Upstart Pastry Chef ~Territory Management of a Genius Pâtisserie~ - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Raspberry and Honey

Beyond the forest lies a vast flower field.

The flowers here are attached to tall vines, bearing small, lovely white blooms.

Their true identity is raspberries.

This flower field was created by dividing raspberry plants that grew naturally in the forest, a project undertaken by me and Tina.

“Wow, Kurt-sama, it’s so beautiful!”

Tina exclaims with excitement, her voice filled with admiration as she stands before the flower field.

Turning with a smile, Tina, framed by the flower field, looks stunning.

“It certainly is beautiful. The flowers are lovely, but soon we’ll be able to harvest raspberries. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yes, I love raspberries because they’re sweet and tart!”

We didn’t create the flower field just for the sake of admiring flowers.

The lands governed by the Arnoldt family are poor, especially the newest village I manage. In such circumstances, there’s no room to grow flowers for ornamental purposes.

So why do we grow them? It’s all for the dream of becoming the world’s greatest pastry chef.

Raspberries serve as ingredients for pastries, but that’s not the only reason.

Raspberries are perennials, producing fruit twice a year, and they also bloom twice annually. This is crucial. Furthermore, as they originally grew in the mountains, they’re resilient to diseases and pests and require little care.

In a corner of the flower field, about ten wooden boxes measuring fifty centimeters in height are lined up.

The lower portion of the boxes has passageways, through which busy bees come and go.

“The bees seem to love raspberries too. They’re busy collecting nectar from the flowers.”

“Raspberry nectar is sweet, so the honey produced by bees that gather raspberry nectar has a refreshing sweetness, making it delicious.”

What Tina and I are doing is beekeeping.

Unlike in Japan, sweetness is extremely valuable in this world.

Essential ingredients for sweets like sugar are hard to come by. Apart from sugar, the only sources of sweetness are fruits or honey. While the former is heavily influenced by seasons, honey can be preserved.

Having a stable supply of honey is essential to get anything started.

Fortunately, there were bees inhabiting the territory.

So, I decided to start beekeeping, leveraging my experience from when I lived in Japan. My family’s home in Yamanashi made a living through beekeeping and fruit orchards, so I had some knowledge.

I considered collecting honey without beekeeping, but finding wild beehives is challenging. Plus, if you extract honey from wild hives each time, it quickly diminishes their numbers. Furthermore, there’s the issue of the relatively low amount of honey that can be obtained from wild bee nests.

“Tina, are you ready?”

“Yes, Kurt-sama!”

We change into linen suits that cover our entire bodies.

They’re quite thick to prevent bee stings and impregnated with scents that repel bees.

While bees themselves are generally gentle and don’t attack humans unprovoked, they fiercely defend their hives against anything approaching.

We cautiously approach the wooden boxes.

Hundreds of bees swarm around us.

Ignoring them, we remove the lid from the box. Bees soar into the air at an alarming speed.

We push through the bees and reach into the box.

Inside the box, ten frames are evenly spaced. Each frame contains a honeycomb.

We remove one frame. The frame is covered in hexagonal holes typical of bee combs, filled with larvae, pupae, and a lot of honey. The honey is a beautiful honey color, indicating its purity.

We brush off the bees clinging to the comb.

“Finally, it’s time to harvest the honey,” Tina said, swallowing nervously.

“It sure took a while,” I replied.

I started beekeeping three years ago. The first year was disastrous. I found wild bee nests, obtained a queen bee and drones, and placed them in wooden hives, but due to the poor quality of the hives, they all perished. Undeterred, I kept experimenting until I managed to establish nests inside the wooden boxes.

From there, I successfully expanded the nests and increased the number of bees, but there weren’t enough worker bees, so most of the honey was used for breeding, and we couldn’t harvest much.

I focused on increasing the number of bees by adding more frames, but the bees I diligently raised perished in the winter due to inadequate insulation.

