Dust Farming

What I have to offer here could change your life and quite possibly the lives of every human on this planet. I am offering you an opportunity because I have been given your details by a most trusted associate. I am looking for a very particular type of person, and my associate has informed me, you possess all the attributes I require. What you’re about to read may seem unbelievable but every word is true. A word of warning though, once you have read this document, there is no going back. You will have knowledge of secrets that must never be told. Others have tried and failed to reveal them. Let’s just say, speak of this to anyone and I will find out.

Still interested? I assume you are because you’re still reading…

Good, now let me fill you in on this opportunity I am offering. But first, a touch of essential background information.

My name is Jago and I am what is called a Piskie. You might not have heard of a Piskie but you could be forgiven for thinking I am a Pixie or brownie or maybe a sprite but you’d be mistaken. I am quite proudly, a Piskie! That’s what folk like me are called in Cornwall, where I’m from. Cornwall is a place at the end of the earth. A long time ago it used to be a place of magic and mystery; a place of fairytales and witchcraft. Cornwall was a land where dragons slumbered and giants were born. Cornwall came from the sea it rose out of; the sea where Morgawr lurked and mermaids wrecked ships. But times have changed, Cornwall has changed. It has been sullied by modernity and lost most of its magic. There are parts, remote and untouched that remain, and Bodmin Moor where I live is such a place. It’s a landscape hewn from wind and rain, where vast swathes of nothing but grass and bog absorb the whispers of conspiring tors. The few trees that eek out an existence here are stunted and bent double by marauding awels (gales to you). Few people live here. It’s a place most only pass through.

I am one of the fewthousand remaining Cornish Piskies who live on Bodmin moor. There used to be millions of us but since the invention of the motor car, our work has all but dried up. Back then, before the car, our line of work was deceiving travellers on horseback or on foot. Specifically, by luring them off the path. On moonless nights or still evenings when mist as thick as clotted cream rolled in, us Piskies would shine our lanterns at weary travellers trying to navigate their way through the moor. They would think the lantern was a light from a cottage or inn where they could take shelter or get directions. We, being playful little imps would lead them off the path and straight into a bog. Local people and the well informed would leave gifts of bread, milk and cheese In return for safe passage through the moor. Since the invention of the car however, the leading astray business has become all but extinct.

You might be thinking, why didn’t we just adapt, get into a different line of mischief. Well Cornish Piskies, especially the moor folk, are staunch traditionalists. They simply couldn’t change. So when humans moved on from travelling on foot or by horse and into the motor car, the moor Piskies just kept on trying to lead them astray with their lanterns. The problem is that modern roads are extremely easy to navigate and headlights are so bright, travellers don’t see our lamps . It was an extremely distressing time that drove some Piskies to move away and find places where the car hadn’t reached yet. God knows where they’ve ended up because everyone has cars now. Others became so depressed, they simply gave up and disappeared into the moors great nothingness. Others, like my uncle Kenwyn took to the bottle. One night he’d been drinking harder than usual and took his lamp onto one of the country lanes to try and lead a traveller astray but instead had his life ended under the wheel of an excursion tour bus. Over 80% of Piskie deaths are on the roads. Shocking isn’t it.

Those of us who’ve remained are all from the younger generation who were better able to adapt to a new way of life. My best friend Joss for example, has got a job at a school in a tiny village. He causes mischief by doing things like moving the kids coats onto the wrong pegs and putting green paint in the red paint bottle. Things like that. They absolutely love it and think his meddling is hilarious. In return for these antics, they leave him bits of their packed lunch. It’s very clever really; similar to the old ways but in a modern world where few adults believe in mythical creatures, Joss has managed to adapt.

I moved out of the mischief trade a long time ago. I am in an entirely different line of work. A line of work that is looking to expand. An expansion that includes you at the centre. This is where you find out about me and my business, and accept an opportunity of a lifetime.

For some years now I have been in the agricultural trade. I own and run a Fairy Dust farm called Pystri Meadows where we are the sole producer of dust from fairies. Fairy dust has long been known to have magical properties. It’s what enables them to fly. A lesser known property of fairy dust though is its ability to help plants grow. A wheat field for example that has had fairy dust added to the soil will yield ten times more wheat than a field that has been sprayed with traditional fertiliser. It’s produced in a gland in the base of their wings and spreads out across the wings to create a dusty coating. If you’ve ever held a moth or butterfly, the fine floury stuff that get left behind on your skin is very similar to fairy dust. One microscopic grain of it is enough to fertilise one plant. Each fairy has four wings and each wing contains about 150,000 grains of dust. Therefore, one fairy’s dust can fertilise a crop of 600,000 plants.

