Is it me or does Mikhail bear a striking resemblance to that Scottish lad...Jamie. Relations perhaps?
If you're referring to JAMMF … could well be … nothing like a good Scottish lad to help around the farm 
A quick look at our statistics after the first week.
Tatiana:
Mikhail:
I've spent 60s on trees (orange, lemon, pear & tea), 18s on vegetables , 2s on seeds, 1s on grinding tea and a bit more on an orange tea recipe. At level three my weekly income has increased to 1s 50c. Mikhail has managed to save all of his weekly income. I had hoped to be generating further funds from trading with Adam the Merchant but alas, somehow I managed to insult him on our first meeting and he refuses to accept my goods. A complaint to his management has been lodged!
We've been eating a lot of bread but will be upgrading our cooking skills shortly in order to diversify our menu. We have a nice assortment of fruits and vegetables just waiting to be turned into delicious meals.
I've gained most of my experience through harvesting though I did enjoy one social gathering which gave me a nice experience point (xp) bump to start out with.
Mikhail has been working hard grinding wheat, baking bread, drying tea leaves and distilling oranges & lemons. However, because he tried to accomplish his tasks in short sessions, he really didn't benefit fully when it came to xps. He's been taking a more leisurely approach in the last few days and benefiting from that.
We're both trying to work smarter not harder 
Woohoo! Was looking forward to making healing potions!
I'm delighted to welcome the Antiquity Crafting System (ACS) to the Queen's Hamlet as it has now been enabled in all four Provence Coeur regions. As you may have heard, Abbondio & I have been using it for the last week and we've been having a whole lot of fun. Though still in the early stages (it was just released to the public) it already provides the opportunity to enhance daily roleplay. I'm definitely excited about its potential as the basics are great and there's much more on the way.
You can see what Mikhail and I've been up to at ACS Journal: Tatiana's Farming for Fortune .
This doesn't change anything with regard to our usual QH farming but can be seen as a nice addition for those that would like an extra challenge. The QH Co-op will continue to make use of the G&S system and we're talking to the ACS team with hopes that some G&S items could be loosely integrated with ACS. I'm dreaming of baking ACS bread made from wheat originally grown in the QH.
I thought I would start this discussion so that you can ask any questions you may have here.
As noted in My Adventures in Virtual Gardening I absolutely love gardening in SL. Back in 2013 when I wrote that post I had just finished my first set of garden meshes for the Queen's Kitchen Garden. The plants & flowers were pretty but I always regretted that they were static. When the QH Co-op began using G&S I planted a variety of fields but was disappointed that there was nothing suitable for a potager. Now with ACS I can re-plant my original garden and enjoy watching it grow. Woohoo!
I cleared the hedged enclosures of most of the decorative plants and started planning. I knew it was going to take quite some time for me to be able to afford a full garden but I was happy to be starting out with an orange tree and tea bush. Over the week I added more trees & vegetables and as you can see there's still plenty of room for more.
I'm also looking forward to adding a variety of herbs as they become available.
The central fountain has been converted into an ACS well and the Branch Benches provide both Health & Hygiene when you sit on them. As I had hoped, it's a lovely place to just sit, relax and watch the garden grown. It's open to the public so please feel free to drop by the Queen's Kitchen Garden anytime.
Thanks, Abbondio! I truly feel that Mikhail & I are soul-mates and I'm so glad he can help with the posing as well as the heavy lifting
The wheat incident is one of those golden SL moments that can unfold from a good active RP. I know that I shall cherish my faux pas for years to come.
I love the idea of taking a share of the crops as you say it would really benefit enterprising low-levelers. I also love pioneering this system and dreaming of its future. Too much fun!
As it was Thursday, the day that the weekly allowance is doled out, I made my way to the bank in Bath to collect my 50c. I now had a grand total of 90c (having expended 10c on wheat seeds), almost enough to buy one onion patch. I wandered through the bakery, perfume, and tea shops musing on making the most of my meager investment.
It was at this point that fortune did indeed smile on me. A kindly aristocrat offered me a loan of 1 gold (that's 10,000c for those keeping track) more than enough to get me started on the garden of my dreams. I'm sure he was just being his habitually generous self but I couldn't help but wonder if he had heard of the "wheat incident" and thought it might be best for the good of all concerned to have me happily puttering in my own private garden rather than rampaging through the public one.
With dreams of orange trees and tea bushes swirling through my head, I accepted his generous offer and promised to repay him as quickly as possible. This brings up a point about loans that may be particularly interesting to Abbondio of the Banco Rezzonico. It definitely gave me the kick-start I needed to advance more quickly and I'm sure it would be an interesting strategy to employ. I await further developments on this front.
I wasted no time in travelling to Mont Saint Bruno where I showed the Harvest & Garden Merchants my coins and ordered delivery of my first set of trees and plants.
Now to build my garden!
Bright and early the next day I headed out to the public farm , an essential area for those of us sans coin or crops of our own. Here you will find all the resources necessary for survival including a well, stove, mill, forge, distillery, drying racks and probably a few other items I haven't located yet. The wheat was tall & golden, waving in the field and enticing me to harvest it. I cheerfully cut down one field and then another. BIG MISTAKE (but we'll talk about that later). I used the mill to grind the wheat into flour, drew some water from the well, and baked my first loaves of bread. It was oh so satisfying.
I then headed off to investigate the possibility of starting my own small garden. It was at this point, much to my dismay, that I learned that every crop must be re-seeded after harvest and therefore the wheat I had harvested actually belong to someone else. Egads! Only one day into farming and my name already was mud. I was a wheat thief! I hurriedly purchased some wheat seeds and went back to replant the fields. All six fields in the area were fallow so I re-seeded them all thinking I would donate them to the community as a way to apologize.
Things were about to go from bad to worse.
Louis happened to wander by and mentioned that he had to change the fields so that only the person that had planted it could harvest it. Apparently there were complaints that wheat was missing (blushes profusely)! So now, not only had I taken someone's crops but I had managed to monopolize the remaining fields. Fortunately, Louis was able to reset the fields again and I was saved from a mob of torch-bearing peasants. Live & learn!
It's been exactly a week since I ventured into the Advanced Economic System [AES] and so far I'm absolutely delighted with my experience. I thought I would start a bit of a journal to record the progress made by Mikhail & myself and perhaps help others to learn from our successes and failures in the early days. I would encourage others that are using ACS to begin their own journals as I'm sure we'd all benefit from the community knowledge.
Tatiana:
Mikhail:
Starting at Level 1 means that our day-to-day objective is basically learning how to survive and thrive. My long term goal is to climb the social ladder and become a Duchesse. Mikhail is looking forward to establishing a worthy profession (as yet undetermined). It's always good to be surrounded by a supportive community so not only are the two of us working together as a team but we're collaborating with friends that are pioneering the system.
I was relieved to see that my starter kit contained objects to keep my Energy & Hygiene needs satisfied. As for Hunger, I quickly learned that there are a number of apple trees that can be harvested to provide nourishment. These are spread throughout Antiquity including the City of Bath and the public farm . I may be a duchesse at heart, but starving is definitely not a good look so I filled my pockets. I also made my first trip to the bank to receive my weekly allowance of 50 copper coins. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I pouted about this pittance until I learned that Mikhail, being a Townsfolk, only received 20c.
Looks like apples will be on the menu for some time to come!
Updated Jan 12, 2020: Changed Antiquity Crafting System (ACS) to Advanced Economic System [AES] to keep information current.