The second year, I started by increasing the number of bees again, managed to survive the winter somehow, and to alleviate the shortage of food for the increased number of bees, I created flower beds near the hives. If the bees had to travel far to find nectar, they would consume more of it as food. By providing plenty of food near the hives, the amount of honey stored in the nests increased dramatically.

Finally, today’s harvest has come.

“How does it look, Kurt-sama? Does it look good?” Tina asked.

“It’s perfect. The honeycomb is sealed tight, and look, honey is still dripping from it. Looks great,” I replied as I moved the frames to the side with a tool next to the hive.

The tool, called a centrifuge, resembled a drum can with fixtures inside to hold the frames vertically. Though the principle was simple, it took some effort to make.

After firmly fitting the frames, I used a knife to remove the sealed honeycomb from the surface.

Once the honey had dried and formed a natural seal, it was ready to be harvested. As I removed the seal, golden honey flowed out, collecting at the bottom of the centrifuge.

“Alright, let’s do this,” I said, turning the hand crank attached to the top of the centrifuge, causing the portion holding the frames to rotate inside.

As a result, the honey flowed steadily due to centrifugal force.

Using primitive methods, one could squeeze the hive and extract honey completely. Indeed, this method could yield more honey. However, it would crush the bee’s nest. With the centrifugal force method, only the honey could be extracted, allowing the nest to be reused.

Returning the frames to the hive, the bees would return, allowing for harvesting next year as well. Nest building is hard work for bees. If their nest is destroyed, they lose the ability to increase worker bees or store honey, leading to a drastic decrease in the next honey harvest.

After extracting all the honey, I returned the frames to the hive and brought in new ones.

Getting tired halfway through, Tina took over.

“Wow, we got so much honey, Kurt-sama! This is the first time I’ve seen so much honey!”

Eyes sparkling, Tina wagged her tail.

In this era, honey is a special treat.

Even searching desperately in the forest, one might find only one hive in a day. And even if found, the amount of honey stored in wild bee nests was minimal.

“Yeah, finally seeing some results. Honestly, I thought it was hopeless multiple times,” I admitted.

For almost two years, we couldn’t harvest honey properly. Tina had been patient throughout.

We moved to another spot with the honey from a single hive, shedding our thick clothes.

“Can I taste this?” Tina asked eagerly.

“Wait a moment. Let me finish the final step,” I replied, taking out a large bucket.

Then, I attached a coarse cloth to the centrifuge and began filtering.

The honey extracted from the hive contained various impurities like debris, larvae, carcasses, and nest fragments.

We cleaned it up thoroughly. Without doing so, the honey wouldn’t be edible.

Finally, the honey was ready. About thirteen liters from a single hive. Not bad.

“Alright, let’s try it,” Tina said eagerly, dipping her fingers into the honey.

The honey stuck to our fingers, and we licked it off.

Sweet. It was so sweet it felt like our cheeks were melting. Perhaps it was because the honey was made by bees that had sucked raspberry nectar, as it had a faint acidity to it.

Tina clasped her cheeks with both hands, emitting an almost inaudible sound, her face lighting up with the most radiant smile.

It seemed she was thoroughly pleased.

“Let’s leave the rest of the hives for tomorrow. Today, let’s head back. When we get home, I’m thinking of making sweets with this honey,” I suggested.

“Wow, Kurt-sama’s sweets! I can’t wait!” Tina’s eyes sparkled as she wagged her tail.

“Expect something sweeter and more wonderful than ever before,” I promised.

“T-That’s, that’s just too much happiness, I feel like I’m gonna die!” Tina exclaimed dramatically.

Honestly, Tina was being overly dramatic.

Up until now, the sweets I made for Tina were made using only local ingredients like wild kiwi or mountain grapes found in these mountains.

They had a hint of sweetness, but they were still somewhat lacking as sweets.

But now, with this honey… and especially with such high-quality honey at our disposal…

My skills were itching to create something.

I could finally make real sweets!

Now, let’s take the first step towards my dream in this world and make the best sweets ever.