, and the bale wrapper was also unloaded after Sasha had parked the truck alongside the open patch of ground where the old barn had been and shown Margot how to operate the truck. While she and Buddleia started lifting the logs onto the flat back of the truck, Marian trotted into the backyard to grab one of the foldable picnic chairs and set it in the cab of the Massey Ferguson tractor, and Sasha drove the old little Hanomag tractor with the half-cab out from under the shelter and connected the bale wrapper to the back of it.\n\nDriving over to the fields on the left of the driveway, Sasha showed Marian how to set and operate the baler. Of course, right as she was in the middle of that, Buddleia came trotting over with Sasha's phone which had been in the cab of the old lavender truck and which had started ringing. Sasha gave her head a cheerful shake and took her phone to answer a call from the sawmill.\n   \"Wouldn't you know, it's like they sensed they'd get a visit today. Hey Fred! Or is it Frank?\"\n   \"It's Fred, Sasha. How's things going?\"\n   \"Good, but busy, Fred. We're at the moment on Cherry Blossom Farm, helping our new neighbors with baling and wrapping a ton of grass they've mowed, and loading up a bunch of logs they've cut down. So in about three or four hours, you'll actually see our truck pulling into your yard with Leia and Margot in it and a load of logs on the back of it which need cutting up into planks and beams and stuff.\"\n   \"Great! Welcome to! We'll keep an eye out! But the reason I'm calling, Sasha; I have a great deal for you if you're interested!\"\n   \"You too? Well, I'm always game for a good deal, so lay it on me, Fred.\"\n   \"Well, see, between here and Fennfield, there's another sawmill we're in contact with every now and then, and we've done a rotation with them. They bought some new equipment, and sold us their old equipment, which means I can now sell you some of [i]our[/i] old equipment. You interested?\"\n   \"I may be, what are we talking about?\"\n   \"I dunno if you've seen it around on our yard, but we have this tiny little old John Deere skidsteer. It comes with both a set of pallet forks, a low-profile bucket and a log grabber to attach to it, and it has weights on the back to keep it in balance. And we also have a small milling machine to cut smaller logs into planks or beams, it comes with two sets of circular sawblade setups, one for planks and one for beams of four by four. Small thing, table model you could say, it can handle logs up to a meter circumference and max four meters long. And because I'm such a generous guy, both that thing and the skidsteer are sitting on a ten meter trailer with a tilt-deck which is included in the deal. A thousand and it's all yours!\"\n   \"That is in fact indeed a great deal, Fred. You know what, when Leia and Margot are there with the logs, and those logs are all cut up and the materials are loaded back onto our truck, you can hitch that trailer to the back of the truck so they can bring it back here with them, because I'll take it.\"\n   \"Great! I'm glad to know it all goes to a good home where it will continue to see constant use. We'll get it all ready, and like I said, we'll keep an eye out for your truck. And an ear as well, haha!\"\n   \"Actually, the truck is a lot less noisy now, Fred. We swapped a younger engine into our grain truck, and the parts for the old engine finally came in so we got that running again as well and put it in the MAZ truck, so that one is now a bunch faster and smoother and a helluva lot quieter.\"\n   \"Oh, that's great! Good work! It's a very good truck, but holy hedgerow was it ever slow and noisy! Good on you for fixing that problem, Sasha! Anyways! Like I said, we'll keep an eye out!\"\n   \"Done deal, thanks a bunch, Fred, and see you soon sometime.\" Ringing off and tapping out her phone, Sasha smiled at Marian. \"Go on and start the baling, honey. That'll give you a bit of a head start while I go put my phone back and tell Leia she'll have to spend some money at the sawmill.\"\n\nMarian nodded with a smile and got into the Massey Ferguson tractor to start baling up the swaths of grass, while Sasha walked back to the truck and told Buddleia about the deal she had just made with Fred. She didn't put her phone back in the truck, though, but kept it with her as she got onto the old little Hanomag tractor and drove over to the fields on the left of the driveway with the bale wrapper attached to it. With how things had been going, it might very well be another call would come in, and it would be kind of difficult to answer her phone if it was in the cab of the truck and the truck was gone for six or more hours.\n\nThree bales had already been dropped from the baler by the time Sasha got to the field with the other small tractor. That was plenty of a head start, as the human woman had to stop the tractor every time to drop the bale after it was wrapped, whereas the Dutch Spaniel woman could just drive on continuously to make more bales. They made good time working in tandem like that, already being more than two and half swaths of grass into the field by the time Buddleia and Margot had finished loading the old lavender truck to capacity and setting off towards the sawmill.\n\nNevertheless, it was still going to be a long day with all that work. That was the thing; on a farm, there was always something happening. Whether it was on your own farm or someone else's farm.\n"
}

{
  "description": "It's been a little bit since the last installment, but we're still going strong! Work on Butterfly Farm continues to crop up, pun intended, so there's still more to show and tell! And with new neighbors, there's even more stuff going on, too!\n\nAdmittedly, this one is a bit of a filler story, to tie up some loose ends from things that happened in the previous stories and set the scenes for the upcoming stories. But it still shows the tall, freckled human woman Sasha and the fluffy purple and white vixen-taur Buddleia are not sitting still! In fact, despite the work having slowed down with crops growing and grass having been mowed, they're hard at work to prepare for after the winter, and even to expand the farm a bit more! And while they're at it, they get a call for help from their new neighbors on Cherry Blossom Farm, so of course they go over to lend a hand!\n\nA Mature rating for this one this time. Nothing really happens, but there is some talk about sexual shenanigans as Sasha lost her challenge with the Warmelink sisters from the spinnery, and upon arriving at Cherry Blossom Farm, she also... well, you'll see >~_^<\nAnd since nothing actually happens but there is only some talk of it, I'm pretty sure I'll be safe to put this here in my IB gallery despite the Mature rating on a story with a *gasp* human in it!\n\nBuddleia and Sasha Farr are © Fritti Breezedancer\nMarian and Margot Witteveen are © Fritti Breezedancer\nThe Minnaluna world and all characters therein are © Fritti Breezedancer"
}

{
  "writing": "On a farm, there is always something happening. Even when work is slow, something always has to be done, and when doing something, there is always something else that will happen as a result of that.\n\nOn Butterfly Farm, there was always something happening. Even with the grass mown, baled and wrapped and the winter rye still growing, and the farming work therefore being slow, there were things that still had to be done every day. And as a result of that, other things were always happening. The rabbits and the chickens had to be fed every morning, and as a result of that, eggs had to be gathered and hutches had to be cleaned. Choco the goat had to be milked every morning and evening, and as a result of that, milk had to be filtered and chilled, with an additional result of cheese and butter having to be made. And there was always some maintenance to do.\n\nNot everything went smooth. The fluffy purple and white vixen-taur Buddleia had started on taking apart the Deutz-Fahr combine harvester so it could be made operational again. The engine was made to run smoothly without a problem, but work on the internals of the large vehicle ran into the problem of parts being on back-order so the work stalled. The tall, freckled human woman Sasha had been working on the engine they had taken out of their 1959 Skoda 706 RT grain truck as it had been replaced with a similar but slightly younger engine, and she had used the lift pump and injection pump that had finally arrived after months of being on back-order to get it running again. That work initially went without a problem, but once the engine was running on the pallet it was sitting on, the vibrations caused it to topple and crush the oil filter. And as the engine was running, the oil was pressurized so it sprayed out in thick gushes all over the floor of the workshop and all over the lower legs of both the freckled human woman and the fluffy vulpine taur. That was a bit more than what a simple bath in the pond which now was fully stocked with fish could clean, so they had to take a couple of additional baths and do some quite rigorous scrubbing and use a generous amount of dish soap and rubbing alcohol.\n\nFortunately, a new oil filter was readily available and easy to put back in place, so the engine didn't sustain any damage. It also fit relatively easily under the double hood of the 1953 MAZ-200 truck together with its transmission, so that truck had become quite a bit more roadworthy after the transplant - doing a couple of test runs with the truck, Sasha found she could run the truck up to almost 75mph quite easily and smoothly without having to row through the gears as if she was stirring a cauldron of soup. Of course, the old two-stroke diesel engine that came out of the MAZ truck was kept and stored for later as it was still an operational and very strong and torque-y motor - but of course when Buddleia lowered it down with the engine hoist, she accidentally released the pressure too quickly so the engine clattered down and completely crushed the pallet they were intending to set it on, as well as its oil pan. Gotta be careful when working with large and heavy objects like complete truck diesel engines!