You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 72 Summer Harvest
It's the 100th day since Roman arrived in Sig.

He spent several days at the woodworking factory and finally leveled up his [Crafting] skill.

……

[Level 2 Manufacturing: 0/380]

[Milestone Unlocked: Craftsmanship]

[Crafting Activity: Earn 500 Primogems]

Compared to other skills, this skill was far more complex and vast. Roman felt a torrent of knowledge gushing out of his mind.

……

The nine life skills are like nine different seeds. By absorbing experience points, they take root, sprout, intertwine, overlap during the growth process, and eventually work together to grow into a complete technology tree with lush branches and deep roots.

Roman had a vague idea of ​​what the effects of each skill upgrade would be, and what changes would occur when multiple skills were combined.

Roman hoped to create skills that would reduce the labor and time required for the summer harvest.

He was disappointed.

Although it illuminated various skills such as stone carving, bricklaying, textiles, and woodworking, it even enhanced the purity of his innate sacred body as a sacred body of earth and wood, a sacred body of blacksmithing, and a sacred body of chef.

However, this knowledge did not significantly improve agriculture.

In fact, even if he were given the blueprints for a harvester, he wouldn't be able to hammer out a large machine by hand.

Roman had no choice but to resort to makeshift methods.

A layer of topsoil was scraped off with an iron rake, and then rice husks were spread on top. The miners at the stone quarry used wedges and hammers to chisel out a hundred or so stone rollers. Oxen and draft horses pulled the stone rollers around, watering and compacting the land to make it flat and firm, turning it into a threshing ground.

This threshing ground covers ten acres.

He provided the blueprints for the windmills, and together with Vicki, they built twenty windmills.

If you don't prepare in advance, it will take a lot of time.

Harvesting wheat involves a complex process.

The main focus is on three processes: harvesting, threshing, and separating.

The time and manpower consumed by these three tasks are incalculable.

If we don't improve overall efficiency, are we just going to let human resources be wasted on this?

……

In the midst of constant busyness.

In the blink of an eye, 20 days have passed.

Early summer passed in the blink of an eye.

Roman did nothing else but focus all his energy on building the windmills and creating threshing grounds.

Morey visited again during this period.

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

Roman only planted 2,000 mu of land this year; the rest of the fields were overgrown with weeds, making grazing and harvesting very convenient.

They are not available 24/7. You can make a person work ten hours a day, but you certainly can't make cattle or horses work ten hours a day.

An ox needs to eat 60 to 70 catties of fodder every day, otherwise it will not have the energy to work. Some of the fodder comes from grazing, and some comes from manual harvesting.

The draft horses received less hay because their feed consisted of grains and beans, which were several times higher in calories and nutrients than weeds.

Moreover, it's not busy time yet, so raising them isn't too difficult.

According to Morey, he contacted a nobleman on the plateau and purchased a large number of draft horses from him.

If Roman still needs more livestock, he can continue to send more.

However, Roman has no shortage of cattle and horses for the time being.

He then instructed Morey to acquire a large quantity of another type of cattle and horses.

He wants as much as he can get.

Morey left Sig Town with 80 barrels of maltose and 40,000 catties of salt, bringing Roman an income of more than 100 gold coins.

And following closely behind were Morey's siblings.

They also brought in 3,500 jin of iron ingots and took away 70,000 jin of salt.

With a sufficient amount of iron ingots, Roman instructed Lax to continue forging heavy plows to prepare for summer plowing.

Secondly, the road construction team has finished their work.

With sufficiently sharp shovels and hoes, more than 500 people were able to pave more than 1 kilometer of road every day. The only thing that limited their paving speed was the insufficient amount of lime.

To this end, another lime kiln was built, and trees were continuously cut down to burn lime.

They finished paving the road seven days before the summer harvest.

As a reward, Roman gave them all a day off to relax, and their free meals were never interrupted. After resting, he immediately sent them off to collect fertilizer for summer planting. This was as the height of summer approached.

