Nothing in particular happens! He makes a swinging motion but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

"It's possible this wouldn't have done anything to a person even if it hit.  The pickaxe doesn't do anything to the ground if there's no rock there."

"I can't think of any good way to ever test it, and we probably shouldn't."

"Sorry anyways."

"Maybe we can test it with one of the less dangerous implements, like the hoe... on somebody we don't like, like Morris. Just kidding."

"Mostly."

"No, actually. I don't actually want to hurt anybody."

"That's the spirit.  Hopefully nobody ever hurts you badly enough to change it."

"Want to try the hoe next?  On the ground, I mean."  Oliver drops it.

"Okay. I guess I need to find a bit of ground that doesn't have any debris on it and also hasn't been tilled yet."

She does so.

She tills the ground successfully!

"Next test, see if we can just... sing some farming chanty together, and have that count as a conversation for purposes of not having the clock advance while we farm?"

"Farming chanty?"

"Do you actually know any of those?"

"No!  But I'm going to sing one anyways!  To the tune of Wellerman, if anyone around here knows that!"

"Once spoke Shennong, the Ancestor, to all who'd follow afterer, Till the land, fell the trees, oh work my children all!"

"Soon may the harvest come, to reap the sowing we've begun.  Four more days till the parsnips done, we'll fill the crate and sell."

"Divert the waters, break the rocks, sow the seeds and darn your socks, sing a song to stop the clocks, answer the farm's call."

"Soon may the harvest come..."

"Ohhhh, I like it so much. Here, I made one too. It's a call and response sort of thing:"

Emily sings both parts, as a demonstration:


I clear the grass
(....... you clear the grass)

I chop the wood
(....... you chop the wood)

I break the stone
(....... you break the stone)

To make our home
(...... to make our home)

I till the soil
(....... you till the soil)

I plant the seed
(...... you plant the seed)

I water our plants
(...... you water our plants)

To increase the chance
(...... to increase the chance)

That I'll grow on you
(...... you'll grow on me)

You'll grow on me
(...... I'll grow on you)

We'll farm this land
(...... we'll farm this land)

Concurrently
(...... concurrently)

"Your format seems like it'd be better for making the world believe we're having a conversation, plus you might be better than me at making things up as we go, it sounds like.  Let's try it your way; you call, I respond."  Starting time?

Oliver has been very dedicated to being in conversation almost constantly and it is now 2:10pm.

Emily is tickled by Oliver's compliments!

She wields the hoe as expertly as she can manage, after only one previous attempt, and begins calling out the song.

"I clear the grass..."

"You clear the grass!"  Oliver will take out his axe and start to chop stumps... does his mind think there's anything to be done with trees besides turning them into Wood?

Sure! You can shake them to get seeds, or put a tapper on them and get some kind of syrup. The kind of syrup depends on the kind of tree.

"I chop the wood!"

Emily is not strictly telling the truth, here, as actually she is continuing to till the soil.

"I chop the wood!"  He'll shake a tree instead of actually chopping wood, then, and see if he can Inspect what sort of seeds he gets.  Can he shake a tree more than once?  Do they have cooldown periods?

The tree Oliver shakes is a maple tree, but it does not actually drop a seed at this time. (Oliver suspects he may not be skilled enough in the relevant way to know how to shake trees properly, so that they might yield seeds.)

Shaking the same tree more than once feels pretty pointless, over and above the lack of skill.

"I break the stone!" Emily giggles.

Does it slow him down to unlimber the pickaxe and actually break a stone, versus continuing to axe?  "Break the rocks!"

Nah, that's fine.

"To make our...    Oh!!!"

"I found... a book!"

"You find a book!"  "I'll come to look!"  (Sung in the same tune.)

He heads over to Emily.

"It's... not here anymore."

"I was digging on a spot that had some little wiggly worms on it, and my hoe hit something, and I could see that it was a book with a blue cover, and then... it was just gone."

"There once was a lass named Emilay, she found a book but it went away, the cover blue but then it flew, soon it was just gone..."

Can Oliver see any trace of the book, if he looks where Emily was digging and maybe tries to shove some dirt aside using his actual hands?

Nope. This is now an ordinary square of tilled soil.