In order to harvest the dust, the best way is to remove the wings just above the base so the dust gland remains intact. This is done by hand, using a method we call ‘pinching out’. There are two specific benefits to removing the wings in this way.

Firstly, if the fairy survives the wing removal, pinching out doesn’t damage the dust gland which means their wings are able to regenerate. Mortality rates from the shock of wing removal are low -around 3%. The ones that survive will grow new wings which takes around one week. A fairy’s lifespan is about a year, which means during their lifespan a fairy has the potential produce 52 sets of wings. This equates to just over 31 million grains of dust.

The other benefit is that it takes away their ability to fly. We remove the wings upon capture or birth depending on whether they are wild caught or captive bred. Of course, the wings do grow back so we keep them in barns as a precautionary measure.

Once the wings have been harvested, they are then dried in our dehydrating cylinders before being ground down to create a powder. The powder, or ‘dust’ is then sold to the farmers who mix it with water and spray it onto their fields.

The one major flaw of the farm currently, is our inability to expand the business because of our underproductive breeding programme. It is my ambition to eventually minimise the amount of wild caught fairies we harvest dust from by breeding from captive stocks. Our issue is that fairies do not breed well in captivity. We’ve tried a number of potential solutions to solve this issue but are yet to see any significant improvements in the farm’s birth rate. Demand for Fairy dust is increasing you see, so unless we find a way of breeding fairies successfully, we just can’t meet that demand or expand the business as I’d like to. Until a solution is found we have no other choice than to maintain our flock numbers by continuing to utilise wild fairy stocks.

To catch the wild fairies, we use what we call mist nets. These are similar to commercial fishing gill nets which are stretched out horizontally over a wide area. Imagine a tennis net but with an extremely fine mesh that fairies - about the size of a large dragonfly - can’t fit through. Some fairies are diurnal but are nearly impossible to catch so the ones we target are the nocturnal variety. It’s on the darkest nights we go fairy catching and the optimum conditions are clear skies with a new moon i.e. no moon at all. Fairies are keen sighted creatures and any sort of moonshine illuminates the mist nets. We also prefer there to be no wind; fairies have excellent hearing and have learned the sound of a net billowing in the wind.

Preparation and concealment is key. We set the nets during the day time whilst the nocturnal ones are asleep in their dwellings. We have sterilised jars ready to contain netted fairies individually. Then all we have to do is wait for darkness to fall whilst waiting in hides. We usually leave the nets for an hour or two after darkness. Any longer than this and trapped fairies damage themselves in their effort to escape, rendering them an unviable product. Any captured fairies that are in good condition have their wings immediately removed, contained in a jar and taken to the farm where they will be processed into groups according to gender. Male fairies go into the male only barn and females into the female barn. The only exception are male fairies who haven’t been weaned yet. They remain with the females until they can be weaned and are then transferred into the male barn. We keep them separate like this because we need to control the variables on our breeding programme. However, our current methods aren’t working and the wild populations of fairies are proving harder and harder to find. This of course means there is a burgeoning urgency from our current and prospective clients to produce a successful captive breeding solution before wild stocks run too low.

The latest project I have been developing centres around building biodomes that replicate the natural habitat of the fairy. The theory is, we will be able to mitigate the stress levels of captured fairies so they begin to behave naturally i.e. breed. Some of the captive bred young can then be released strategically where they will repopulate the wild stocks. The rest will be distributed into the biodomes. With a careful balance of captive breeding and wild stock repopulation, we will be able to expand fairy dust farming far beyond the reaches of Cornwall. If this project is successful, Fairy dust farms could monopolise the global fertiliser industry.

Now, that I have briefly shared this information with you, what specifically do I want from you I hear you ask. I am in need of your experience in agricultural logistics, networking skills and expertise in international marketing. Most importantly though, I believe you can keep the lines between fantasy and reality blurred; keeping our secrets safe, whilst creating a globally recognisable brand. Trust me when I tell you, you are a perfect fit for this position; my associate has been watching you closely for some time and you have proven yourself to be the best candidate for the job. Out of all my prospective candidates, you came out on top in every criteria I asked them to test for.

I am offering you the opportunity to be my partner in a business that is going to change the face of agriculture. Change the world we live in. We will have the power to end famine and get rich doing it. If you join me, you could be the most powerful person on this planet. To turn this down would be a mistake. And remember, if you do turn me down, you are now privy to the secrets of a select few. If any of those secrets were to find their way out of your lips, that would be an even graver mistake.

I look forward to hearing from you and welcoming you on board.