Lady of the Lord From the East - Chapter 188

Although the king said that Prince Edward could live in his newly bought house – of course, the specific one can be chosen by the crown prince himself, after all, it was given to him, but the new city is still in the final stage, and the house cannot be handed over for the time being, and even if it is It has been built, and the interior decoration of the new house has not yet started, and the furniture servants have not been arranged. Naturally, it is impossible to live in people.

And the other party is the crown prince. As the owner of the territory, you should treat such a distinguished guest well. So after the greeting, Crown Prince Edward and his people all got into the arranged carriage, followed by Felix and Wei Wei. I went back to Fort Sardinson first. It is estimated that before the new city can move in, the crown prince will have to bow down in their castle.

It’s really condescending. Although today’s Fort Sardinson is clean and tidy, and the internal ventilation system has long been improved, it cannot be ignored that it is just an old castle built by a rural noble. The castle looks shabby and old. Although we have made changes as much as possible, the dampness and coldness inside the castle are still a headache, especially in winter. That kind of environment is not good for healthy people. Not to mention people who were already in poor health. Many servants in the castle suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases because of this. Even the previous owner, Felix’s father, was not spared. He was almost forty years old. Sometimes there is a problem with the legs.

Now, although none of the members of the family have been sick because of it, they will inevitably follow in the footsteps of others in the long run.

So whether it is Felix or Wei Wei, they have already had the idea of ​​renovating the castle, but the renovation of the castle is a big project, and ordinary renovation can not solve this problem. Wei Wei means to simply tear down and rebuild, but it is the family after all. The castle that has been passed down for many years is the hard work of our ancestors. It really needs to be rebuilt, not to mention Felix and Dolores, the two masters who have lived here since childhood, the butler and other old people who have worked in Sardinson Castle for many years. The servants are reluctant.

Therefore, it is impossible to push, and we can only find ways to renovate and improve it.

This kind of thing can only be left to Pierre and other architects to worry about. Wei Wei feels that she can only give some small opinions, such as modifying windows and installing glass windows. The specific renovation has to be discussed by the architects collectively. After all, in addition to living conditions, the castle is also an important defense base, and its defense cannot be completely abandoned for comfort.

Although no one should dare to attack Sardinson now, there is nothing wrong with being careful.

However, due to various reasons, the specific renovation time has not been set. Originally, Wei Wei planned to wait for the new city to be built, and their family and their servants moved in together, leaving the castle for the architects to toss.

At present, this plan is still not planned to change, but firstly, we have to wait for the houses in the new city to be able to live in people.

So not only she, but other people in the castle also know the master’s plan, so everyone has been paying attention to the progress of the new city.

The current feedback is that the houses in the new city will not be built until November and December, which is almost before and after winter.

And it’s still October. Although it is colder in Fort Sardinson, it is relatively late for the whole Prady to enter the winter. Now this season is autumn and the air is cool, but the temperature is just right.

The carriage went all the way from Slot to Melk Town to Sardinson. Compared with the house that was still in the final stage, the Crown Prince was more curious about the scenery of Sardinson, so they took this road.

Along the way, whether it was Sloth’s delicious seafood or the special delicacies of several towns, the crown prince was very happy to eat. His diet has been strictly controlled recently, and many of the food he used to eat can’t be eaten. The food is mainly light. Although it is not to say that the food is not delicious, there are more or less medicinal herbs in it. The taste is limited, but the crown prince can’t be eaten. This time, Wei Wei has relaxed the restrictions and allowed him to eat some. Food that will not affect your body, and Sardinson’s food is recognized as delicious, and there are many vegetables, fruits and meat that cannot be eaten elsewhere, each of which has opened the eyes of the Crown Prince and others, such as pork, Now the Sardinsons will castrate their pigs beforehand, so the pork they raise is tender and not fishy. With the ingenious cooking methods, the delicious meat dishes made can really make people swallow their tongues.

Therefore, it was obviously exhausted, but by the time of Fort Sardinson, the crown prince and others found that they had gained weight. The crown prince did not change much, and his gastrointestinal absorption ability was poor, so he only grew a little longer. Miss Campbell is also a woman. He is sensitive to this aspect, so although he likes to eat, he will deliberately restrain himself, and his body weight has basically not changed, but like the imperial doctor and other servants, they are obviously fatter than before, and their faces are bigger.

In addition to food, Sardinson’s scenery is also eye-opening for them.

