//------------------------------// // Episode 4 – Agriculture // Story: Twilight Sparkle Investigates // by Bradel //------------------------------// The image blinked on. “You sure you want to do this now, Sugarcube?” The image swung around, whitening as the sun crossed it and re-resolving on Applejack. She stood in front of the empty, crimson-leaved trees of Sweet Apple Acres. “Why shouldn’t I do what I want?” Twilight’s voice was sweetly cheerful. “I didn’t mean it like that, Twi. Just, we finished the harvest a fortnight back. There ain’t much goin’ on around the farm these days.” “Well, that’s perfect! Then you aren’t busy, and we can talk for a while!” Twilight trotted out from behind the camera, coming to a stop beside Applejack and turning. “Hello, everypony, and welcome back to my ongoing video series, ‘Twilight Sparkle Investigates’! Today we’re going to learn about agriculture.” “I thought you told me you wanted to talk about farming.” “Farming is a type of agriculture, Applejack.” “I know that, Sugarcube. But if you wanna talk about agriculture, Big Mac is your pony. He’s the one with the fancy degree. I just know farming.” Twilight huffed. “Fine, farming. What’s the difference, anyway?” “Well, there ain’t a whole lot, I admit. But agriculture’s about the science, so I reckon it makes sense you might want to know more about that. Also, farming just has to do with raisin’ our apples, at least how I understand it. Big Mac had to learn about all sorts of other things too, like taking care of animals. That’s called husbandry.” “I know what husba—” “I help out with them, but he knows a lot more about dealin’ with cows and pigs than I do. And they taught him the business side of things, too. He says I’ve got a good head for that stuff, and I reckon I do, but he’s always been the one with the talent for numbers.” Twilight paused, casting a quick glance at the camera. “I… uh… didn’t realize there were so many different…” She bit her lip. “Can you tell the little colts and fillies any more about the business side of things? If you’re good at that… well, what exactly is it that you’re good at?” “I’m pretty good at sellin’ stuff, for one. Also, ‘product positioning’—which Big Mac says is fancy pony speak for figurin’ out who wants to buy a product and what’s gonna make ‘em more likely to buy it.” “Isn’t that just marketing?” “I dunno. That’s what I thought, too, but Big Mac says marketing’s bigger than that. Kinda like agriculture’s bigger than just farming. Which is what I know about, and like I said, if you really wanna know about agriculture, you should be talkin’ to my brother.” “Yeah, sorry. I guess maybe I didn’t realize how much you and he really did, and I just assumed… well…” Twilight blushed and stared at the ground. “Ain’t no shame in that, Sugarcube. Plenty of ponies just assume. But now you know better. So, which is it gonna be?” “Huh?” “Farming or agriculture? ‘Cause like I said—” “Oh, farming. Farming’s fine, and you’re the one I wanted to talk to, anyway, since…” Twilight’s voice trailed off. Applejack frowned at Twilight when she didn’t continue. “Since?” “Since… um, nevermind. Anyway, what can you tell the colts and fillies about farming?” “That’s a pretty big question, Twi.” “Yeah, I guess… okay, so how about, how does the whole harvest cycle work? That’s probably a good place to start.” Applejack turned to look at the apple-bare apple trees and sighed. “This is why I figure you would have liked doin’ this better a couple weeks back. Ain’t much I can show, now that we’re done harvesting. But I guess that means we’re right back at the beginning of the cycle. Okay, so.” She took a deep breath, turned back toward the camera, and smiled. “So right now we’ve got trees losin’ their leaves for the winter. That’s cause it takes them a lot of energy to make those leaves, and winter ain’t a great time for leaves, what with all the snow and ice, and the sub-zero temperatures. You see, leaves are how plants get their food, and cold is pretty hard on ‘em. So trees… well, I reckon it’s kinda like they hibernate for the winter, just like all those critters Fluttershy takes care of.” “Is that really important for farming?” “Well, not so much,” Applejack said. “But I figure if you’re gonna understand how apples work, you gotta understand something about apple trees. And that starts with understanding how trees eat, and why they lose their leaves. So after the cold’s gone, the trees wake up and they’re hungry, so they grow a bunch of new leaves, and that’s how they feed themselves. But eatin’ ain’t the only think an organism has to do, right? They also gotta reproduce. Same as ponies.” Twilight blushed and her feathers fluffed up, but Applejack didn’t appear to notice. “With ponies, reproduction’s easy. You just put a mare and a stallion together, and—” “Applejack!” Twilight’s cheeks were bright crimson. “What is it, Sugarcube?” “Th-these are videos for children! You c-can’t go talking about…” “You don’t think they already know?” “Of course not!” Applejack chuckled. “Okay then, Sugarcube. In my experience, most little fillies are pretty curious and I figure colts are probably the same, but maybe you unicorns are a bit more—” “Stop it! Just ‘cause she l-likes you doesn’t m-mean it’s okay for you to… to…” The scene fell silent, as Applejack stared at Twilight with wide eyes and Twilight looked everywhere except at Applejack. “Sugarcube? I think maybe we’ve been talkin’ about different things. Is that so?” Twilight grunted. “Do you…” Applejack’s mouth tightened. “Do you, um, wanna keep talkin’ about farming? Or do you wanna talk about… some other stuff?” Twilight turned to look at the camera. Her eyes glistened. “Let’s keep talking about farming. And then maybe… Um, maybe afterward we can talk about…” Her voice trailed off and she stared up at the clouds. Applejack coughed, looking uncomfortable. “Okay. Well. Where was I? Oh, yeah, repro…” She glanced over at Twilight and noticed her begin to blush again. “Anyway, so, if you wanna get more trees, they grow up from seeds, right? And those seeds, they come from apples. That’s what apples are: they’re how trees… make more of themselves. And they taste good because that way, animals will come eat the seeds and, well, spread ‘em around better, with extra fertilizer to help the seeds grow. So that’s why we get apples.” Again, the scene fell silent. Twilight stared down at her hooves. “So, uh, Sugarcube. You got any other questions?” Twilight jumped a little, as if surprised she’d been spoken to. “Oh. Let’s see. You said the harvest is done, right? So how does that work?” Applejack smiled. “Sure, yeah. So the trees, well, they want the animals to eat their apples, right? But they also need to sleep for the winter, and it takes a lot of energy to make apples—a good sight more than it takes to buck ‘em, I’ll bet. So the trees can’t keep makin’ em after they go to sleep, and what kind of sense would that make, anyway? If all the animals they want to eat them apples are hibernatin’ or movin’ on to greener pastures, it don’t make no sense to keep repro… I mean makin’ apples. So I figure the trees just learned a long time ago when the best time to stop makin’ apples was, and that’s when the apples get to be the sweetest. Critters will eat ‘em any time, pretty much, but they’re pretty sour until the fall. And when they’ve been on the tree too long, they start gettin’ rotten, too. But it’s pretty easy to tell when they’re good to harvest. They turn red. Or at least the regular ones do. Zap apples are a whole ‘nother can of worms. Anyway, that’s what I think. I don’t know if Big Mac knows any different, but that’s how I always figured trees had to work. They’re smarter than ponies give ‘em credit for.” More silence. “Um, Twi?” Twilight blinked. “Yeah?” Applejack sighed. “You really don’t care about the farming, do you?” Twilight turned back toward the camera and bit her lip nervously. The image blinked off.