\n\nProving that when something out of the ordinary happens it's never an isolated incident, were the three European hamster sisters, the Warmelinks, visiting the farm that very same evening to deliver the sofa Sasha had asked them to make in cooperation with the people from the new carpentry and woodworking shop. And of course, after a long naked evening filled with sexual shenanigans and playfulness and a nose-touching close examination of Sasha's buttocks by the end of the evening when it was time to go to bed, the mildly ribbed fabric that had been used to make the cushions for the sofa had indeed not left even the slightest imprint in the tall human woman's freckled skin, so Sasha lost her challenge and she had to accompany the trio of European hamsters back to the tiny village of Rolling Hills the next morning and subject to a full morning and half an afternoon of \"being measured for a dress\". Stark naked, of course, and with all three of the sisters groping and rubbing and fondling her all over, as well as fingering her into an orgasm each, followed by a thorough licking from each of the three hamster sisters to \"clean up\" which resulted in another three climaxes. Plus about eighty percent of the village noticed how Sasha was a bit unsteady on her feet after all that when she walked to the tavern for a stiff drink. It didn't help that Buddleia had been laughing at her the entire time and cheerfully told everyone they came across and who asked Sasha what was the matter absolutely everything that had happened in cheery detail.\n\nOh well, at least it gave Sasha the opportunity to pick up the mail from the post office and the revenue from the general store. And truth be told, the bottle-green denim dress that had been made to measure by the Warmelink sisters didn't look half bad on her, either.\n\nAside from that exuberantly sexual intermezzo and the mishaps with the truck engines, the days bubbled by calmly like a stream in spring. Animals were taken care of, milk was stored, cheese was made, butter was made as well, and maintenance was done. Winter rye kept growing, the grass kept growing, the silage bales kept fermenting. One of the two Verdant Island Lop females in the largest rabbit run gradually swelled up more and more as a litter of kittens grew inside of her, and extra hay was provided to the rabbits to let the pregnant one collect mouthful upon mouthful of it to stuff it in one of the sleeping spots in the large hutch and make a comfortable nest. It wouldn't be long anymore until a number of cute little baby bunnies would be hopping around. Inspired by the rabbits, and with Sasha's reminder of the promise she had made to their new neighbors at Cherry Blossom Farm, Buddleia had also built two more roomy rabbit hutches so the Dutch Spaniel Marian and her daughter Margot could start keeping rabbits as well. They just had not yet gotten to bring the hutches over to the other farm so far.\n\nDespite having been replanted in the midst of summer, the elderberry bushes had also taken well to their new location and had fruited and ripened fully. The result of that was that a couple of days had been spent picking and cleaning all the berries - the result of which was that even more long and extensive baths in the pond were needed because by the end of the cleaning both Sasha and Buddleia were stained a purplish red all over from the small berries. But after all that, and utilizing the cane sugar and raisins Sasha had bought from the general store in preparation, both the very large and very old two-gallon glass jars that had belonged to Sasha's grandmother were sitting out in the full sun on the small garden table that was set near the rabbit hutches in the field in front of the house, filled up with the berries, sugar and chopped-up raisins on water to steep and ferment into what Sasha was determined to continue calling \"sunny wine\" in honour of her grandmother.\n\nInventory was also taken, to make sure of what types of seed and how much of each they had in stock, as well as how much solid fertilizer. The current work might be in a lull, but that did provide plenty of time to look to the future and make plans for what to do the next upcoming season. Would they keep most of their fields as grass and turn it into silage again? What would they plant in the two fields that currently had winter rye growing in them? Come to that; what would they do with the winter rye? Buddleia had remarked that winter rye was usually grown as a cover crop and cultivated into the soil before it matured as a sort of natural fertilizer; would they do the same thing? It was possible to harvest the grains, but would it be feasible? Sasha had decided they would harvest it; for one, it would give them an opportunity to re-tie their connections with the flour mill, and for another, it would mean income, and that was still an important point to keep in mind. The silage was a great financial boost, but any extra harvests would be more than welcome.\n\nSpeaking of the silage; would they continue with it? Both Sasha and Buddleia agreed it was a very profitable route to take with the farm, at least for the coming year or two or three, especially due to how proportionally little work it took them to make and the low cost input of merely time, several dozens of liters of diesel fuel and a couple of rolls of plastic wrap. But with the elongated and indeed very large field aside the dirt road that ran behind the farm turning out to also belong to them and therefore being eligible to be cut, they did have quite a large amount of grassland to cut. Sasha did want to plow up one of the fields in the spring to reseed it with grass that would grow denser and give a higher yield, but would they keep all the other fields as grass as well? It was a bit much.\n\nWith a week of clear, sunny and decently warm weather ahead of them, the tall freckled human woman and the fluffy purple and white vixen-taur decided to take some time and survey the farm, so they could see exactly what they had, exactly how it was shaped, and bounce ideas off of one another. After a breakfast of warm porridge, a bath in the pond, taking care of the animals and taking care of the milk and cheese, both of them took some time to relax and lay in the grass of the field in front of the house, near the rabbit hutches and runs.\n\nComfortably leaning up against the side of Buddleia's quadruped lower body, Sasha crossed her arms behind her head and stretched out, closing her eyes for a few moments and taking slow, deep breaths to draw in the fresh autumn air. Buddleia did much the same, letting her deep breaths go in low and long-drawn churring sounds while she calmly and almost absently ran a paw up and down along Sasha's side.\n   \"We not do poppies yet, yes?\" she said eventually, leaning in her upper body a bit so she could nuzzle her cheek and muzzle against the top of Sasha's head. \"Maybe sunflowers?\"\n   \"No poppies, indeed,\" Sasha nodded with a quiet smile. \"That's too much investment for us, we'll have to learn about it and acquire special equipment, and we're not at that point yet.\" She dipped her head backwards to look up at Buddleia's face with a deeper smile. \"We may even have to wait a year with sunflowers too. It very much depends on whether Dan can find us the equipment we need for that, and if the price is right. So let's first concentrate on what we can do with the equipment we have.\"\nBuddleia nodded and in the motion leaned her head upside down to give a soft lick down from Sasha's forehead and between her eyes down over her small button nose.\n   \"Yes, you right, Sasha. We have machines that work, so we work with those first, get other machines later when we can afford. Is good idea, yes.\"\n   \"Will you stop it with the slobbering, you silly fuzzbutt you,\" Sasha chortled while she pushed her glasses back up her nose after Buddleia's lick had pushed them all the way down. \"We already had our bath, you know.\"\nBuddleia giggled with several chirped staccato yips.\n   \"But is fun, Sasha!\" She leaned over her upper body even more so she could bring her head down to Sasha's head and give several more large, long licks over the human woman's face. \"You taste nice too, like cinnamon, yes! Yee hee!\"\n   \"Quit it, you nutso fuzzbutt!\" Sasha chortled, playfully pushing her hands against Buddleia's slender muzzle and fuzzy cheeks. \"We're supposed to be planning for the future, you know!\"\n   \"Okay, we plan,\" Buddleia chirped, giving a last playful lick right over Sasha's right ear. \"For when we plan, Sasha? After rye harvest, yes?\"\n   \"That's right,\" Sasha sniggered, wiggling a finger in her damp ear and teasingly wiping it on Buddleia's fur. \"If I calculated it right, we'll get another eight cuts of grass before the rye is ready for harvest, maybe nine if we leave it sitting until the end of the month. That means, from all the grass fields we currently have, we'll get close to four thousand bales, which will be over eight hundred thirty thousand in silage. That should be plenty to start looking at other and maybe even new equipment, so I'm thinking there will be quite a bit of a reorganization coming after the rye harvest.\"\n   \"What we do after rye harvest, Sasha?\" Buddleia asked with another chirp. \"Plant other grains?\"\n   \"Definitely, but not right away,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"We may need to plant grass in the fields that have the rye, because it will be too late in the season to plant anything else. I looked it up, and if we don't use the winter rye as a cover crop to cultivate it into the soil come spring, it will take until summer before it's fully ripe and harvestable in June. That's a few months after spring planting season, so any cereal crops we want to plant next year, we'll have to plant in other fields.\"\n   \"So what we reorganize then?\" Buddleia smiled.\n   \"Here, hang on,\" Sasha smiled.\n\nShe got up and walked to the small old farmhouse, returning a few moments later with a clipboard holding several sheets of lined paper and several sheets of blank printer paper. Cuddling up against the soft and fluffy side of Buddleia's quadruped lower body again, Sasha began jotting down some bullet points, saying aloud what she was thinking about and writing down.\n   \"So, we have the field on the other side of the pond and that little forest, where the right rye field wraps around at the moment. That will stay grass for the time being, until the rye is harvested, because after harvest, I want to change those fields into more logical shapes. We have the left rye field behind the house; I'm thinking we'll plant that with that grass mix I bought from Dan after harvest. Not gonna mess with that huge and long narrow field on the other side of the back road, so that'll stay grass as well for the time being. That leaves us with the fields to the left of the house; I'm thinking those will change from grass to something else before the rye harvest if we want to be in time for the spring season.