Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest-Chapter 83 - 17: Summer Harvest

Roman had been in Sige Town for 100 days.

He stayed at the Wood Factory for several days and finally "Manufacturing" Skill had been leveled up.

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[Level 2 Manufacturing: 0\380]

[Milestone Unlock: Handicraft]

[Handicraft: Obtain 500 original stones]

Compared to other skills, this one was far more complicated and vast. Roman felt a torrent of knowledge continuously bursting forth from his mind.

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Nine Life Skills were like nine different seeds. By drawing Experience Points, they would root and sprout, intertwining and overlapping during their growth, and eventually become a complete and elaborate technology tree with abundant branches and deep roots.

Roman vaguely knew what kind of effects each skill level-up would bring and what changes multiple skills working together could bring.

Roman hoped the manufacturing skill could reduce the labor and time needed for the summer harvest.

He was disappointed.

Despite lighting up skills such as pottery and brick making, textile work, woodwork, and even thus improving his purity as an Innate Civil Engineering Saint Body, an Innate Blacksmith Saint Body, and an Innate Chef Holy Body,

these knowledge didn’t result in significant improvement in agriculture.

In fact, even if he had the blueprints for a harvester, he couldn’t manually hammer out large machinery with a hammer.

Roman had to resort to primitive methods.

He scrapped a layer of soil with an iron rake, then scattered husks, letting the miners from the stone mine use wedges and hammers to carve out about a hundred stone rollers, which were pulled around by oxen and draft horses to roll everywhere, sprinkling water and pressing, making the ground flat and firm, turning it into a threshing ground.

This threshing ground covered ten acres.

He provided the blueprint for the valley windmill, and together with Vic, they created twenty carts of valley windmills.

If preparations were not made in advance, it would greatly delay the process.

Harvesting wheat involved complicated steps.

Mainly focused on reaping, threshing, and separating.

The time and manpower consumed by these steps were incalculable. freёnovelkiss.com

Without improving overall efficiency, was it just to let manpower be wasted?

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Amidst continuous busyness,

before he knew it, 20 days had passed.

Early summer had quickly faded away.

Roman did nothing else but focused all his energy on creating valley windmills and rolling out the threshing ground.

Morry had visited again during this period.

He brought Roman 19 oxen and 40 draft horses, not only fulfilling the promise of 50 oxen and 100 horses but also giving a few extra oxen as a bonus.

This year, Roman only planted 2000 acres, and the rest of the fields were overgrown with weeds, making grazing and harvesting convenient.

They were not used round the clock for transportation though, as one could make a person work ten hours a day, but definitely not oxen and horses.

An ox needed to consume about sixty to seventy pounds of forage a day, otherwise, it wouldn’t have the energy to work; some of the forage came from grazing and some from manual harvesting.

The draft horses needed less forage, as their feed was mixed with grains and legumes, which provided several times the calories and nutrients compared to the weeds.

Moreover, it wasn’t the busy season yet, so feeding them wasn’t too challenging.

According to Morry, he had contacted a noble on the plateau and purchased a large number of draft horses from him.

If Roman still needed more later on, he could continue to bring more livestock.

However, Roman no longer lacked cattle and horses.

Instead, he asked Morry to acquire another type of cattle and horses in large quantities.

He would take as many as he could get.

Morry left Sige Town with 80 barrels of maltose and 40,000 pounds of salt, bringing Roman an income of more than a hundred Gold Coins.

And following that was Morry’s siblings.

They brought along another 3500 pounds of iron ingots and took away 70,000 pounds of salt.

With a sufficient amount of iron ingots, Roman asked Lax to continue making heavy plows for the summer plowing.

Next, the road construction crew had finished their work.

With sharp enough shovels and hoes, more than 500 people could lay over 1 kilometer of roads each day, the only constraint to their paving speed was the insufficient quantity of lime.

For this reason, another lime kiln was built to continuously cut trees and burn lime.

