He'll definitely have to try that, dill is one of his favorites. Cucumbers aren't, but dill is good on carrots, maybe he can find some of those.

"Pickle carrots shouldn't be too hard to find. Although I prefer pickle cucumbers to plain cucumbers, because the process changes their texture. I bet you should look for foods that are based on preservation techniques generally, because it will probably be newest to you. Do you have dried and preserved meats?" the farmer asks.

He's not sure what specifically they mean by 'preserved', there; he dries meat so he can keep it with him if he's going to be away from the house all day and to put in the feeder for the dogs, but for regular use he mostly keeps it frozen.

The three of them briefly search for the right words.

"Maybe just drying it is the same as the thing we're thinking? But how you dry it changes the flavor. And there are some ways to preserve it that aren't drying or freezing," the woman tells him.

Huh,  maybe it's the same thing? By drying he means he slices the meat thin and has a machine blow slightly-hot air on it for several hours, sometimes with spices on it for flavor, to make jerky. He doesn't know about ways to preserve meat besides those two.

"You can preserve meat by packing it in salt," the woman elaborates. "That makes it pretty salty, but it can taste good. Also, if you dry meat over a fire instead of using a machine, you get flavor from the wood. But maybe it's not very different; not everything can be different."

One of the others makes a comment.

"You can also preserve meat by taking all the air away around it and keeping it cold. That makes it very light, but also kind of crunchy and flavorless," she adds.

Well, that explains why he's never heard of those - most Crafters don't have access to that much salt, and they don't like messing with fire, it's too unpredictable. And he's not sure what the advantage of vacuum-drying is, if you still have to keep the meat cold.

"Oh, no. You just need to keep it cold while it's drying. After that, you can store it in warm places," they clarify. "Preserved like that, and in a sealed box, it stays good for many years. It's good for emergencies because sometimes the machines that keep things cold break. But if you can just make them stay cold without little lightnings, it probably isn't important. Preserving meat without air is not very popular, because it doesn't taste as good as freezing or drying it."

That is an advantage of crafted things, yeah, that they just keep working forever if you make them that way.

Speaking of meat, he'll grow the sumac and juniper trees next - again, as bushes - since those are for flavoring meat. The bright red sumac berries have a lemony flavor usually paired with a little bit of pepper, and the deep purple juniper berries have a herbal piney flavor with a bit of citrus tartness.

Those are both a bit more reasonable to taste-test on an individual basis than some of the other spices. The sumac berries get a better reception than the juniper berries, but they like both. 

They can have some seeds to take with them, if they want, by the way; he's not sure how useful that will be without them being Crafters, though.

Next he's got nutmeg, cinnamon, and a couple of varieties of green cardamom; these are all good in sweet dishes or tea. He's all out of butternut sugar, though; that he does make a few days' worth of at a time, since it takes a few hours to boil down the butternut sap, but he ran out while he was in the sky and hasn't gotten around to making more yet.

"We'll just have to grow the seeds the slow way," the farmer answers. "But that still means that in a few years we'll have plenty of seeds to share with everyone who wants some."

"Do you know what the natural season for these is? What kind of soil and water they like?"

Nutmeg and cinnamon are both familiar; cardamom is less common, but it's something they have as well. The women are a bit sad about not getting to try butternut sugar, since they don't really think it's used for that here.

"We usually use sugarcane or maple for sugar," the woman with the tablet mentions. "But you can get more sugar in the city if you want to."

He knows what kind of conditions the established plants like, but not their usual growing seasons or anything about starting them naturally, since he's never bothered to do that - the usual setup, for a Crafter, is having a building specifically for plants and growing them up to a nice established size when you first put them in there so you can harvest from them right away.

He's had maple and cane sugars, they're also popular back home; it's good that he'll be able to get them here. Butternut sugar is very similar to maple sugar, too, just with a little bit of a deeper nuttier flavor.

"That makes sense. I do want to try it at some point. I think maple sugar is popular because you can set it up to harvest itself, and lots of people like the wood flavor," the woman explains.

The farmer jots down the growing condition information to pass along with the seeds.

He definitely thinks maple sugar is tastier than cane sugar, yeah. He'll include some butternut seeds in with the rest, of course; he expects to be too busy to do enough food-growing for everyone to get to try it that way.

He finishes out the spices with three varieties of anise and two of fennel, which he was intending to get rid of all but one or two of - all five have a similar licorice flavor, but the anises have slightly more complex taste profiles - one is almost creamy, which he hasn't decided if he likes or not - whereas the fennels have tasty bulbs, leaves, and flowers in addition to the seeds.

Oh, that is creamy. They're not really sure whether they like it either, but it's definitely novel. They tell him as much.

"I don't think I've had anise before, actually. We don't use it much," one of the women comments. "But I bet it would make a good candy."

Crafters do use it for that, yeah.

It's getting late, he notices; he can stay up a little while longer if they'd like to try a few more things from the rest of his collection, though.

The þereminians glance up at the sky to check the time. Yeah, it is getting a bit late. On the one hard, it's hard to imagine anything they could be doing that would be more interesting than continuing to talk to Traveler. On the other hand, they were all on the way home from work and have not actually had dinner.

"Yeah, it is getting late," the woman with the tablet agrees. "It was good to meet you! I'm really glad you're visiting."

The others also relay their well wishes, and then make sure they have the little crafted items that he gave them.

He walks back with them with the rest of the trinkets; when he gets close enough he lets the people on the edge of the crowd know that he's about done for the night but they can have the trinkets and he'll come back over for the trays (which he's modifying into little tables) in the morning.

A few people scramble for their phones, and then wave the "thanks" glyph at him.

Once it's clear that he's probably going to bed, people mostly pick up a trinket and then disperse; there's one very full train headed back to the city, and then things are mostly quiet.

He takes in the chairs and things before turning in for the night, leaving the dog outside to watch the house.

She won't go far, but she will go to check on anybody coming through the train station.

Well, unfortunately þereminia does run night shifts in a lot of places. So while there are fewer people passing through at night, there are still small waves of people headed to go tend to various outlying jobs.

They have varying reactions to Traveler's dog; most of them are not quite sure how to treat her, and end up just nodding to her or greeting her with a few words of LCTL before continuing on. A few have seen dogs before, and crouch down to let her sniff at their hands for a moment.

That's fine, especially the people who let her sniff their hands. She'll beg for petting from them, and give extra attention to anyone who seems sad or stressed.

People will definitely give her some petting, sure. Although not for too long since people are mostly on the way to work, or back to bed.

Mostly, people who choose to work the night shift are people with less sun-dependence than average. And the night is pretty quiet. So most everybody passing through is neither sad nor stressed, just going about their business.

There is one man who comes through a little after midnight who smells acutely distressed, even though this isn't particularly apparent in his manner. He's one of the people who just nods to her and wishes her a good morning before going to wait for the train.