\"\n   \"Is good idea, but we be limited a bit,\" Buddleia nodded. \"If we plant in spring, we do barley or oats, in March, and harvest in September. Last few years I farm actively, I do oats in one field and spring canola in other field, harvest in September and do winter canola in both fields, plant in September and harvest end of April or early June. Winter canola better too, give more yield, but you have fallow fields from June to September.\"\nSasha nodded slowly, chewing on the end of her pen.\n   \"Yeah, that kinda sucks, because that's three months of productivity wasted. We could get three cuts of grass in that time, that's three loads of silage at... let's see... seventy-seven plus eighty-one, makes... a hundred fifty eight bales all in all, at two hundred ten a pop, makes... a bit over thirty-three grand we'd be leaving in the ground. I'd rather make that money and put it into the account if I can help it.\"\n   \"Is best option though,\" Buddleia pointed out. \"Is shortest time fields lay fallow. We do barley, wheat, oats or spring canola only, we have fields fallow from September to March. I always do oats, then winter canola, then three months fallow so soil can recover for more winter canola, and every other year I leave one field fallow longer to plant oats again in spring.\"\n   \"Where did you sell the oats?\" Sasha wanted to know. \"I don't think you'd bring them to the flour mill, did you?\"\n   \"No, I sell to livestock dealer and Co-op,\" Buddleia nodded. \"Livestock dealer use for feed, I not know what Co-op does, sell on to factories I guess. And I always sell few bushels to bakery so they can make oatmeal.\"\nSasha also nodded.\n   \"I see. I'd be more tempted by barley, we can sell all of that to the flour mill. Although I have to say I'm very partial to the idea of canola. Two harvests is big, and remember we ran into miss Simones from the BGA in the tavern the other day? I talked with her for a bit, and she said they have the facility to make bio-diesel from canola. We could sell to the BGA for a good price, and even have part of the yield turned into bio-diesel for ourselves so we can fill our fuel tank with it and run our equipment on it. I feel that would offset the loss in revenue if we leave the field fallow for three months.\"\n   \"Is good idea, Sasha, yes!\" Buddleia nodded with a smile that showed the lower halves of her upper canine teeth. \"I not think of, I always sell canola to oil mill, they pay good price. But is very good if we can bring canola to BGA and get diesel back, yes! We do that, yes!\" She giggled in several staccato yips again. \"But canola all the time, when we do sunflowers? I want sunflowers, Sasha! Yee hee!\"\n   \"We'll get to that, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha chortled. \"We're talking about the left-side fields right now; we can keep those for canola, maybe oats and barley or wheat or even triticale for crop rotation now and then. That still leaves us with the right rye field and the field behind the pond; once we have that rye harvested and those fields sorted out into more logical shapes, we can put sunflowers there.\"\n   \"Okay! Is good idea!\" Buddleia nodded happily. \"Grandparents put sunflowers there too!\"\n   \"I remember you mentioned that,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"And I'm thinking we may even branch out and try other grains. Sorghum is incredibly suitable for the climate here, and if we grow sweet sorghum we may even be able to sell off the remains of the plants after harvest to a place that produces sugar and syrup, or to the BGA to make ethanol.\" She scratched behind her left ear with the back of the pen for a moment. \"Although I have to admit I'm not quite sure on the procedure. From what I've read so far, we'd have to choose between grain sorghum and sweet sorghum, and we might have to harvest the sweet sorghum before the grains are ripe, so it's either one or the other we'd get as a result. I'll have to read up more on that.\"\nBuddleia nodded again and clapped her paws cheerily.\n   \"Sorghum is good! Grandparents grew sorghum in back field! Was one big field behind the house all the way to left fence! We use sorghum for crop rotation back then, is very good! We can do again to rotate crop if we also grow barley or wheat, Sasha, yes!\"\n   \"That would be a very viable option, then,\" Sasha chortled. \"And to be honest, I'm very interested in trying out spelt. That's almost an artisan crop by now, and I remember there was a farm near Fennfield that grew it for an artisan bakery in Fennfield. My gramma would get what they called a Dinkel loaf from there that we only used for Sunday breakfast and lunch as a sort of treat, and it was very tasty. I'd like to try a small field of spelt sometime to see how it goes. Oh, and we'd have to talk with the flour mill to see if they can handle it as an aside.\"\n   \"I not know of spelt, but it sound nice!\" Buddleia smiled, combing her fingers through her bristly whiskers. \"If we experiment with small field, maybe we do durum sometime too? You make pasta with durum, and pasta is yum!\"\n   \"I'm definitely not opposed to that idea,\" Sasha nodded with another chortle. \"And I think we can organize things so that we'd have a small field for experiments like that. Right! So let's talk logical shapes then. To be honest, I'm a sucker for geometric shapes, that's an influence from my grampa, because they're much easier to harvest. Even if it does mean you may give up a small amount of arable land.\" She scrambled to her feet and stretched. \"Let's take a nice little stroll and see what we have to work with here.\"\n\nBuddleia nodded with a smile that showed the entirety of her upper canine teeth and the tip of her tongue. She also got to her four feral feet and gave herself a quick, short shake before folding an arm around Sasha's waist and following the tall human woman towards the back of the farm. The rye in the back fields was a good two feet tall already, lush and dark green and calmly swaying and waving in the light breeze. Walking down the dirt road behind their farm to the right, they stopped by the end of the fence, where the narrow dirt path running from the dirt road in the back all the way to the dirt road in the front denoted the rightmost property line of Butterfly Farm.\n\nAs they walked along the fence, Sasha looked aside at the rye field and tilted her head a bit.\n   \"See, there's a thing. I didn't quite realize it in the excitement of planting our first crop, but that hill, as small and low as it is, poses a problem.\"\n   \"What problem, Sasha?\" Buddleia asked with a light shrug. \"We never have problem with field here.\"\n   \"Well, not so much a problem, as more an inconvenience and a major pain in the ass,\" Sasha said with a light chortle. \"With the way that hill slopes between that dirt path and the path near our farm, that makes it a bitch and a half to run a combine across. I don't think we'd have much of a problem harvesting the rye, a grain header is a bit more forgiving, but if we'd put sunflowers here, we'll have to use a corn header for harvesting and those are super rigid. We'd have to make very weird passes to make sure we catch everything as we go up and down that hill in whichever direction.\"\n   \"Is true, that,\" Buddleia nodded with a chirped chortle. \"Grandfather always make strange patterns with harvester to get all sunflowers, I remember.\"\n   \"Yeah, and look at that,\" Sasha pointed down the field next to the small forest and the pond. \"That little forest behind our shed juts out in a weird way right into that field. I'm not sure if it did way back when that field was still part of this farm, or if the trees got free reign to grow that way after that field was sold, but either way it means we'll have some work to do.\"\n   \"You want to cut trees?\" Buddleia said with her head a bit canted as she looked down the field.\n   \"A number of them, anyway,\" Sasha nodded. She flipped over to the sheets of blank printer paper on her clipboard and sketched some basic lines. \"If this is that field, and this is that small forest, I'm thinking we draw a line from here to here and cut down all the trees that are over that line. It'll make this field...\" She shielded her eyes with a hand and stared down the field. \"...more or less rectangular all the way down to the pond. And past the pond, from here, there's enough space to have it form an L-shape along the front fence. And from what I can see right now, there's no weird slopes or ripples down the entire length, so that would make a great sunflower field. So if we...\" She turned to her clipboard and drew a few more lines. \"Let's see, if we'd cut back those trees, and then extend that field all the way to the fence on this side by cutting into this rye field, we'd have a very long L-shape without any terrible slopes. That'll be great for sunflowers, and we can plant the rest of the rye field with grass. It's much easier to mow and bale over that little hill than it will be to run a combine over it. And that, in turn, leaves the rye field behind the house free for something else after we harvest the rye in that field.\"\nBuddleia's smile slowly grew wider as she looked at the lines Sasha sketched on the paper, and she nodded.\n   \"Is good idea, yes! Much more sunflowers, all the way to the front! I like!\" She put her right paw on Sasha's shoulder and pointed at the narrow strip of land between the dirt path and the actual wider dirt road. \"And look, Sasha! We ask Dan about that bit of field, we may get cheap, and that be good for experiments with spelt or durum, yes!\"\n   \"Now you're thinking with your head, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha chortled, playfully booping the damp, cool black pad of Buddleia's nose with a fingertip. \"And we [i]should[/i] own that bit of land, that's such a narrow strip it'd be just silly to leave it laying there between the path and the road.\" She made a note on one of the papers on her clipboard. \"Next call to Dan, I'll ask him about that. Now let's go look at what else we got.