Day 1
Has it really been only half a year since I came to this place? With the arrival of autumn, I am reminded that I am but a newcomer here, and there are many things I do not yet know. Today I planted my seasonal crop of Sweet Potatoes and generally pottered around the place seeing what sort of things can be foraged. Although I have saved up some Pink Cat flowers for her, there are some new blue flowers which will tide Popuri through the season, enabling me to profit off other foraged items such as mushrooms, grapes and apples.
As of today, my dog is now an adult, and so Won came to sell me a dog ball. Although I care little for playing fetch with the dog, I bought it to shut him up, although it has since got lost.
Day 2
I am still trying to find the optimum autumn routine- today I began by caring for the animals, before turning to the usual morning pursuits of foraging, love and lumber, but from now on I may leave the animals until later. After a trip to the stores to replenish my stock of animal feed, I spent the afternoon watering before making another profitable trip into the mines. I must note that when I go foraging in the mornings, I often come across Gotz and Louis out together; when coupled with the fact that they live together, I must conclude that they are HARD GAY for each other.
Popuri is now up to Green Heart level with me; I will soon have her eating out of the palm of my hand.
Day 3
Autumn has barely begun, and already the villagers have another of their infernal festivals; this time it was the Music Festival, and in an effort to make everyone think favourably of me, I agreed to play the ocarina. After completing the usual daily tasks, I headed down to the church for the festival, only to realise that I was ninety minutes early. After an interminably dull period of waiting, I went inside and played for what seemed like hours; after all that, I could do nothing more than fall straight into bed.
Day 4
Sundays are always quiet, and since it was raining today, I decided to just wander around the mountain, collecting wild grapes, mushrooms and truffles for sale. Once that had exhausted my interest, I ventured into the mine to make some more profit from digging up the near infinite supply of Copper, Silver, Gold and Mystrile that can be found there.
Before bed, I decided to see what was on TV, and somehow ended up watching The Shogi Hour, a rather dull program that showed only a portion of a shogi tournament. Why can’t they have The Go Hour instead?
Day 5
Since the rain had stopped today, love was back on the schedule, along with more foraging and mining (part of me thinks I should save up the truffles I find to give to Karen, but my more financially aware side forbids it). Aside from my tendency to spill animal fodder on the floor whilst filling their feed boxes, all is going well, and the dog has even been persuaded to stay in the cow barn (since the damn thing won’t use its doghouse).
I must admit that I have begun using TV as a way to escape my dreary existence; today I watched a drama called ‘Fairy and Me’.
Day 6
My first harvest of sweet potatoes came in today, and I have to say it was an exhausting experience. Even with the basket, the damned things take ages to harvest, so much so that I only time for a quick visit to Popuri and the most basic of farm tasks. Perhaps I should start thinking about hiring out the Harvest Sprites; I could certainly use some underlings.
Day 7
Today I finally bought the Milker from Saibara; not only does it look like a rather suspicious piece of tubing, but when I try to milk Elrood, nothing happens! What am I doing wrong? Aside from this excitement, this was a fairly normal day of foraging, love and lumber, although disappointingly I had no time for mining.
Day 8
Another rainy day today; I love the freedom from watering, but such days always leaving feeling weak (and to be honest, as if it were better off staying in bed). After pottering about on the farm, I went out for the usual foraging and lumber chopping, before heading into town to pick up more feed for my eternally hungry animals, and of course, to woo Popuri. I may even marry her, for there is a dating sim like satisfaction in forcing a girl to love you.
Day 9
Hectic days like today are just why I hate this village, farming and life in general. Although I toiled away from 6am harvesting the latest crop of sweet potatoes, at 10am I had to stop and take an egg to the Harvest Festival for their hotpot. Although I have to admit that the hotpot was rather tasty, it took a record eight hours to finish eating it, forcing me to rush around in the evening, desperately trying to harvest and water the sweet potatoes and look after the animals before bed. Even just achieving the bare minimum took me until 1:30am.