They had finished the paving work seven days before the summer harvest.

To reward them, Roman specifically gave everyone a day off to relax, and even the free meals would continue without interruption. After resting, they were relentlessly sent to collect the fertilizer needed for summer cultivation.

As the midsummer approached.

So did the summer harvest.

The vast, neatly arranged golden wheat fields, row by row, densely planted and not sparse at all, could even be described as crowded—utterly breaking their understanding of land.

The wheat ears, countless and endless under the brilliant sunshine, shimmered brightly.

The wheat stalks were tall, the grains were plump.

Surrounded by spikes, laden with heavy fruits, the stalks bowed their heads.

Every wheat husk, every ear of wheat seemed to radiate a divine glow.

Anyone who came here, whether ordinary farmers who had witnessed its growth or Conquest Knights like Green and Aaron, felt a heartfelt shock.

Deep inside, a profound reverence emerged spontaneously!

They gazed at this land with the piety of pilgrims.

In this agricultural era, only food was the foundation of survival!

Under certain extreme conditions, food was far more valuable than gold, silver, jewelry, or steel salt.

Everyone was moved by this scene!

"What are you staring at? Get moving!"

Roman kicked the utterly disheartened Green.

You were called here to harvest wheat, don’t think just because you’re handsome you can avoid working on the land!

All the farmers snapped out of their daze.

Having cultivated this land for over ten years, they now faced these dense wheat fields and didn’t know where to begin.

Until Roman picked up a scythe, a farm tool resembling a horizontal chopper, and with each swing harvested several bunches of wheat ears.

Indeed, he and the two Conquest Knights had to participate in the labor.

And the farmers were already used to Lord Roman often joining in the work.

The scythe was highly efficient, allowing an able-bodied man to harvest five acres in a day.

Compared to it, the sickle was nothing!

The only downside was that it was too heavy; those with less physical strength could only swing it briefly before needing a replacement.

Only strong laborers or Conquest Knights could use this tool for an extended period.

Roman had Lax and Vic manufacture a hundred scythes—the investment in these tools was necessary and would be useful in the future too.

Everyone started to hustle, also practicing the use beforehand.

A hundred scythes could cover five hundred acres in a day.

Both Green and Aaron exchanged glances, both sweating profusely.

Now, they had no choice but to carry scythes and join the harvesting crew.

Their physical constitution was excellent, and though they were not accustomed to farm tools, with a little use, they quickly mastered the basic method.

Roman, Aaron, and Green’s harvesting efficiency was unparalleled; their movement was steady, somewhat resembling an unbeatable grass-cutting trio.

Together, the three of them harvested nearly thirty acres.

Behind them, people continuously threw the harvested wheat stalks onto carts, then transported them to the grain processing area with clearly defined roles.

By evening, everyone responsible for harvesting had arms sore from the strain.

The scorching sun, busy traffic, and rising dust painted an accurate picture of the moment.

Dozens of carts loaded with wheat stalks ceaselessly transported them to the grain processing area in Sige Town.

At the processing area, workers spread them on the ground and had oxen and horses pulling stone rollers to repeatedly crush them for threshing.

This labor lasted the anticipated four days until all the wheat was harvested.

Harvesting was easy, so was transporting, but threshing was time-consuming.

The stone roller had to be continuously moved, without a moment of rest.

For this, Roman had mobilized all the large animals, even commandeering the salt transport carts, asking salt mine workers to temporarily store the refined salt at the salt mine.

The broad processing area allowed them to pull the stone rollers back and forth; places they couldn’t reach were continuously beaten with flails.

Meanwhile, farmers used wooden forks to shovel away the straw devoid of wheat grains, piling them into high stacks.

Another group used wooden shovels to pour wheat grains into the grain windmills, using the wind generated by the windmills to separate the wheat husks from the grains.

Each grain windmill could process several thousand pounds of wheat grains a day.