King of Mercenaries - Chapter 79: Season of Harvest

Autumn, the 3200 and some morgens of rye were ripe for harvest. Leaving aside the 200 morgens of land belonging to the Church, the 1000 morgens of land under Marin and the 2000 morgens under his underlings had all used the bending plow for ploughing, and the fields were all fertilized with manure.

Not only that, when he had nothing to do, Marin also urged the serfs to enter the fields to pull out weeds, preventing them from endangering the growth of rye.

Also, the rye on Texel was planted with the hole sowing method, and not the Broadcast seeding method commonly used by the European farmers of the Middle Ages. Broadcast seeing was truly convenient, but the distribution of seeds were uneven, and was a superficial sowing method. Because the seeds spread through human hands would sometimes cluster together, and sometimes miss spots. If the seeds cluster together, when the seedlings start growing, they would compete for nutrients, in the end, the seedlings which were clustered together would not grow well at all. Well the places without any seeds will easily result in a waste.

Hole seeding was different, during sowing, they were already arranged in an array, leaving behind suitable space for the seeds. Before the sowing, Marin directed the serfs to perform salt water seed selection, and choose the better seeds. At the same time, because hole seeding sown the seeds deeper than broadcast seeding, it was more conducive for seed germination That’s why, not only was the effects of this seeding method great, the yield was also good.

After the harvest started, Marin specifically sent Kohler to supervise things, and count their yield. As the bundles of wheat straw with their ears were transported to the threshing floor, the serfs split up their manpower and started separating the grains.

Everyone divided their labor clearly, the women used iron sickles to cut down the wheat with their stalks, and laid down in the fields. As for the men, a portion of them went into the field, and with crude straw ropes, bundled the wheat stalks together. Then the ones with larger strength were in charge of carrying the bundles of wheat onto the roadside.

By the road, a line of horse wagons were waiting there. Some of the men were in charge of tossing the bundled wheat onto the wagons.

Then, the wagons would transport the bundled wheat to the threshing floor.

At the threshing floor, the wheat with their stalks were thrown down and piled properly. Then, another group of people would start by removing the stalks, with one hand on the stalk and hit the ears of the wheat on rocks, so that the wheat grains and their shell would separate from the stalk.

After the separation, because there were large amounts of chaff mixed within. The farmers started using wooden tools to turn them over. In ripe ears, the chaff and the grains weren’t firmly fitting. With the involvement of outside forces, and squeezing against each other, the grains were quickly separated from the chaff.

Afterwards, the farmers used their tools to scatter the mixture of grains and chaff from high up, against the wind.

As the grains had higher density and weighed more, when they were scattered, they would fall straight to the ground, and not deviate far from landing. As for the chaff, which had low density, with the blow of the wind, they would start flying downwind, and would deviate far from the origin. After repeating this several times, the chaff would gradually be separated from the mixture, leaving mostly grains behind…

Of course, this wasn’t the end. After separating the grains and chaff, the grains needed to be spread on the threshing floor and exposed to the sun, until the grains are completely dry…

After a month of busy work, the wheatfields on the island were finally done harvesting. At the same time, the 200 morgens of soybeans under Marin were basically harvested.

After Kohler and co.’s calculation, the 2800 morgens of ryefields under Marin and his underlings had an average yueld of 3000 pounds per morgen, which converts to about 250 pounds per mu…

250 pounds, which was about 227 catty, for Marin who was already used to a yield of thousands of catty per mu in modern times, this was a very low yield. But for Europeans in the Middle Ages, this was an amazingly high yield…

Because in this day and age, the yield of rye per mu was about 150 pounds. The places with yield above 200 pounds were only found in Italy which had fertile lands…

As such, the entire island was in an uproar…

“Come on? The yield is only 3000 pounds per morgen, you call this a harvest?” Marin was quite speechless. In modern times, one mu was able to yield that amount, let alone 12 mu of land?

However, when Marin’s underlings heard what he said, they were even more speechless…

“Young Master, you must not know much about agriculture. In our Deutschland, if the yield could reach 1800 pounds of rye per morgen, then that’s already considered a good harvest. Now that the yield reached 3000 pounds, which was more than two-thirds higher than that, how could we not be happy?” Kohler said speechlessly. The people around them were all in agreement with what Kohler said, and nodded their heads furiously.

“Tsk, you guys are this happy with such a small achievement? Really good for nothings. My teacher had told me that in the East, 300 pounds per mu was a very common happening.” Marin had no love to their data, and felt nothing over it. In modern times,

whenever their rye fields had a yield of under 1000 pounds per mu, his father and mother would feel like it was bad luck. That’s why, his standards was really high.

“Alright Boss, your teacher is amazing, so are you…” Schwartz who was standing nearby had a speechless expression.

As for Frundsberg the newly recruited, he had been acting like a spartan for quite some time. His family was a Knight Family, which had their own small farmable lands, which was roughly several hundred morgens. Towards the high yield of rye on the island, he was extremely shocked. As for the other underlings under Marin, they were already used to Marin creating miracles, so they were quite immune to this. Only Frundsberg, who was experiencing the “Miracles of Marin” for the first time, had a hard time speaking due to sheer shock.