It’s not that the scenery in Sardinson is so special. Although the crown prince has always been in poor health, he often has to go to different places to cultivate. The places where he spends summer and winter are different every year, and the royal family chooses to build other palaces and manor places. The scenery is not bad, so ordinary scenery alone is not very attractive to His Royal Highness, who has seen a lot of natural scenery.

What really opened their eyes was the sight of Sardinson’s harvest.

The crown prince, who often cultivates in the royal family’s manor, has never seen the scene of a bumper harvest in the farmland. What impressed me the most was the continuous wheat waves. The golden patches rustled with the autumn wind, setting off a row of wheat waves, which filled the air. The aroma of mature wheat grass, and all the swaying wheat in front of you, if you look closely, you can see that all the fields are either wheat oats or rye barley, and other crops are extremely rare.

But it’s different in Sardinson. The crops they grow in their fields are very different from other areas. This season is supposed to be autumn sowing, so there is no mature wheat and oats in the field, and spring The sown oats and barley were almost abandoned by the colonists this year. Only a few fields were planted, and most of the remaining fields were actually planted with peas and chickpeas, which were seldom planted in previous years. Fruits and vegetables that he has never seen before, and plants that are completely unrecognizable make the crown prince, who is actually familiar with crops, have the illusion that he has never seen the fields, because he cannot recognize many things.

But ask if you don’t understand. Every time the crown prince sees a crop that he has never seen before, he will directly ask Felix who is accompanying him, so he quickly knows that many of them are the legendary fruits and vegetables brought by Wei Wei from the East, because Last year, everyone had a bumper harvest of all kinds of fruits and vegetables they planted before and after their houses. In addition to selling some of the remaining seeds to other people in need, most people chose to even out some less fertile fields and turn them into vegetable gardens to grow tomatoes and pumpkins. Strawberries and other fruits and vegetables, of course, they are not planted for their own consumption, but these vegetables and fruits are very popular, not only the lord’s factory will buy these specially, many foreign merchants will also pay a good price to buy them, and even many people are I signed an agreement with the merchant in advance and only chose to grow these fruits and vegetables this year. Take strawberries as an example. They were originally popular fruits, but the strawberries used to be wild wild strawberries. , so after the appearance of the huge creamy strawberry, this rare fruit has been well received. Although it is difficult to eat fresh strawberries outside of Sardinson, the processed strawberry jam is most of the rich. A must have meal on the table.

Vegetables such as tomatoes and pumpkins, which can be stored for a long time and are delicious after cooking, are also very popular and popular commodities, and many people will deliberately leave the seeds when they buy them back, thinking of planting some themselves.

In this regard, the lord and wife of Sardinson County did not prohibit the outflow of seeds as they did last year. After all, it is too difficult to ensure that the seeds will not be outflowed after mass production, unless the lords sell these fruits and vegetables, but that is not advisable, Otherwise, the lords will make more money by taking advantage of the fact that they are the only ones who have these fruits and vegetables. Could it be delayed until the big sale in the future, so that the lords can’t sell the things they can’t sell?

And after the price is lowered, their purchase price can also be reduced accordingly, which is not a bad thing for the lord.

“But they have all gone to grow those vegetables and fruits, so is there enough food to eat?”

The crown prince asked a question. There are worries about the Sardinians in the eyebrows, and they worry that they will not have enough food rations because of their excessive pursuit of property. Although money can buy food, it is best to reserve food by yourself. Bad luck encounters disaster years, even if you have money, you can’t buy food.

This had happened before, and the king had taught the crown prince about it, so he was impressed.

“There’s no need to worry about this.” Felix answered him with a smile. He liked the crown prince’s concern very much. A crown prince who cares about the lives of ordinary people will be a benevolent king in the future.

“It’s not that the people in Sardinson didn’t grow enough food. Look at the fields.” He pointed to a green field outside the carriage. “See, those beans.”

“Yes, I saw it, what happened to them?” The crown prince was puzzled. “Are those the food for your subjects?”

This is not impossible. The common food that commoners eat is black bread and beans, but as far as he knows, the people of Sardinson should be relatively wealthy. Will they still insist on eating beans?

Even people with better general conditions, even if they can’t afford wheat, are more willing to choose rye or barley than beans, right? After all, they taste better than teeth-grinding beans.

