Apocalypse Queen: My Space, My Rules Chapter 236: A Rich Return

The huge surge of energy brought by the two major storage space upgrades had caused these fruit trees, which normally would have needed at least a year or two before bearing fruit, to mature early. It was an unexpected windfall.

The two of them turned into fruit farmers. After picking cherries from 10 trees, they moved on to apples, then pears, persimmons, and jujubes.

After working for more than an hour, they had harvested over 300 pounds of cherries, 120 pounds of apples, 100 pounds of pears, 90 pounds of persimmons, and more than 60 pounds of jujubes.

After storing all the fruit in the static zone, they went together to harvest the melons, fruits, and vegetables planted out in the fields.

Pumpkins had the highest yield, with more than 500 pounds harvested. Then came the blueberries and strawberries, with over 100 pounds of each. Green and red peppers, eggplants, green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes had each filled a large basket.

Mariella picked up a hoe, ready to dig up the sweet potatoes and potatoes, but Chandler stopped her.

He drove over a machine made specifically for digging sweet potatoes. It could also dig potatoes, and supposedly yams too.

But the area they had planted experimentally was very small, only about 10 square feet, so the machine barely had time to get started before the job was done.

Chandler weighed the sweet potatoes and potatoes, then concluded, "With the same amount of land, potatoes produced more."

Mariella immediately decided, "We'll plant more potatoes from now on. Cut the sweet potato area in half."

They harvested more than 40 pounds of sweet potatoes and over 50 pounds of potatoes, then stored everything in the static zone.

Chandler then drove an amphibious harvester into the rice paddies to harvest the rice.

The cut rice was threshed directly into grain and kept as seed.

After that, he harvested the wheat, corn, and soybeans, then threshed and dried them.

Mariella and Denton had traded for farm equipment twice already. From transplanting rice seedlings to planting, harvesting, threshing, and drying, nearly the entire process had been mechanized.

But after all the crops had been harvested, Chandler made another request. "We still need to trade with Denton one more time. Have him get us a small tractor for digging out the rice fields."

Mariella made a note of it.

Next, Chandler used the seeder to plant large areas of wheat, corn, soybeans, potatoes, and sweet potato slips.

Mariella used the newly harvested rice grains to start seedlings, preparing for large-scale rice planting.

After finishing the seedlings, she planted some leafy vegetables too, including large-leaf spinach, romaine lettuce, green cabbage, purple cabbage, baby cabbage, and cilantro.

Then she checked their seed inventory and selected green onions, lettuce stem, and endive. During the process, she also discovered several packs of mushroom spawn.

That was valuable stuff.

But Mariella still hadn't mastered mushroom cultivation, so she decided to study it first and experiment later.

All in all, her seed inventory had become even more plentiful, because fresh, high-quality seed stock kept being added.

By a little after nine that night, the two of them had finally finished all the farm work, including planting 26 acres of land.

They were originally supposed to harvest the reed marsh too, but they were a little tired, so they decided to rest and continue the next day.

The two of them showered in the bathroom inside the storage space. Chandler claimed that, to save time, they should take a shower together.

Mariella wasn't used to bathing with other people, so she turned him down.

Chandler then said he could scrub her back for her.

Mariella thought about it for a moment. In the end, she couldn't resist the handsome man's temptation and agreed.

Inside the steamy bathroom, Chandler seriously helped scrub her back.

Mariella felt a little awkward and pushed Chandler behind her, pouting as she said, "Your belt buckle is poking me again..."

Wait, that wasn't right. They were showering. Why would he be wearing a belt?

Mariella realized it a second later. Oh my God. So the thing poking her had never been his belt buckle.

The next day, Mariella woke up when the sun was already high in the sky.

She had been too tired the night before. No matter how much Chandler had tried to persuade her, she had insisted on sleeping in the villa inside the storage space and refused to leave for the RV bedroom.

The pillow beside her was already empty. Apparently Chandler had gone out for morning exercise again.

Mariella got up, washed up, and went downstairs, only to see Chandler bringing out a steaming hot breakfast from the kitchen.

He had actually made two kinds of savory grits, mushroom turkey hash and freshwater seafood grits, with two large pots of each.

There were also the crab ravioli and churros she liked, which had probably been taken directly from the static zone. Chandler chose onion twists and meat ravioli, along with two plates of vegetables and two plates of pickled sides.

Chandler asked which grits she preferred. She tasted both, then finally chose the freshwater seafood grits.

The seafood grits had been cooked with crab roe, river shrimp meat, and grass carp, and the flavor was incredibly rich and fresh.

Chandler served her a large bowl of the seafood grits and filled himself a bowl of turkey hash. The remaining pots were placed in the static zone for storage, ready to be taken out anytime they wanted.

As they ate and chatted, Mariella learned that he had gotten up early, but he hadn't gone out to exercise.

He had gone to harvest the reed marsh.

"All the mature plants on the water have already been collected. Water caltrop seeds had the highest yield, with more than 300 pounds harvested. There were also over 200 pounds of water chestnuts. We harvested more than 100 pounds of wild rice stems and regular water chestnuts too. There were over 2000 pounds of grass carp. Carp, crucian carp, and silver carp together totaled more than 2000 pounds. We also got 1000 pounds each of river crabs and river shrimp."