Crystal Gathering too Slow

[Felis]

I need 12000 wind shards, you expect me to mine up that many?

The cap is at 9.999

12 shards per run every 6-7 node is nothing compared to the 1,100 I need to make one stack of food.

4 shards each node. That would make 12 shards per every 3th node.

Say you would need to start gathering, get all 4 shards and run to the next node ~ 20 seconds.
1100 shards = 275 nodes = ~ 1,5 hours