“No, those beans were interplanted with other grains. Well, I guess the fields were originally planted with corn and sweet potatoes. In July and August, sweet potatoes and corn were harvested, and these interplanted beans were left in the fields and continued to grow. In autumn, farmers can collect an extra batch of grain, so these beans are actually a bonus harvest, and the real grain has already entered their granary, so it is not that everyone has not stored enough grain.”

This year, almost every household in Sardinson County grows corn and sweet potatoes. For a single family, the harvest is not small, and as long as the territorial residents have a little brains, they will choose to sell these new grains in exchange for Wheat and other rations, plus the grain accumulated in previous years, so Felix can bet that the granaries at these farmers’ homes must be full, and there is no worry about running out of food to eat.

In this case, even if they don’t even plant wheat this year, they don’t have to worry about the lack of food next year.

Of course, as a lord, it is impossible for the lords to completely give up their own food storage and only focus on the pursuit of interests, so he wrote back a long time ago to let everyone know that when the lords are planting the land, they must ensure that some of them must be planted. The specific amount of wheat depends on the amount of land you have.

No one resisted this order. Wheat is the grain they have been growing for hundreds of years. It is impossible to say that it will not be planted if it is not planted. Moreover, the wheat production in Sardinson is now different from what it used to be. Even if only wheat is grown, they will not It will suffer, at most it will not make so much.

And everyone’s life is better, and eating will naturally improve. Stewed beans have been abandoned by many people. Bread is now the staple food recognized by everyone in Sardinson. In the past, ordinary civilians could only eat black bread, which was hard and unpalatable. But now everyone can see white bread that the nobles can afford every few days on the dining table. The black bread that is usually eaten every day is not the kind of black bread mixed with a lot of stone sand, but an improved method. Similar to the modern bran bread, although it is still black, it is no longer hard and can be used as a murder weapon, but has a unique fragrance.

Therefore, since every household has to eat bread made of flour, it is naturally impossible for them not to save enough wheat, and for the commoners who are reluctant to spend money, it is impossible for them to spend money to buy expensive wheat, of course It’s better to grow your own.

Moreover, their lords also harvest wheat, and the price is not low, so as long as there is no disaster in the year when the grains are not harvested, it is not a loss.

So, don’t look at the fact that you can’t see a single wheat in the field, it’s just that they came at the wrong time. If it was a little later, after the beans were harvested, the field would turn into green wheat seedlings again.

Prince Edward knew that he was wrong, smiled embarrassedly, and at the same time became interested in what Felix said about interbreeding. Seeing that he didn’t seem to mind saying this, he humbly asked for advice.

This kind of planting technology, which can allow a piece of land to harvest two kinds of grains at the same time and improve productivity, if possible, naturally should be popularized and popularized to benefit the people.

Felix does not know as much about field affairs as Wei Wei, but he knows more than others, and Wei Wei will explain everything to him before doing it with his consent. Felix also knows roughly what is suitable for interplanting and what is not suitable.

Therefore, Felix not only introduced the interplanting technology to the crown prince, but also said that the canal and many other agricultural reform technologies were all operated by Wei Wei and confirmed to be practical and effective, and they are very suitable for most areas of Prady. terrain.

In the past, nobles often sent people to Sardinson to learn their planting techniques, but those nobles were embarrassed to ask Felix about it, probably thinking that he would never teach this important technique to others, so they were secretly secretive. I contacted those ordinary farmers, but the farmers all worked according to the orders of the agricultural officials. They didn’t know the rules themselves. How could they teach other people? The experience that the people who come here can learn is very limited, and they are just swallowing dates and drawing gourds according to the fields of ordinary farmers. This way of learning cannot be said to be completely useless, but the essence is naturally missing, so we have to wait for them. It might take years to figure it out for yourself.

Of course, this situation is currently only in a few areas around Sardinson County. The nobles further away, because of the road, go to the territory of those aristocrats who steal learning to continue to learn, and then learn more. It is scarce, so the farther away from Sardinson, the smaller the reform of planting technology. They know that using fertilizers can increase yields, but how to use them and the amount used are not very clear, and they probably learned from those who stole it. For the same reason as the technical nobles, these people also did not come to ask Felix what he meant. They all chose to explore by themselves, and the progress was naturally behind.

Now that someone finally asked him, it wasn’t something he planned to hide, and Felix was naturally happy to answer him, so this way, their communication was basically based on field farming, and His Royal Highness was also a beneficiary. shallow.