\"\n\nThey walked the other way, back along the fence separating the backside of their farm grounds from the dirt road, past the field of winter rye behind the copse of trees and along the back-side left field all the way down to where the dirt roads on that side of the farm made the weird elongated and wavy X-shape. The back-side left field, situated between the dirt path on the left of the copse of trees, the long dirt path separating both left-side fields and the fence alongside the back dirt road, was almost rectangular in shape if it wasn't for the fact it curved along with the curve of the back road. At the very left side of the farm grounds, that dirt road continued its smooth curve as it ran off into the landscape towards where the Cherry Blossom Farm was located, crossing the dirt road that ran right along the left side of the farm grounds from the main road towards the sawmill. A turn-off from that road onto the road to Cherry Blossom Farm and a turnoff from the road to Cherry Blossom Farm onto the road to the sawmill enclosed the two weirdly elongated and wavy triangles that were formed by the unusual crossing, and which had been added to the Butterfly Farm grounds by the tan Katanga lion Ag agent Daniel as he originally owned them.\n\nSasha shook her head as she looked at the strange crossing with the weird turnoffs and pointed towards a forest-covered, higher hill some way in the distance.\n   \"This is so dumb. Look, if they had made a much straighter crossing, that road could run right towards that hill and curve along it to lead to Cherry Blossom Farm, and then they could have made a much straighter turnoff from that road to this one as well over there. That would make these two weird patches of land into a much more usable and more or less rectangular shape that could be a workable field.\"\n   \"What if we make new road?\" Buddleia chirped a chortle, also pointing. \"We do what you say, make Cherry Blossom road straight from there and go along the forest hill there so it cross here much more straight, and we make straight connection between sawmill road and Cherry Blossom road there.\"\n   \"If it were up to me, I'd do that in a heartbeat,\" Sasha sniggered. \"Unfortunately, it's [i]not[/i] up to me. Dan said the roads are owned by the province, and they decide what's done with them.\"\n   \"Ask Dan to get in touch with province when you ask about that strip of field on other side!\" Buddleia chirped another chortle. \"He say they have no use for all land out here, maybe they have no use for roads either, so we get to decide how the roads run because we have much use for the land here, yes!\"\n   \"Worth a shot,\" Sasha sniggered again. \"And if we'd get to do that, I'm gonna name these damn roads too.\" She pointed again, at the dirt road that ran along the front side of their farm grounds, the one that ran along the left side towards the sawmill, and the one that came from the direction of Cherry Blossom Farm and past the backside of their farm after crossing the road leading to the sawmill. \"See, I'd make that Butterfly Road, and that Sawmill Road. Over there where Butterfly Road connects to Sawmill Road, I'd make that a straight connection, or maybe a small one of those triangle connections. That road there, I would make that Cherry Blossom Road, and I'd make another straight or small triangular connection where Butterfly Road connects to it, and the same over there, where it connects to Sawmill Road. And that would make a much neater connection for the road behind our farm too, and I'd call that Waving Grain Road, which I'd also connect either straight or with a small triangle to Sawmill Road. And then boom, we'd end up with a very usable field between all those roads on the side of our farm.\"\nBuddleia chirped a number of short, staccato yips and pushed her paw against Sasha's shoulder.\n   \"Draw it on your paper, Sasha! Make good plan to show province, yes! You totally convince them!\"\nSasha gave her head an amused shake and shrugged with a laugh.\n   \"Haha! Sure, why the hell not, it'll be good for a laugh anyway.\"\n\nLeaning against the fence, the freckled human woman flipped to another sheet of blank printer paper and started sketching more lines. Part of the left side of their farm grounds, part of the front, the roads that ran in front and to the side, and the new layout of the other roads more or less as she had described them earlier. She even scribbled the names she had suggested between the lines that represented the roads. When she was done, she pushed herself off of the fence and held out the clipboard to Buddleia with a grin.\n   \"There, whaddaya think of that, babe?\"\n   \"Look so much better!\" Buddleia chirped, clapping her paws again. \"We should do, Sasha! Is so much more handy and logical!\"\n   \"Well, like I said, it's not up to me, it's up to the Arfajia Province council,\" Sasha chortled. \"But hell, I could always show this to Dan, maybe he could work it out neater on the computer and present it to the council and see what they say. I mean, hell, he's already planning to foist them into improving the roads around here.\"\n   \"Yes! We should totally do, Sasha!\" Buddleia nodded cheerily. \"We can have better field on this side!\"\n   \"Speaking of,\" Sasha chortled. \"I'd need a drone or something to look at it from above, but I do believe that we're bigger than I had initially thought. Look, with that rocky shelf over there, I think we could easily make a path from the driveway, past that rocky shelf and all the way to the end here. That would divide that front field into two much more manageable fields, and we could give Choco a much larger pen at the front over there too, give her that whole part between the fence and the new path, because this front field is much bigger than it looks. And then we can also connect the two paths with that path we made along the front of the bale shelter on that rocky shelf.\"\n   \"Yes! We do that too! Is very good idea, Sasha!\" Buddleia nodded again. \"And is easy! We run plow to make path, then cultivator to smooth, then run trucks up and down to compact! We do in one day, easy!\"\n   \"Looks like we have a plan for tomorrow,\" Sasha chortled. \"I gotta say though, before we do that, we'll have to get rid of that plow we have now and get another one.\"\n   \"Why?\" Buddleia chirped a chortle. \"Is nothing wrong with plow, Sasha.\"\n   \"I know, but I just can't get used to the diagonal offset of that thing,\" Sasha chortled with a mild grin. \"It's [i]such[/i] a pain in the ass to use, and it only has a, what, two, two and a half meter spread? Plowing those fields for the rye was such a goddam struggle. If we wanna make a decently straight path, I'd much rather swap it for a straight ripper, at least that I can work with and make decently straight lines.\"\nBuddleia poked out her tongue and chittered a yipped giggle.\n   \"Okay, is fair I guess. That old plow is bit difficult to manage, and you have to turn it at end of every furrow, is wasted extra time.\"\n   \"Not to mention that with a straight ripper, you can plow at ten miles per hour rather than three,\" Sasha sniggered. \"We'd be done three times as fast, leaving us more time to do cultivating and sowing and whatnot. Come to that, I'd also rather change that old disc harrow for a wider cultivator, because that thing also only has a two and a half meter spread.\" She playfully poked Buddleia in the chest with a finger. \"So if you're not emotionally attached to those things because they used to belong to your grandfolks, I'll ask Dan if we can trade them in for some better and wider equipment.\"\nBuddleia chirped another chortle and batted a paw at Sasha's hand.\n   \"Is okay, grandparents changed equipment too, is progress. We do too if Dan has good equipment we can use, yes.\"\n   \"Right, then for now, let's get back to what we were actually doing,\" Sasha chortled. She pointed at the front-side left field, which had a decent patch of spruce trees and bushes at the side where it bordered the road, forming so much of a natural fence a regular fence had not been put in place there. \"That there is a problem as well, and it's related directly to what I said earlier about the geometric shapes.\"\n   \"You wanna cut down trees?\" Buddleia said. \"But I like the trees, they be there since before I born, some even before grandparents were born.\"\n   \"No, I'm thinking something else,\" Sasha smiled, walking a little way up the path separating the front and the rear left field. \"See, if we would plow up this field to grow canola, we could go in a straight line from here right in front of that patch of trees, leaving the trees where they are. The only thing is that it would leave this triangular patch of land here, and once we make that other path there, another triangular patch of land on that side. We could plow that up as well to add to the arable field, but I'm thinking we keep it straight and make this field a perfect rectangle. Then we can use those triangular patches of unused land to... hell, I dunno. Maybe build a small shelter to keep the plow and cultivator under on this side of the farm, or we could even plant some more trees here and just let them grow.\"\n   \"I like that, yes,\" Buddleia nodded with a smile. \"More trees always good! But what we plant here, Sasha? More spruce? Forests is almost exclusively spruce already, is bit much.\"\n   \"Yeah, and if we're gonna do those super trees Dan mentioned in those spots of land between those road crossings, it'd be better to use something different here as well,\" Sasha nodded. \"Something that grows a little quickly, something we could maybe use for materials later.\" She ran a finger along her nose. \"Matter of fact, I'm considering cedar. Those look real nice, and they smell real nice too, plus the lumber retains that smell, it would make for some awesome furniture later in the future.\"\n   \"Cedar is nice, yes,\" Buddleia nodded with another smile. \"But they grow in cold places, I not know if they suitable for here?\"\n   \"If they can stand the cold, they should grow even quicker in the warm weather here,\" Sasha chortled. \"But in a way you're right, we'd best consider carefully what kind of cedar to plant here. Heh, another thing to ask Dan, he seems to know a good deal about almost everything.\"\n   \"That why he the Ag agent!\" Buddleia chittered. \"He clever fellow, he know lots!\" She playfully started poking Sasha's shoulder with both index fingers repeatedly. \"Call him, Sasha! Call him and ask! Go go go!\"\n   \"Knock it off, you crazy fuzzbutt you!\" Sasha laughed, pushing Buddleia's paws away. \"I'm calling him already, sheesh!