The summer harvest has arrived as scheduled.

That neat, golden wheat field, like an ocean, was planted so densely, row upon row, so crowded, that it completely overturned their understanding of the land.

The dense, countless ears of wheat, stretching as far as the eye can see, gleamed in the bright sunlight.

The wheat stalks are tall and the wheat grains are plump.

The ears of wheat are surrounded by clusters of grain, laden with fruit, so heavy that the stalks droop their heads.

Every chaff and every ear of wheat seemed to radiate a sacred light.

Everyone who comes here, whether an ordinary farmer who has witnessed their growth or a knight-errant like Green and Aaron, feels a profound sense of awe.

A profound sense of reverence arose spontaneously from the depths of their hearts!

They gazed upon this land with the reverence of a pilgrim.

In this agricultural era, food is the foundation of survival!

In some extreme cases, food is far more precious than gold, silver, jewelry, steel, or salt.

Everyone should be moved by this scene!
"What are you standing there for! Get moving!"

Roman then kicked a heartbroken Green.

We called you over to harvest wheat. Don't think you can avoid working in the fields just because you're handsome!

All the farmers suddenly realized what was happening.

They've been farming for over a decade, but now, faced with this dense wheat field, they don't know where to begin.

Until Roman picked up the scythe, a farm tool that resembled a horizontal guillotine, he harvested seven or eight ears of wheat with a single swing.

That's right, he and the two knights who went to war also had to participate in the labor.

The farmers had also gotten used to the lord frequently going to work in the fields.

The saber is extremely efficient, enabling a young and strong man to harvest five acres of land in a single day.

Compared to that, the sickle is nothing!

The only downside is that it's too heavy. People with poor stamina won't be able to keep swinging it for long and will need to be replaced.

Only able-bodied young men with good physical condition, or knights on campaign, could use this farming tool for extended periods.

Roman had Lax and Vickers forge one hundred sabers—these agricultural tools were a necessary investment and would be useful in the future.

Everyone else also got busy and started working in a flurry of activity.

They practiced how to use it in advance.

One hundred sabers can cover five hundred acres of land in a single day.

Green and Aaron exchanged a glance; both were sweating profusely.

Now he has no choice but to pick up his saber and join the harvesting team.

They were in excellent physical condition, and although they were not used to farm tools, they quickly mastered the basic usage after a little use.

Roman, Aaron, and Green's harvesting efficiency was unparalleled, the scene was somewhat like mowing down grass in a game of Musou, and their pace was also very steady.

The three of them worked together to harvest nearly thirty acres of land.

Behind them, people kept throwing the harvested wheat stalks onto the carts, which were then transported to the threshing ground; the division of labor was clear.

By evening, everyone responsible for the harvest had extremely sore arms.

The scorching sun, the heavy traffic, and the billowing dust are a true reflection of the scene at this moment.

Dozens of horse-drawn carts, fully loaded with wheat straw, were continuously transported to the threshing ground in Sige Town.

The workers at the threshing ground spread the grain on the ground, and oxen and horse-drawn carts used stone rollers to thresh it.

As expected, the harvest lasted four days, and all the wheat was harvested.

Harvesting is easy, and transportation is easy, but threshing is time-consuming.

The stone roller must be used to continuously crush the material without stopping for even a moment.

Roman mobilized all the large livestock and even the salt-carrying wagons to allow the salt miners to temporarily store the refined salt at the salt mine.

The spacious threshing ground allowed them to drag stone rollers back and forth, and to repeatedly pound the areas that couldn't be pressed down with flails.

The farmers then used wooden forks to shovel away the wheat straw after the grains had been removed, piling it into tall stacks.

Another group of people used wooden shovels to pour wheat grains into a grain winnowing machine, using the wind generated by the winnowing machine to separate the chaff from the grains.

A single grain winnowing machine can process thousands of kilograms of wheat grains every day.

(End of this chapter)