"So get me up to speed again, hate to say, but I've lost track of how things are going here on the farm." I apologized as Ashe drove us away from the farmhouse and towards four structures about a mile down the road.
"Well, we're on track to meet our original timeline to get all four greenhouses bought and fully manned with five farm hands each," Ashe called out, her voice slightly raised to be heard over the bumping and rattling of her truck, as it drove down the unpaved road, "So far I've bought all four greenhouses, but right now only two of them have a full staff."
"You're trying to stagger their growth cycles, right?" I recalled reflecting on our initial conversation that seemed like ages ago, "That way, when the seedlings need to go out into the field, we can put all the farm hands on that job to get it done as soon as possible."
"Right on the money Tiger takes about four weeks to germinate from seed, and at 45,000 seeds a greenhouse will be planting damn near an acre every week," Ashe listed off with a broad smile on her face, giving me the impression that those were some damn good numbers.
"How long until the plants are ready to be harvested once they're in the field?"
Ashe let out a whistle, " That depends on the crop we're growing; sometimes under the right conditions, it can be a couple of months. But right now we're doing a spring vegetable mix that we can take clippings off of, so it'll only be a month or two."
"Like lawn clippings?" I repeated and Ashe nodded, "Yep, as the plant grows, you'll cut off the older leaves and sell them. That's where you get things like baby spinach."
I pursed my lips, "But won't taking all the leaves away make the plant grow a lot slower?"
"If you overdo it," Ashe confirmed, "But if you wait until there's enough new growth between each clipping, trimming the older leaves can actually help the plant grow as it diverts energy to the new leaves and roots instead of sustaining the older leaves. Besides, once the leaves start getting too old they get tough and bitter, which is not something you want to be eating in your salad."
"Got it, cuttings are the way to go, now just how are we gonna sell them?"
"That's the main thing we'll need to talk about, post-harvest processing. The cuttings can be sold as salad mix, just like the ones you can get at any supermarket. But instead of going direct to retail, we should see what the farm stand has to offer in terms of making us some income. I know some farms that can be completely self-sustained by just setting up a little shed on their property and having folks drive on down for some quality produce."
"I'm sure that the farm stand will be a viable option, my magic wouldn't give us the option to buy one otherwise," I advised as I felt the truck start to decelerate and Ashe pulled alongside the road to park.
As she did, I quickly opened the system and found the Farm Stand's details.
[Building: Farmstand]
Cost: $12,000
Maintenance: $3,600
Workers: 0/2
Brief: A collection of wooden stands and display tables that allows the direct-to-consumer sale of produce at a 25% markup, while attracting up to 100 customers a day when fully staffed.
[Upgrades]
Capacity I: $5,000
"Honestly, we could get this fully operational today, but there's just one issue. The farmstand requires two workers in order to operate at full scale, but our current cap is twenty, meaning we either need to find another way to sell our produce or cut back on how many greenhouses we're running."
Ashe clicked her tongue in disappointment as we got out of her truck, "Shouldn't there be a way to increase the number of workers we can have on the farm?"
"Oh, there is, but upgrading the farm right now would set us back around 5.5 million, and right now we don't have the capital for that, and I'd say we have a lot more room to grow into with our current production scale."
"Then what do you think we should do, tiger?" Ashe asked as she looked from me to the four greenhouses, "It'd be a shame to have one of these facilities just standing there unused."
"It's inefficient for sure, but it might just be our best choice," I grumbled while doing some quick math. "We can fully staff three of the greenhouses and leave the last one working with a skeleton crew. If 45,000 plants are produced at full scale, then we're probably only gonna get 27,000 seedlings out of the greenhouse."
Ashe clicked her tongue in disappointment, "That'll mess up our whole turnover rate down the line; we might want to find a plant that doesn't need to be transplanted and can just be grown inside the greenhouse from seed to harvest."
"Oh yeah, what kind of crops were you thinking about?"
"Something that fruits, like a tomato or some sort of pepper," Ashe answered as she slowly started to nod her head, "Actually, that will work out just fine, those kinds of produce tend to fetch a premium price and will help us draw up some customers when we have a bit of variety to offer."
"Alright then, what do we have to do to get that set up?" I asked as we started walking towards one of the greenhouses, "Surely we need some kind of extra equipment to raise full-grown plants indoors."
"Hmmm, we'll need an irrigation system, substrate, planting pots, and eventually trellises to support the plant once it starts bearing fruit. Can you magic provide us with anything along those lines?" Ashe asked as she glanced over her shoulder at me.
"Give me a second, checking real quick…yeah, they have all of that."
[Equipment: Overhead Irrigation System]
|Designed to deliver water to crops within an indoor setting via suspended sprinklers|
|Cost: $75,000|
[Equipment: Bag of Potting Soil mix]
|Contains 20 gallons of an ideal mix of various soil types to create the perfect substrate for your plants, promoting both water retention and aeration|
|Cost: $15|
[Equipment: Fabric Grow Bag]
|A ten-gallon resilient fabric growing vessel that can support a plant for its entire life cycle. The fabric material provides excellent aeration and drainage to ensure root health and prevent salt accumulation|
|Cost: $35|
[Equipment: Trellis Arch]
|A long metal archway provides support for all climbing vegetables and allows for ease of harvest when fruiting begins. Large enough to support 100 plants at a time
|Cost: $350|
"What's the cost looking like to get this greenhouse up and running?"
"Huh, let's see, if we're doing 27,000 plants, that's 13,500 bags of soil, one irrigation system for the whole greenhouse, and 270 trelises…we're looking somewhere in the ballpark of 1.3 million not including seeds and labor."
"Damn, I was hoping we wouldn't go over a mil. Do we need to finance it? What's the income at the restaurant looking like?" Ashe glanced over at me again, clearly worried that we would have to set up another project map, but I just smiled, "If you want, I could go ahead and buy everything right now and still have nearly half a million left over."
Ashe's stared at me for a long moment before she grinned with a burning ember in her eyes, "Just know, Tiger, tomorrow, you're gonna be the one walking with a limb after I'm done with you."
"I wouldn't expect anything else from you, darling. Now, do we want to go about setting up the greenhouse first or get to planting the first of the seedlings?"
"The greenhouse," Ashe answered without a moment of hesitation, "Doing a whole acre by hand is gonna take the rest of the day even with the five farmhands helping out. Once we get finished with that job, you're not gonna want to do anything else besides strip down and shower."
"Well then maybe we should do the fields first so we can get to that shower a bit quicker," I suggested as my hand snaked its way down to Ashe's butt.
"Now, you know I'll never turn down a good romp, but we got work to do Tiger," Ashe admonished as she swatted my hand away with a disapproving click of her tongue, "So let's get those wandering hands busy and start cracking away at this workday."