The old man patted the two somewhat shy young men sitting beside him and took a deeply satisfying drag from his pipe.
Then, watching the sprawling farmlands blur past the window, he sighed with regret.
"It always comes down to a lack of funds. After the first harvest, I figured contracting farmland was a solid gig. But without the capital, I just couldn't set up an operation that big.
"By the time we came back the second year—Year Five of the wasteland—Mulberry Field Town had completely transformed. It was more than five times larger! The craziest part was the grain stores. Before, there were only two. But that year, an insane twenty-one of them popped up!
"Independents like us couldn't contract land anymore. We had no choice but to attach ourselves to those grain stores, work for them, and pay those middlemen an exorbitant tax.
"That fifth year, the three of us contracted twenty-five acres, but our actual take-home cut amounted to barely five acres' worth..."
