Stardew Valley’s Farming Master

Chapter 226: Saving Twenty Years of Detours

Back at Red Star Farm, Leon waited for a while after returning, relieved to see that Abigail hadn’t come storming back. With his mind at ease, he started preparing dinner.

Dinner was simple. He rinsed the thawed pork, flattened it, coated it in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried it until golden. Then he cut it into pieces and added them to rice. Just like that, a simple pork cutlet rice was done.

Meat always brought a deep sense of satisfaction—far more enjoyable than eating fish. As a meat lover, Leon regretted not going to butcher John earlier to buy some.

After eating his fill, he took a shower, watched some TV, and ended the day. The next morning, sunlight once again drove away his sleepiness. Stepping out of the cabin, he saw it—that familiar green glow that signaled crops were ready to harvest.

“Mature Potato (Harvestable)”

“Mature Cabbage (Harvestable)”

“Mature Tulip (Harvestable)”

Three sections of the field were lit with the system’s ready-to-harvest markers. Especially in the tulip section, Leon could tell without any help from the system—it was already in full bloom.

“Yesterday these tulip buds hadn’t even appeared, and today they’ve bloomed.”

Leon couldn’t help but marvel at the varied colors of the tulips. Compared to other plants, their rapid transformation was the clearest example he’d seen of the accelerated growth on Red Star Farm.But admiration lasted only seconds before he got to work on the graduation ceremony for these crops.

He started with the tulips. Their blooms came in red, pink, yellow, and orange. Harvesting them meant cutting from the base of the stem. Leon had intended to pull them out roots and all, but was surprised to find he couldn’t. The system’s sickle, however, sliced through the stems with ease, keeping them intact for storage in his System Backpack.

When all the tulips were harvested, he counted fifty in total—twenty from seeds bought at Pierre’s General Store and thirty from the gift Evelyn had given him when they first met.

The tulips took up nearly half the space in his System Backpack. Oddly, tulips of different colors couldn’t be stacked into the same storage slot, and even among the same color, high-quality ones refused to merge. That was the hallmark of high-quality crops.

Unlike high-quality parsnips, however, high-quality tulips showed no obvious differences. After comparing ordinary and high-quality tulips side by side for a long time, Leon finally noticed subtle distinctions—the high-quality stems were firmer, the petals and stamens more numerous, the shape of the blooms more uniform, and the fragrance richer.

Not being a flower enthusiast, Leon shipped most of the tulips, keeping only eight ordinary pinkish-purple ones—the most abundant color—and a single high-quality pink tulip. That special tulip was destined for Evelyn, as a thank-you gift for the seeds she’d given him. In a way, it was also repayment for a debt, since her conversations hinted that she and his grandfather had once shared a bittersweet story.

“Having a good grandson like me, Grandpa, you should be smiling in the afterlife.”

With that mutter to the sky, Leon moved on to harvesting cabbages.

He used the sickle again. These cabbages had broad, spoon-shaped leaves forming a tight rosette. Smooth and hairless, the leaves were edged with gentle waves—different from the cabbage heads he disliked, these were actually a variety of kale.

Not that it mattered. Leon didn’t like cabbages or kale, so their only worth to him was as sale goods. Among the twenty cabbages, one was Silver-star Quality and one was Gold-star Quality—easy to tell just by size.

Then came the potatoes.

Unlike cabbages or tulips, potatoes couldn’t be harvested with a sickle. Their edible tubers were underground. Normally you’d have to dig them up, but the soil at Red Star Farm was loose, and the stems and leaves were sturdy enough that Leon could simply pull them out by hand.

Pulling potatoes was oddly satisfying. Even more so was the yield—he had expected one or two tubers per plant, but each stem had an even number of tubers, usually two, sometimes four, all about the size of a fist.

Some plants also had tiny tubers the size of a fingernail. Leon thought they were underdeveloped potatoes until the system clarified:

“Premium Potato Seeds (Seeds): High-quality potato seeds blessed by Cool Shade Beneath the Rice. Same growth cycle as regular potato seeds—18 days—with a very high chance of producing high-quality crops.”

The system’s description made it clear why his potato yield was so high—this was the special double-yield effect of Cool Shade Beneath the Rice.

He had thought the technique worked only on rice, but this proved otherwise.

“Thanks for your kindness, old man. Even in another world, I can still enjoy your blessings.”

Chuckling, Leon tucked the seeds into his backpack and clasped his hands together, bowing to the land before him. He didn’t bow to the sky—he saw the old man as the god of agriculture, and the land as his true seat.

With that blessing, he pulled the rest of the potatoes. Twenty plants yielded sixty-eight tubers, including sixteen high-quality ones—eleven Silver-star and five Gold-star—again judged by size.

The high-quality potatoes also produced extra seeds—forty-one Premium Potato Seeds in total, ready for the next planting. Leon had an idea: if these premium seeds produced more high-quality potatoes, they should also drop more premium seeds. With the number of high-quality plants increasing each season—and potatoes benefiting from Cool Shade Beneath the Rice’s double-yield—the harvest could become astronomical.

“The old man’s showing me the straight path to fortune.”

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