\"\n\nShe had indeed brought her phone along with the clipboard. Leaning against the fence again, she swiped to her contacts list and hit the one for the Co-op and setting the loudspeaker function when it started ringing.\n   \"Sasha, good afternoon!\" answered the voice of the Katanga lion man Daniel. \"You sensed I have a deal for you, didn't you!\"\n   \"Uhh, sure, let's go with that,\" Sasha sniggered. \"So lay it on me, Dan; whaddaya got?\"\n   \"You still make hay, yeah? And you use that tiny two meter tedder? I got a better one, a Kuhn, triple-foldable and an eight and a half meter spread. Best thing, it only needs forty horses to run it.\"\n   \"Hmm. Sounds nice, but that's too much for us, Dan. We do still make a bit of hay, but only for Choco and the bunnies, so the small tedder is plenty for what we need. Now if you'd have a windrower with those kind of specs, [i]that[/i] I would be very much interested in, but that tedder is a bit too big for what we're doing.\"\n   \"Fair enough. I just thought I'd give you first dibs, as it came in yesterday.\"\n   \"Appreciate it, Dan. And we are in fact looking to replace some equipment, plus I need some info.\"\n   \"Keep talking, Sasha. What do you need, what can I do for you?\"\n   \"First off, I'm looking for a different plow. A straight subsoiler ripper, with a spread larger than two and a half meters. And I'm looking for a different cultivator as well. Either with discs or with tines, but also a good deal wider than two and a half meters. And for both, no more than a hundred horsepower requirement to run them. I have our old plow and disc harrow to trade in for them, too. Second-hand would be preferable, but we have the funds now to get something new if need be.\"\n   \"Okay, alright, I can do that. That's pretty much deliverable from stock, and we do have second-hand stock sitting here. For starters, how about an Agrisem Four-M ripper? The four-M does in fact stand for four meters, so it's a four meter spread, on a straight bar with a three-point hitch and eight ripper spoons. Needs a minimum of eighty horsepower to pull. If you trade in your old plow, I can let you have it for seven hundred seventy-five.\"\n   \"Done deal, that's perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Can you do me a similar solid for a cultivator?\"\n   \"I think so. I have one sitting here that folds out into a very wide V-shape, for a total spread of ten meters. Solid steel support wheels up front, pintle hitch, two folding bars with rows of discs. Needs a hundred horses minimum to pull it. I wish I could tell you what brand it is, but it's like Ukranian or something, and that alphabet pretty much looks like garbledegook to me. But either way, with the trade-in of your old cultivator, I can do eleven hundred on that one, and no warranty on the hydraulic rams, but they seem to be in good shape.\"\n   \"Great, I'll take that too, the Fiat and the Massey are both well over a hundred so we should be able to pull it no problem. Any word yet on a slurry spreader, a Fortshritt combine and... what else did I ask you to look out for?\"\n   \"A planter for sunflower seed. And no, like I said, those Fortshritt combines are way too reliable so it's very tricky to find them on the used market, and I haven't found a planter yet either, but I may have a lead on a slurry spreader. Give me some time on that, I'll know more by the end of the week.\"\n   \"Excellent. Now for the info I need. Would you happen to know what type of cedar tree would be best to plant in this valley? Since, you know, they're pretty much cold-weather trees and all that.\"\n   \"Cedar, huh? Yeah, there's one actually, called the Deodar Cedar. Originally from the Himalayas, but of all the cedar types, it's the most tolerant to heat and drought conditions, and it loves the sun. Grows pretty quickly too, and it's very ornamental because the branches droop a bit, like a weeping willow more or less. Plus it also smells amazing, so it's actually a very popular tree for parks and gardens and what have you the world over.\"\n   \"Sounds awesome. Does it make for good lumber?\"\n   \"That depends on what you want to use it for. It's actually historically known to be great wood since it's rot-resistant and very durable, so in like the Indies and thereabouts, they built amazing temples and what have you out of that wood, and also houseboats, bridges and even early train cars. And the grain is very fine and dense so you can polish it up a treat. But it's also a bit brittle, so it wouldn't make for good furniture like chairs. Tables, maybe, or cabinets, but not chairs or bookcases or stuff like that where you need a decent load-bearing capacity.\"\n   \"Jeezus balls Dan, is all that knowledge in that cranium of yours, or do you have the Wiki open on your screen?\"\n   \"Haha! To be honest, yes, I do have the Wiki open. I knew of some of it, but all those lumber details came from the Wiki.\"\n   \"Alright, well, either way it pretty much answers my questions. Next question; can you provide saplings of that deodoodeleedoo tree?\"\n   \"Ah. Now that will require a new page opened on my computer. Give me a moment, Sasha. Hmmm, hum te dum de dum... where would it be... Forestry... papapapapap... in here maybe? Uhmmm, humm... ah, there we are. Yes, Sasha, I can order it from the nursery I get forestry crates from. They come in crates of twenty or fifty, and of course, the crates of fifty are more expensive but a much better value. You're looking at nine hundred for a crate of twenty, seventeen hundred for a crate of fifty.\"\n   \"Hmm, okay. If you order now and tell them to step on it, how soon can they be there?\"\n   \"Let me seeeee... Well, I can overnight them, and as that nursery is between here and Arfafield, if I order now and overnight it, they'd be here early afternoon tomorrow. That does add a hundred bucks to the price, though.\"\n   \"At eighteen hundred for fifty, that's still a decent deal. Go on and get me a crate of fifty, Dan, and we'll swing by tomorrow to pick up the stuff. It'll take us some time to load up the old plow and cultivator anyway, and then that four-hour drive, so we should arrive in the early afternoon as well.\"\n   \"You got it, Sasha. Order is done, estimated delivery time; tomorrow between one and two-thirty in the afternoon. I'll put out that ripper and the cultivator as well and tell the guys to point a pressure washer and grease gun at them for you so they'll be all ready to go. Anything else I can help you with?\"\n   \"Ma-a-aybe. See, we were doing a bit of a survey here to see how to best divvy up the fields for the next planting season, and of course that weird-ass double road crossing came up. As a bit of a joke, I drew up a rough plan on how I would run those roads in a much more logical manner, and I even included actual names for the roads. When we drop by tomorrow, do you think you could take that sketch I made and work it out on the computer into something that looks better and more official, and maybe present it to the province council? See what they think, and maybe see if they could give us permission to reroute the roads in the manner I drew up? It would free up some space and make the ground next to our farm so much more usable to actually work it and grow something there.\"\n   \"Hahaha! That's awesome, Sasha! Yeah, sure, bring that sketch, I'll be glad to work it out for you and bug the province council with it. Who knows, they may actually say yes, especially if they don't have to do the work themselves. And you're right, it would clean up that crazy stupid double crossing next to your place there.\"\n   \"Excellent, thanks a bundle, Dan. Oh, and by the way, is that offer for the nineteen eighteen land prices still good?\"\n   \"Sure, that didn't change after you bought that patch of land that used to belong to your farm back then, it's still valid for all eight of the rectangles around the one your farm is in.\"\n   \"Fantastic, in that case you can also draw up another deed. You know that dirt path that outlines the right property line of our farm? Between that and the two dirt roads, there's a quite narrow strip of land, and it's just silly to let that sit there unused, so we want to add it to our farm grounds.\"\n   \"Great! That's wonderful, Sasha! I know exactly what piece of land you're talking about, so sure, I'll draw up a deed for it and have that ready when you drop by tomorrow as well. At those old prices, you'd be looking at... let's see... four point one acres, three sixty-two an acre, so that would make... fourteen hundred and eighty-four dollars and twenty cents for that strip of land.\"\n   \"Four damn acres of land for less than a crate of trees, we're lucky to have you and your shrewd wheeler-dealering, Dan,\" Sasha sniggered, looking down at her phone as it dinged. \"Oh, but I'm gonna hang you now, I have another call coming in. Draw up that deed, keep me posted on news from that university and a combine, and well see you tomorrow afternoon then!\"\n   \"Gotcha Sasha, see you tomorrow.\"\nSasha rang off and swiped to the new incoming call, smiling as she saw it was from their new neighbors at Cherry Blossom Farm.\n   \"Marian, hi! Sorry for the pause, I was just talking to the Co-op. How's it going? Are you guys settling in okay?\"\n   \"Ah, that's fine, Sasha, no worries. We're, uh, we're doing fine, actually. We're all settled in, and we started work on clearing space for our new fowl pens. But, uh, we did a bunch of work, but we need some help now. Is that okay to ask?\"\n   \"Of course! We were just doing a bit of surveying, because there's not much else to do at the moment here. What can we help you with, honey?\"\n   \"Ah, well, we cut a bunch of trees and we did a lot of mowing. You mentioned it would be best to put that grass into wrapped bales to make silage, and you said you have a baler and a wrapper?\"\n   \"We do indeed! Do you want to borrow them, or would you rather have us do the work so you can do other work?\"\n   \"If, uh, if it's not inconvenient, I would prefer if you could do it. And, uh, could you bring that big truck as well? We cut up the trees we felled and it's quite a stack, if we could borrow your truck, we could bring them to the sawmill and have them turned into the materials we need to build the pens. Is that okay?\"\n   \"Of course, honey, that's no problem at all! Give us some time to load up, and we'll be right over. Should be no more than an hour and we'll be there.