On the carriage after them, Wei Wei was discussing the recent situation in Sardinson County.

Dolores has been in charge of managing the castle during this period of time, and has heard a little about other affairs in the territory, so she can say quite a few things, such as the most recent one, after Felix was promoted to duke, The nobles of the counties assigned to him by the king all sent representatives to visit Sardinson Castle, but because the master was away, these people just left with a gift, but they also left a message saying that they would wait for the Duke to return. Will visit again later.

Among them, a relatively special family of visitors is the in-laws of the Williams family, the natal family of their eldest brother Eric’s wife Pena, Count Garcia’s family.

Their deceased sister-in-law Pena’s maiden family Garcia’s territory is not too far from Sardinson. Although it is not an adjacent county, the straight-line distance is only separated by two or three noble territories, so this time the king divided the territory. At the time, the territory of the Garcia family was also divided, and because the Garcia family and the Williams family were relatives, after receiving the news, they specially sent someone over to say hello.

Pena is the eldest daughter of the current Earl Garcia. In addition to this daughter, Earl Garcia has a son and two daughters, but they are not married yet. Earl Garcia’s territory is located further north in Sardinson, and its own resource conditions Worse than the original Sardinson, but when the earl married his daughter to Eric, he asked for a piece of land near the Mediterranean Sea as a dowry. , was a few of the more profitable assets in Sardinson when the previous earl was on the throne. Earl Garcia also took a fancy to the income of this land and chose to make it a betrothal gift. At first, Felix’s father did not agree with this matter. , but Count Garcia insisted that he was even willing to exchange a larger piece of land. Felix’s father agreed to this condition after considering all aspects.

——By the way, the land that Count Garcia exchanged was not his own fief, but part of the ranch north of Fort Sardinson, which was sold by the ancestors of the Williams family in the early years One of them, so his father wanted to buy it back, and the olive garden was bought by his father from other merchants. It was not considered ancestral property, and it meant different things to his father. Otherwise, no one else would agree to this exchange condition. .

However, because of this incident, the relationship between the Garcia family and the Williams family has not been harmonious, especially after the death of Peña, the two sides almost broke off. After that, it was only because Wei Wei started to fiddle with essential oils and needed a lot of olive oil. One of the few olive groves in the domain – the others were in the hands of the barons who had not surrendered at the time – Felix went to the person in charge of the olive grove to discuss the acquisition business, but it was business at the time, and No relatives.

And Count Garcia didn’t know whether he was angry with his daughter’s early death or because of his guilty conscience. Even if he did business with Felix, he basically didn’t have any contacts. His other sons and daughters were not old enough to socialize, so every time they were sent by housekeepers and the like, they basically left with gifts, and the strangers seemed to have never married.

However, Felix didn’t blame Count Garcia for this. Although Count Garcia insisted on changing the land, if his father really didn’t want to, he could change his eldest brother’s wife. In the final analysis, it was because he wanted the land, which gave others the opportunity to raise prices.

And Felix didn’t know until after he inherited the title that his father himself was the first to propose the exchange. At that time, Earl Williams asked his son to marry Earl Garcia’s daughter because he wanted to take back the land on the pasture, and Earl Garcia was no more than that. It’s just that he chose a more valuable olive garden because he didn’t want the money he gave.

Now, Count Garcia was probably worried that Felix would find fault with him after he was proclaimed a duke, and wanted to ease the relationship with each other, so he took the initiative to show his kindness and expressed his intention to come and visit.

Dolores can’t be in charge of this matter, and neither does the housekeeper, so she has not given a reply, just waiting for them to come back and deal with it.

In addition to this, there is another group of unexpected visitors now living in Dingle, waiting for their return.

“It’s someone from the other side of the mountain.” Dolores pointed to the continuous mountain range that could be seen far from the window. “It should be a caravan, but the leader is a noble, because it’s not good for you not to be in the castle. Entertain them, and Butler Patton will send people to town.”

Sardinson is a border county. Although there is almost no communication between them and neighboring countries because of a large mountain range standing on the border, in fact, it is another country after crossing the mountain.

And Wei Wei made up the experience when she first arrived, but she also came over the mountains and mountains from the neighboring country next door. Now the other party has really come over from that road, bringing a lot of goods and planning to do business with them, and visit Sardin. Sen’s lord is obviously their main purpose, so they are waiting for Felix’s return.