Day 10
It was another rainy day today, and much as I wanted to stay in all day and watch TV (I have ordered a frying pan from the shopping channel), the lure of duty called. After a morning of foraging, mining and chopping lumber, I went into town to chat to Popuri (the foolish girl is so easily influenced by identical gifts of flowers every day) and to phone the shopping channel to place my order. Afterwards, there was little choice but to go back home and finish my chores before embarking on more foraging and therapeutic mining.
Elrood is still depressingly milkless, a situation that leaves me so desperate that I have started milking random objects- my dog, a stump, they all seem to have a higher probability of producing milk than this damned cow.
Day 11
Once I loved Sundays for their lazy pace, but now I see that this only means that they are excruciatingly boring. Naturally, I fill my hours with the usual foraging, lumber and mining, but even so, by the time 6:30pm rolled around, I could not find anything further to occupy the hours, and was forced to retire to bed. I even watched the Shogi Hour again on TV, even though it is as dull as everything else around here.
Day 12
Today was yet another of those immensely tiring sweet potato harvests which leaves me little time to anything more than the most basic farming tasks. I did manage to fit in a trip to Gotz’ HARD GAY cabin, however, where I requested that he start work on an outrageously expensive barn extension (6800G and 500 lumber) tomorrow. Admittedly, at this stage I only have the one cow, so a barn that can house twenty animals may seem a little excessive, but I must plan ahead.
Day 13
I am happy to report that at long last Elrood has matured into a full-sized, milkable cow- I cannot tell you the satisfaction I gained from finally being able to magically make a bottle of milk appear by using the milker. Unfortunately, I then wasted over an hour walking to town to buy grass seeds, only to realise that the supermarket was closed today. In order to forget this disappointment, I spent the day working hard before foraging on Mother’s Hill. At 6pm I met up with Popuri at the top of the hill for moon viewing; although it was dark, cold and distinctly unromantic, I think she enjoyed herself. Unfortunately, she insisted on spending half the night up there, so I had to go straight to bed without even collecting my basket.
Day 14
Another rainy day today, which spares me the effort of watering the plants, but means I have to go all the way to Popuri’s house to talk to her; to my surprise, however, she has finally reached orange heart level! I have also been informed of a grape picking job at the vineyard, which Cliff and I will be going to tomorrow- it will at least make a change from the normal routine. Other than these events, this was a normal day.
I have gone off TV since they started showing The Song Hour- when will TV shopping return?
Day 15
Damn those villagers- I had my day all planned out, but when I went to help out at the vineyard at 10am, they insisted that I stay until 5pm, even though it cannot possibly take that long to harvest grapes from such a small plot of land. Worse yet, my sweet potatoes are not ready, I keep forgetting to buy grass, and I have neglected my mission to obtain a second cow! Can life get any worse?
These are always great 🙂
Anton’s seems a little bit more optimistic than his normal self this entry!
Harvest Moon has been invaded by HARD GAY… Good thing it’s not the focus of the story. XD
Are you going to explore further into Anton’s increasing fascination with the TV (which distracts him from work) and the stuff he does when he becomes bored? (Milking the dog, LOL)
What about the mystery surrounding the townspeople who always say the same thing? 😛
Neriya: Autumn was a good season for Anton, but winter is getting him down a bit- so cold, and the poor guy doesn’t even get warmer clothes.
Wrath88: Since winter is a relatively dull season, Anton may have to resort to your suggestions to liven things up a bit, but his biggest concern right now is trying to tell all his identical cows apart.
May I know why he’s concerned with telling his cows apart? Does it have something to do with their milking schedule? Or did you actually give them the same name? (Is that possible?)
Another question: What awaits Seiran? The *gasp* glue factory?
They all have different names, but the problem lies in the need to talk to them all every day- with ten cows milling around it’s hard to remember which ones you talked to (and milked or brushed if necessary) and which ones are still to do. Also, you can have two cows on one square, which is a pain when you’re trying to get to one and can only talk to the other one.
Seiran must live, come next spring in the game he should grow up and then I can ride him around the farm (I don’t think you can actually ride him outside of the farm though, so it’s a bit pointless).