\"\n   \"Ah, thank you so much, Sasha, that will be such a big help. We'll, uh, we'll see you then.\"\n   \"Count on it, Marian. See you in a bit.\"\n\nSasha rang off again and tapped out her phone with a smile. Buddleia also showed both her upper and lower canine teeth and a good portion of her dark pink tongue in a broad smile, her ears still perked and swiveled forwards as she had been listening to the conversation as well.\n   \"They do so good! Much work already! Of course we help!\"\n   \"You bet we do, fuzzbutt,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"Let's go put these papers away and get loaded up to go over to our neighbors, huh?\"\n   \"Yes! Be so nice to see them again! They so cute!\" Buddleia chirped a chortle.\n\nWith a chortle of her own, Sasha pushed herself off of the fence again and led the way up the dirt path between the front and rear left-side fields. She stepped into the small farmhouse for a moment to put away her clipboard and jotted down a last few quick notes before walking back out to the large shed. Using the pallet forks on the frontloader of the Massey Ferguson tractor, they carefully set the bale wrapper on the flat deck of the MAZ-200 truck after filling the holders with fresh new rolls of plastic wrap. While Sasha started strapping down the wrapper, Buddleia removed the seat from the Massey Ferguson tractor so she could drive it, and hitched the baler to the back of it after she had also put the two rabbit hutches she had built for their new neighbors on the back of the MAZ truck.\n\nWithin half an hour, Sasha was driving the old lavender truck down the path between the left fields and onto the dirt road leading to Cherry Blossom Farm, followed by Buddleia in the MF tractor with the baler behind it. As the tractor only did 35mph at best, and the truck now managed to get up close to 75mph, the tall human woman reached Cherry Blossom Farm in only another half hour, well before Buddleia in the tractor. She smiled as she drove up the driveway; it split about two-thirds down into two slightly narrower driveways that ran up to the front left and front right corner of the main farmyard, surrounding a triangle of land that had three rows of cherry trees along the inside perimeter - it was nice to see that none of those trees had been cut down, even though there was a fairly sizeable heap of logs laying in the packed dirt area where the very old two-story barn that Buddleia had taken down had been.\n\nSomewhat unusually, as Sasha pulled into the farmyard, she found it to be empty. Of course, the green and dark gray Nissan D21 Navara and the dark brown Range Rover were parked near the farmhouse, and a sun-baked orange Kubota mini excavator was sitting near the heap of logs, but there was no sign of the white and orange Dutch Spaniel Marian nor her daughter Margot.\n\nHopping out of the truck, Sasha looked around on the farmyard with a bit of wonder while she slowly walked up to the farmhouse. Just as she was about to knock on the door, she halted and tilted her head a bit at the sound of giggles and running coming from somewhere behind the house. With a light shrug and a small smile, the lanky human woman stepped around the left side of the house to see what was behind it. And again, she suddenly halted as she rounded the back corner of the house, her lips slowly curling into a wider smile and eventually a light grin.\n\nWith the house being situated at the very back of the farmyard, the backside of it was very near a narrow, elongated forest of spruce, pine and beech trees that ran along the backside of the farmyard and off into both directions. A fairly large divot had already been cut into the side of that forest by the previous farmer to create a decently-sized back garden with a large grass lawn and some flowering bushes behind the house. And on that lawn, Sasha found the two white and orange Dutch Spaniels, in a quite unusual scene.\n\nFor one, they were both stark naked. For another, they were running in circles across the lawn, waving their arms at one another, Margot every now and then hopping aside to dodge her mother as Marian made a grab for her, then making a lunge for Marian who in turn dodged and resumed the chase, both of them giggling like a pair of schoolgirls and throwing playful threats such as \"toldya, you can't catch me!\" and \"I'll get you yet!\" at each other while they ran after one another in circles and made grabs for each other's backsides.\n\nSasha actually had to put a hand over her mouth to stifle and muffle a giggle of her own as she started to realize what she was looking at. Those two playful dog ladies... they were actually chasing each other's tail! Oh golly but that was just too funny and absolutely adorable! Shaking her head cheerfully, Sasha very quietly retreated and walked back to the old MAZ truck, opening the driver door and closing it again with a loud slam before once again walking back around the left side of the farmhouse while calling out aloud. Good thing she had opted to only put on her pink sun hat with the two ribbons before driving over, so she was just as naked as the two Spaniel women which should soften the blow of embarrassment a bit.\n   \"Hellooo! Anyone home? I'm here!\"\n\nThe tall human woman's much more noisy approach had worked. As she again stepped around the rear left corner of the farmhouse, both white and orange Dutch Spaniel women were hastily trotting up to the open back door. Marian actually bumped into the back of her daughter as Margot almost stopped dead when Sasha appeared around the corner of the house in only her glasses and sun hat.\n   \"Oh! Hey! Dressed for the occasion, that's neat.\" She shook herself briefly after the collision with her mother and brushed a few locks of her brown hair from her face while canting her head and looking Sasha up and down. \"Holy shit, you look pretty, woman. Look at all those freckles! That's the most goddam freckles I've seen on anyone, ever!\" A playful grin curled her lips and bared her upper canine teeth partially. \"So do you always visit your neighbors in the buff?\"\n   \"When they're as cute as you and your mother, hell yeah I do,\" Sasha sniggered. \"And I did mention that this is the way we do our work on the farm, didn't I?\"\n   \"You did at that, but this ain't work on your farm, so what's your excuse?\" Margot grinned.\n   \"My excuse is that we dressed in the usual way we do our work on the farm, did our work, we got a call, we loaded up some equipment and promptly made our way over without bothering or even remembering to put on anything more than a hat,\" Sasha chortled. \"And besides...\" She motioned at the two naked white and orange canine women with an airy wave. \"Not like I'm all that underdressed in this present company, am I? Hell, with this hat on, I'm actually overdressed it looks like.\"\n   \"Ah, well, uh... This is... a bit embarrassing,\" Marian said, kind of half hiding behind her daughter and blushing a bit.\n   \"Oh hell no, not at all, this is just natural, honey,\" Sasha smiled with a light chortle. \"I know from lots of experience that it feels the very best to do farming while dressed like this, and hey, it's the way we're born, right?\" She walked over to the two canine women and folded an arm around Marian's shoulders, smiling deeper. \"And neither of you have anything to be ashamed for, honey. You're both beautiful, and such beauty definitely deserves to be fully shown off. Plus there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a bit of fun every now and then to take a break and relax from all the hard work a farm brings with it, and the work is so much nicer when you can do it utterly free and unabashed and unhampered by the restriction of clothing.\"\n   \"Toldya, mom,\" Margot sniggered, poking out her tongue at her mother. \"This is the way everyone in this country goes around, and it's perfectly natural and normal. We don't have to hide it whenever someone comes by for a visit.\"\n   \"Not when it's me and my wife, anyway,\" Sasha chortled. \"I do still advice at least shorts and a shirt for when you go to the sawmill or into town or to the Co-op. But hey, we've had someone from the sawmill and the Ag agent and one of the mechanics from the Co-op visit our farm some time ago, and we were naked at those times too, because they came to our place. And sure, they made a mention of it, but that was it, so there's really no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed.\"\n   \"Ah, uhm... that's... nice to know,\" Marian said, still blushing but slowly smiling and getting a bit more at ease from the comforting gesture of Sasha's arm around her shoulders. \"And, uh... well, it's also good to know that... well, we should be prepared for this kind of sight greeting us should we come visit your farm sometime.\"\n   \"Oh yes, whether you call first or drop by unexpectedly, either way you will find Leia and me doing our work as naked as this when you visit,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"And of course, you're both always welcome to drop by for a visit any time you like. Just remember that once a week, usually on Friday, we won't be there because we're taking that four-hour drive to the village to pick up our mail and revenue, and we usually spend the whole day in the village before undertaking that four-hour drive back to the farm because it's such a ridiculously long drive.\"\n   \"Ah, yes... that makes sense,\" Marian nodded, her blush receding but a trace of it still lingering around the dark, damp pad of her nose. \"Say, uh... perhaps we could, like... share or alternate that journey? I've gotten a post box at the post office as well, so maybe, ah, we could sometimes pick up each other's things as well? Since, uh, since one of us will be there anyway?\"\n   \"We'd have to go together at least once to let missus Dobbart and missus Stebbins know we might do that so they're aware of it as well, but yeah, we can totally do that,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"It's hardly any effort, and it'll be a good help, right? Just the thing neighbors would do for one another.\"\n   \"You're a very kind lady,\" Margot smiled. \"Hey, but, ain't your wife with you?\"\n   \"She'll be here any minute now,\" Sasha smiled. \"I drove the truck here, but she's in a tractor so it'll take her a bit longer. But hey!\" She put a hand on Marian's shoulder and her other hand on Margot's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. \"Speaking of the truck, I got some things for you on and in there, so come have a look!