Schwartz seemed to have noticed Frundsberg’s shock, so he clapped Frundsberg on the shoulder, and spoke in a meaningful voice:

“Alright lad, don’t be so surprised. Our Boss just loves to create miracles. I’ve been following after him for quite some time now, and the miracles I have witnessed was more than what I had ever seen in the past 20 something years of my life…

…

The yield of oats on the other side was also dissatisfactory for Marin. Because the yield of oats was only a measly 120 pounds, which was 108 catty per mu. However, the oat grass of oatwheats were also great fodder. Although the harvest of seeds were a bit low, but it wasn’t unacceptable. Besides, the yield of oats in the modern times were no more than three-four hundred catty, which was about the same as soybeans.

200 morgens, which was about 2400 mu, 120 pounds per mu, the total yield reached 288 thousand pounds. Currently, the price of wheats in Europe was very expensive, reaching 3 pfennigs per pound, which was basically the daily salary of an artisan. There were important usages for oats, as the horses needed it as feed frequently.

There were more than a thousand horses on Texel, so oat consumption was naturally high. As for Marin, he had never considered making money using oats, instead he would be using it to feed the horses. To the point that because the yield of 288 thousand pounds of oats was too much, Marin intended to increase the population of horses, and cultivate more warhorses.

As for these horses, they did not let Marin’s hopes down. In the Spring, many stallions had succumbed to the enticing of the mares, and performed acts of ‘original sin’ in the green pastures.

When it was Autumn, the bellies of many mares were already bulging…

Marin had counted, there were roughly 200 and some mares that are foaling, in the start of the upcoming year, there would be about 200 and some foals being born. Marin was quite delighted, he already decided to hire high-leveled horse breeders, to cultivate these young foals since young, and hope that there would be a good amount of warhorses which will come from them…

Under the strong suggestion of his underlings, Marin organized a grand harvest feast. All of his underlings, as well as the serfs would be celebrating this harvest.

One must know, the 800 morgens of rye under Marin’s name yielded 2.4 million pounds of rye. As for the other soldiers, each family had about 5 morgens of wheatfield, which also yielded 15 thousand pounds of rye on average.

15 thousand pounds of rye, which was about 15 pfennigs, which was about 93.75 markkas, or 250 gold coins. That might not amount to much for a tycoon like Marin, but for the destitute mercenaries, that was an enormous sum. One must know, those who were selling their lives to be soldiers only had a daily salary of 2 pfennigs, and after one entire year, their yearly salary would amount to only 12 gold coins. 250 gold coins, even if there was only a profit of 150 gold coins, for them, it was already an extremely large sum… Of course, these lands were more or less the ‘fiefs’ for the 400 soldiers. As such, Marin did not need to pay them their salaries separately. As such, these 400 soldiers were similar to the Fubing of Tang Dynasty,

granted their own lands, they would provide their own weapons and horses, and accompany their superior into battle…

Forget the normal mercenaries, even Schwartz and Frundsberg were envious of this. Marin had already promised to grant Schwartz 100 morgens of land, besides, the serfs had already developed the land, now they were waiting for upcoming Spring to start sowing.

As for Frundsberg, Marin had also promised him 50 morgens of land. One must know, 5 morgens of ryefields was enough to provide each mercenary’s family with 250 gold coins (although the profits was only 150 gold coins, because they needed to deduct the costs, daily spendings and taxes like the Tithe), 100 morgens of land, wasn’t that basically a salary of 5000 gold coins a year. 50 morgens, that was still 2500 gold coins… One must know, a warhorse only costs 100 gold coins…

Schwartz and Frundsberg both could already imagine how their hands would go numb from counting their gold coins…

“Oh right, Schwartz, George (Frundsberg), both of you must remember this, do not reveal our advanced technology in agriculture to others. Otherwise, if everyone learned it, everyone would have high yield, then the prices of wheat would drop, and we won’t have so much income then…”

“But Boss, what about my family’s manor?” Frundsberg asked.

“Leave that aside for now, the land you have on this island is more than enough for you to become rich. If you perform well, I’ll grant you another 50 morgens of land, it all depends on how well you do…”

“Boss, what should we do if an outsider spied our agriculture techniques? There’s a lot of foreign merchants on the island. Besides, we aren’t able to control the church on the island…” Schwartz asked worriedly.

“We don’t have to worry about the church, what do those clergymen know about farming? Besides, they would not entertain the thought of going to the fields, they would only stay in their churches, things like farming are all done by the serfs, and that doesn’t have anything to do with the clergymen. As for the foreign merchants…” Marin pondered for a moment, then spoke:

“How about this, in the future, the farmers who come from outside the island are only permitted to stay at Port ‘t Horntje for trade, and without authorization, are not allowed to enter the the Island interior. ‘t Horntje was a port in itself, and there are no fields around it, so they won’t be able to figure out anything…”

“Good idea, I’ll have that done immediately…” As the Warden of the Island, Schwartz knew what to do…

In reality, Marin himself also knew that the use of manure and Chinese farming tools weren’t exactly advanced technology, and would be easily copied.

The Venetians also managed to protect the secrets of glass mirrors very well, but still had their secrets stolen from the French, so Marin did not believe they would keep this secret for too long. However, it would still be beneficial if they could keep the secret for longer, at the very least, it would earn more money for everyone, and help improve their family’s financial situation.