\"\n\nBoth Spaniel women smiled and followed Sasha around the left side of the house. They both tilted their head curiously as the human woman led the way over to the old lavender truck, and Sasha smiled as she started undoing the straps holding down the bale wrapper and the two rabbit hutches.\n   \"Here we go! Leia used to build lots of rabbit hutches when she was young, she built two very nice ones for the rabbits we have, and a few days ago she built these two as well. We didn't paint them yet because all we have is that lilac-colored paint and you may want to paint them in a different color, but either way, these are for you so you can start keeping rabbits as well.\"\n   \"Holy shit these look nice,\" Margot said with an appreciative nod. \"Really well-constructed, your wife really knows what she's doing it looks like.\" She turned to Marian. \"So you decided we should keep bunnies as well, huh ma?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, when Sasha first came over to introduce herself, we talked about how to set up our farm here,\" Marian nodded. \"I mentioned we might want to look into something small we could rear ourselves for some fresh meat other than poultry, and she suggested keeping rabbits because they do that as well.\"\n   \"Yeah, it'll take some time, but it'll be worth it,\" Sasha nodded with a smile. \"We've had ours for weeks now, almost two months even, and we only now have the first litter on the way.\" She let go a short laugh. \"And that was even unplanned, because we never put either of our males with our females, we were still waiting it out for a bit. But apparently a wild rabbit got into the run with our females, so, yeah, first litter on the way.\"\n   \"That's nice though, bunnies are cute, I like the idea of keeping some, even if the end goal is to wring their necks and put them on our plates,\" Margot chortled. \"Why two hutches, though? I mean, look at these, they're big! You can easily keep, what, five, six rabbits in one of these?\"\n   \"We figured to give you the opportunity to do it the same way we do,\" Sasha smiled. \"We keep our males and females separated, so we won't get overrun with tons of rabbits. Much better for their health too, if you don't keep breeding them time and time again, over and over again after each litter.\"\n   \"Good thinking,\" Margot nodded. \"And hey, thanks! These are really nice, and I really like the idea of keeping bunnies.\"\n   \"You're very welcome, dear, and just wait till you see the kind of rabbits you'll get from the butchery in the village,\" Sasha chortled. \"Even the most seasoned tough brute of a lumberjack would go 'awwwww!' at the sight of them.\" She looked around as she was about to hop off the back of the truck and chortled again, pointing up the road. \"And there's my wife trundling down the road, so we'll be complete in a minute! And in the meantime...\" She hopped off the back of the truck, opened the passenger door and leaned in to take a few things which she presented to Marian. \"Here's a few more housewarming gifts. This is fresh jam Leia made from the plums of our plum tree, this is a bottle of fresh milk we squeezed out of our goat this morning, and this is one of our signature cheeses we started making with that milk, enriched with roasted beech nuts from the trees all around our house and a pinch of pink salt.\"\n   \"Oh my gosh, Sasha, thank you so much!\" Marian almost yelped. \"That's so sweet of you! It looks delicious!\"\n   \"Yeah, I never had goat milk before, but I had some goat cheese once or twice, so I'm curious how it'll taste,\" Margot nodded. \"Hey, thanks a bunch again, Sasha, we really appreciate it.\"\nBoth of them gave Sasha a hug, much to the glee of Buddleia who just pulled up and got out of the tractor.\n   \"Yay, you nakie too! And you cuddle! I just in time! Yee hee!\"\nMarian very nearly jumped back and blushed a bit again, but Margot kept an arm around Sasha's waist while she turned to look at Buddleia with a cheerful grin.\n   \"And you're dressed for the occasion too I see, neat! Though of course that lower end of ya will always be naked anyway.\" She looked at Sasha and chortled. \"Is she always like that, Sasha?\"\n   \"Hell yeah, she's very free and open and playful,\" Sasha nodded with a chortle. \"I guess that's what growing up all alone on a farm a million miles in the middle of goddam nowhere does to you.\"\n   \"Sounds like we have something to look forward to, ma!\" Margot chuckled with a grin and a wink at her mother.\nMarian concentrated on adjusting her glasses with one paw while holding the bottle of milk, jar of jam and the cheese in her other arm, blushing again at Sasha's next remark.\n   \"Oh, but the two of you are very open and definitely very playful already, I noticed.\"\n   \"You play games? Yay, good! Playing is lots fun, yes!\" Buddleia chirped a chortle.\n   \"Ah... well... I'd better put this away inside,\" Marian said softly. \"Uhm, would you like a cup of tea?\"\n   \"That sounds wonderful, honey, then we can have a calm sit-down and you can tell us what you want us to do and where,\" Sasha smiled.\n   \"Right, come on in!\" Margot smiled, letting go of Sasha and leading the way to the front door. \"This house is a bit bigger than our old place, so we had lots of space for our furniture and then some space to spare, so I'm sure you can find a comfy place to sit too, Leia.\"\n\nShe opened the front door and saw everyone inside. The door opened into a small but roomy entrance hall, from where several doors and a flight of stairs led to other parts of the house. To the right, a door led into the living room, which was at the far right side of the house and partially at the front, with a walled-off kitchen protruding into it from the back, and a fireplace against the far right wall. There was indeed a modest amount of furniture, a table or two, some cabinets and book cases in varnished oak, and a four-seat sofa and two armchairs with a velour-like upholstery in tints of brown and gold, and it was all quite spread out in the spacious room.\n\nWhile Marian stepped through a door into the kitchen, Margot flopped down on the sofa and took a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table, lighting one and presenting Sasha and Buddleia with one, which Sasha accepted while sitting down in one of the armchairs while Buddleia lay down next to the chair on the chest and tummy of her quadruped lower body on the circular rug the chair was sitting on. Moments later, Marian reappeared from the kitchen as well, carrying a tray with a tea set and a plate of simple cookies which she set on the coffee table, pouring cups of tea for everyone and also lighting a cigarette from the packet Margot had used.\n\nCalmly sipping their tea, they sat and casually talked for a while about random subjects concerning both their farms. Marian mentioned she had no idea what to do with the dozen cherry trees in the triangle of ground between the farmyard and the two arms of the driveway, and Sasha advised to harvest the cherries once they were ripe, sell a bunch of them to Mr. and Mrs. Greene from the greengrocery store, and talk to Mrs. Stebbins from the general store to acquire a bag of sugar and a ton of empty glass jars to turn the rest of the cherries into jam which she was certain Mrs. Stebbins would be happy to sell for them. Buddleia also said she'd be happy to help them harvest the cherries, as one stomp of her against the trunks of the trees would have all the ripe cherries tumble down in once, and she advised to talk with the Ocicat woman Sonya Jonker from the crafts store about weaving them several large wicker baskets to collect the cherries in. Margot mentioned they had found the farmhouse had a fairly large cellar which even had a walled-off part that was kept dark and cool, which prompted Sasha to promise they'd bring over a couple of the large wood shelving racks Buddleia had built to put in that part of the cellar so the cherries and all the jars could be stored there and kept for a good amount of time. She also offered to sell a couple of the smaller stainless steel under-counter freezers for the same price she had paid for them at the auction in Arfafield, so those could be put in the cellar as well and used to keep more produce for an indefinite amount of time, as she had bought more of them than she could use herself.\n\nEventually, after a second cup of tea, a cookie or two and another cigarette, all four of them got up to have a look around the farm at the work that needed to be done. The calm talk had also completely alleviated Marian's initial embarrassment over having been caught naked with her daughter, as the casual tone of the conversation had clearly shown just how normal and natural that state of dress was for all of them. Having put the tea set away and rinsed the cups, the Dutch Spaniel woman joined her daughter and Sasha and Buddleia in walking around the farm, pointing out the work they had already done.\n\nTo the left of the driveway had been two large fields that were completely overgrown with grass, which had been neatly mowed and was laying in narrow rows. A narrow dirt path led from the left rear corner of the farmyard past the back garden and through the strip of forest to several more fields behind the elongated forest of which the grass that had overtaken them was also laying in neat narrow and continuous rows from left to right across all three of the fields. It was clear that the logs had come from the left-side path through the forest having been widened, and a second path on the right having been cut through the strip of forest as well, plus a sizeable patch of trees that had been cleared from the edge of the rightmost field to enlarge it.\n\nWalking back and forth slowly while looking at the narrow swaths of mowed grass and the tree stumps still sticking up from the ground, Sasha eventually gave a nod of her head and turned to the two canine women with a smile.\n   \"Alright, here's what I'm thinking we should do. Margot, you're strong, so you and Leia load up those logs on the back of our truck, okay? When you bring them over to the sawmill, ask Fred or Frank to saw them into planks and beams and slats; they'll advise you on the best sizes to waste as little of the wood as possible, and the leftovers will be chipped so you will also receive a bit of money for that. You can wait for the sawing to be done, it only takes a couple of hours, and they'll load up the materials on our truck so you can bring them back here. I'd put them in that little shelter you have built to keep them dry, because there's a few days of rain in the forecast for next week.\"\n   \"Gotcha, Sasha,\" Margot nodded, grinning cheerily. \"I take it we should probably put on some clothes before driving off to the sawmill, huh?\"\n   \"That's probably a good idea, yeah,\" Sasha chortled. \"Although they really won't bat an eye if you show up in your bare butt, so I'd say it's up to you. In the meantime, Marian, I saw you have some small collapsible chairs in the backyard. Fishing chairs or something?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, picnic chairs actually, but yes,\" Marian nodded.\n   \"Good, take one of those and put it in our Massey tractor, we took out the seat of that so Leia can drive it,\" Sasha smiled. \"You run that tractor over those rows of grass with the baler behind it. It's easy, I'll show you, just set it to four to five miles an hour, lower the pickup of the baler, engage the PTO, and off you go, you can just keep driving because the bales will fall out the back. I'll hitch the wrapper to our old Hanomag tractor you guys bought and follow you to wrap the bales you make. With it being a drive of two hours to the sawmill, and two hours back, plus an hour or two or maybe a bit more to wait for the logs to be sawn up, we should about be done by the time Leia and Margot get back here. They can help us move and stack the bales. I'm thinking we'll stack them where those logs are now, that's an even spot of ground and it'll be out of the way.\"\n   \"That sounds good to me, yes,\" Marian nodded again. \"What should we do with the bales after that?\"\n   \"Nothing,\" Sasha chortled. \"Just let them sit there and do their thing, they'll start fermenting all on their own. We let ours sit for thirty days, and they're all done by the end of it. The only thing you should do is tally-mark them every day so you can keep track of the number of days. Well, and it's good to check them every so often with a PH meter, a moisture meter and a thermometer, but I'm guessing you don't have any of those, and it's no real use for you to buy them because you'll only make silage this one time, yeah?\"\n   \"Ah, yes, we only needed to get the fields cleared of the tall grass,\" Marian nodded with a smile. \"We weren't planning on doing this kind of work every time. What, uh, where do we bring those bales when they're done?\"\n   \"The BGA, they'll pay you two hundred ten bucks apiece for them,\" Sasha smiled. \"You've been to the livestock dealer, yeah? If you drive there, you'll see a shortcut through the forest that's behind there. Take that shortcut, and at the end of it, you can make a left to head to the village, or make a right; do that, turn right and you'll drive down a small road between the forest and the side of the BGA yard and end up on the gravel road that runs in front of the BGA. That yard is full of these round buildings with dome tops, but drive over to the one square building that's there, announce yourself at the reception and tell them you have a load of silage bales, and they'll show you where to go and unload. You can borrow our truck to transport the bales, but who knows, maybe you already may have a truck of your own by next month.\"\n   \"Ah, actually, we will, yes,\" Marian nodded with a wider smile. \"We're in the process of buying a very old Volvo truck, the Co-op found it for us and they're giving it a refresh for us to make it reliable. We need a truck with an enclosed box for the large cages when we bring our birds to market, you know, and this one has a bed with hoops over it and a tarp curtain, so we can have the back enclosed for our birds or open for other cargo.\"\n   \"That's great,\" Sasha smiled. \"That will transport those bales for you just fine. Still, do let us know if you need help loading them, okay? It can be done by hand, Leia and I do that too, but it's quite heavy work, and you have to be careful not to poke holes in the wrap.\"\n   \"We will, Sasha, thank you so much,\" Marian smiled.\n   \"And we better get started with those logs,\" Margot chuckled.\n   \"One more thing for you, though,\" Sasha chortled. \"When you're at the sawmill waiting for those logs to be cut up, talk to Fred or Frank about renting their stump grinder. They'll bring it here and grind down all those stumps for you so they'll be out of the way.\"\n   \"Right! Good shout, I'll make sure to do that,\" Margot nodded, turning to Buddleia with a grinned smile. \"Well Leia, I guess it's you and me for the time being, huh? Let's see just how strong you are!\"\n   \"Yes! We load all logs easy!\" Buddleia nodded with a smile that showed her upper canine teeth and the front part of her dark pink tongue.\n\nAll four of them walked back through the strip of forest and past the house to the farmyard. The two rabbit hutches were taken off the back of the old MAZ truck and set in the backyard for the time being, and the bale wrapper was also unloaded after Sasha had parked the truck alongside the open patch of ground where the old barn had been and shown Margot how to operate the truck. While she and Buddleia started lifting the logs onto the flat back of the truck, Marian trotted into the backyard to grab one of the foldable picnic chairs and set it in the cab of the Massey Ferguson tractor, and Sasha drove the old little Hanomag tractor with the half-cab out from under the shelter and connected the bale wrapper to the back of it.\n\nDriving over to the fields on the left of the driveway, Sasha showed Marian how to set and operate the baler. Of course, right as she was in the middle of that, Buddleia came trotting over with Sasha's phone which had been in the cab of the old lavender truck and which had started ringing. Sasha gave her head a cheerful shake and took her phone to answer a call from the sawmill.\n   \"Wouldn't you know, it's like they sensed they'd get a visit today. Hey Fred! Or is it Frank?\"\n   \"It's Fred, Sasha. How's things going?\"\n   \"Good, but busy, Fred. We're at the moment on Cherry Blossom Farm, helping our new neighbors with baling and wrapping a ton of grass they've mowed, and loading up a bunch of logs they've cut down. So in about three or four hours, you'll actually see our truck pulling into your yard with Leia and Margot in it and a load of logs on the back of it which need cutting up into planks and beams and stuff.\"\n   \"Great! Welcome to! We'll keep an eye out! But the reason I'm calling, Sasha; I have a great deal for you if you're interested!\"\n   \"You too? Well, I'm always game for a good deal, so lay it on me, Fred.\"\n   \"Well, see, between here and Fennfield, there's another sawmill we're in contact with every now and then, and we've done a rotation with them. They bought some new equipment, and sold us their old equipment, which means I can now sell you some of [i]our[/i] old equipment. You interested?\"\n   \"I may be, what are we talking about?\"\n   \"I dunno if you've seen it around on our yard, but we have this tiny little old John Deere skidsteer. It comes with both a set of pallet forks, a low-profile bucket and a log grabber to attach to it, and it has weights on the back to keep it in balance. And we also have a small milling machine to cut smaller logs into planks or beams, it comes with two sets of circular sawblade setups, one for planks and one for beams of four by four. Small thing, table model you could say, it can handle logs up to a meter circumference and max four meters long. And because I'm such a generous guy, both that thing and the skidsteer are sitting on a ten meter trailer with a tilt-deck which is included in the deal. A thousand and it's all yours!\"\n   \"That is in fact indeed a great deal, Fred. You know what, when Leia and Margot are there with the logs, and those logs are all cut up and the materials are loaded back onto our truck, you can hitch that trailer to the back of the truck so they can bring it back here with them, because I'll take it.\"\n   \"Great! I'm glad to know it all goes to a good home where it will continue to see constant use. We'll get it all ready, and like I said, we'll keep an eye out for your truck. And an ear as well, haha!\"\n   \"Actually, the truck is a lot less noisy now, Fred. We swapped a younger engine into our grain truck, and the parts for the old engine finally came in so we got that running again as well and put it in the MAZ truck, so that one is now a bunch faster and smoother and a helluva lot quieter.\"\n   \"Oh, that's great! Good work! It's a very good truck, but holy hedgerow was it ever slow and noisy! Good on you for fixing that problem, Sasha! Anyways! Like I said, we'll keep an eye out!\"\n   \"Done deal, thanks a bunch, Fred, and see you soon sometime.\" Ringing off and tapping out her phone, Sasha smiled at Marian. \"Go on and start the baling, honey. That'll give you a bit of a head start while I go put my phone back and tell Leia she'll have to spend some money at the sawmill.\"\n\nMarian nodded with a smile and got into the Massey Ferguson tractor to start baling up the swaths of grass, while Sasha walked back to the truck and told Buddleia about the deal she had just made with Fred. She didn't put her phone back in the truck, though, but kept it with her as she got onto the old little Hanomag tractor and drove over to the fields on the left of the driveway with the bale wrapper attached to it. With how things had been going, it might very well be another call would come in, and it would be kind of difficult to answer her phone if it was in the cab of the truck and the truck was gone for six or more hours.\n\nThree bales had already been dropped from the baler by the time Sasha got to the field with the other small tractor. That was plenty of a head start, as the human woman had to stop the tractor every time to drop the bale after it was wrapped, whereas the Dutch Spaniel woman could just drive on continuously to make more bales. They made good time working in tandem like that, already being more than two and half swaths of grass into the field by the time Buddleia and Margot had finished loading the old lavender truck to capacity and setting off towards the sawmill.\n\nNevertheless, it was still going to be a long day with all that work. That was the thing; on a farm, there was always something happening. Whether it was on your own farm or someone else's farm.\n"
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