When Aiden explained the cultivation calendar to the old man, he understood it more quickly than expected.
“If there were such a thing, it would certainly be convenient.”
Weather, rainfall, soil quality, and many other things would need to be considered in practice.
Even so, whether there was a broad guideline for each crop or not would greatly change the efficiency of the work. That was something even an illiterate farmer could understand quickly.
“Um, Administrator. There is something more important than when to plant and harvest which crop. Especially from now until the sowing begins.”
“You mean what must be done in spring before sowing the seeds?”
“Yes, yes.”
“What is that?”
“Turning the earth over deeply. Since I was born and raised in the north, I do not know how deeply people plow the soil in other regions, but....”
“When you say deeply, how deep do you mean?”
“Because of the long, cold winter, the soil in the north is frozen hard quite far down. Especially in land where much snow has piled up, when spring comes, the melted snow sometimes gathers below the ground and freezes again. If you fail to melt that properly and sow seeds on top of it, by summer, the crops will be unable to grow and will all rot away.”
“Ah!”
“Old men like me, who have nothing but age, know it from experience, but hot-blooded young men sometimes overlook it and ruin their farming. It is a pity.”
“We must be sure to record that and stress it repeatedly.”
“Yes, yes, Administrator.”
The elderly farmer continued speaking for quite some time after that.
He spoke of the cultivation methods for barley and oats, which served as staple foods, and of root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips, and carrots that would fill the northerners’ bellies. He also spoke of leafy vegetables such as cabbage and kale.
“Ah, berries grow here too?”
“If you plant them around this time, you can pick the fruit in June or July. If you make jam or liquor with them then, they will keep well for quite some time.”
For Aiden, who had unconsciously failed to think about fruit because this region was so cold, this was another unexpected gain.
As the farmer’s words gradually came to an end, Jamie, who had been frantically taking notes, finally caught his breath and nodded.
“I think it would help if we also wrote down what must be done each month on the cultivation calendar, Administrator.”
“Yes. You can make a sample, right?”
“Yes. Then it would be better to visit other experienced farmers like this, hear their stories, and emphasize the parts that overlap.”
“Right. For anything that seems too unusual, we cannot be certain, so the lord’s castle will verify it directly and compile it again next year.”
“I will prepare it immediately!”
“One more thing before that.”
Jamie, who had been about to run straight back into the lord’s castle and send his subordinate officials to various villages, had to stop in his tracks.
“As you visit the villages, if there are any leftover seedlings or seeds, buy them.”
“Seedlings and seeds?”
“Yes. Tell the officials who will be sent to other villages the same thing.”
“Uh.... Yes!”
Fortunately, a fair amount of tax revenue had come in from the merchants who had finished the fur trade and left the north, so they could pay for seeds with a smile.
That did not mean their finances were exactly comfortable, however.
“The crop cultivation calendar must be completed and distributed as quickly as possible, so put off the distant villages for later first. We can investigate those places later and add them then. Let’s do what we can do first. What we can do first.”
There was no need for it to be perfect from the beginning.
‘Where is there such a thing as perfect administration? You implement it first and fix it afterward.’
No matter how much thought went into a project at a desk, once it was applied in the field, all sorts of problems were bound to appear.
That was why, at times like this, it was better to move quickly even if some parts looked lacking, then revise things while observing the results after application.
Before long, the second flea market opened.
It now had a name.
, an extremely dry and administratively convenient name.
“Could the name really not have been....”
“What? It looks good, doesn’t it?”
“We could have made it something prettier. Something meaningful.”
“Hmph.”
At Jamie’s grumbling, Aiden snorted.
A person could not be good at everything.
Regrettably, it seemed Aiden lacked a sense for naming.
“Still, there are definitely fewer participants than before.”
“I suppose the first time attracted a lot of attention. More importantly, the sowing season is about to begin now.”
“That’s true.”
“So this time, many villages gathered their goods and sent representatives. Since all the young men could not come, it seems they used their heads in their own way.”
“People all think in similar ways.”
The north’s economic scale was still too small to handle even a five-day market.
Because of that, they had agreed to open the market once every fifteen days, and today was the second market day.
“Now, now. Seedlings and seeds are also traded over here, so come take a look.”
There was one more thing that had changed.
At the entrance of the market stood a wooden building where former Kalisa merchant company workers, now lower-ranking officials belonging to the Commerce Development Department, were raising their voices diligently.
It was the trading post.
“What is that?”
“Was that there last time?”
“No, I don’t think I saw it before.”
People’s attention naturally gathered there as well.
“What is this place for?”
“This is a trading post officially recognized by the lord’s castle. We purchase goods here, and also sell certain approved items separately. We also guarantee large transactions, and purchase goods needed by the lord’s castle.”
The trading post employees, who had been trained in advance, answered with smiling faces.
Since they had originally been merchants, they seemed to have grown accustomed to the work easily.
“Then will you buy this too?”
A man who had been listening to the explanation quietly showed the bundle he had been carrying on his shoulder.
“It is wool.... I have another cartload over there.”
The man said he had not come to the previous market because he had thought, “What could there be to see?”
Naturally, he had no idea how envious he would be of his neighbor, who had gone to the market and sold a great deal of cheese made from the milk of the sheep and goats he raised.
“How much wool do you have?”
“This is the highest-grade product for now. There are two cartloads, and the quality is a little lower than this, but it should not be low-grade.”
“Then let’s see....”
The trading post employee took out a thick table from the desk, checked it, then wrote the estimated purchase price on a small note and handed it over.
“Hmm. This is a little low.”
“The purchase price at the trading post is inevitably a bit lower than private transactions.”
The employee gave him an apologetic look.
“No helping it. Then if I try selling it myself at the market and have some left over, will you buy it at this price?”
“Of course.”
“Then I will try to sell as much as I can and come back later.”
The man, who had looked slightly offended when he first saw the price, was fully satisfied with the conversation that followed and left.
There were people watching that scene from the second floor.
Aiden and his two aides.
“It seems you set the prices in advance.”
“The trading post is an institution under the Commerce Development Department, so I thought we needed to establish standards in advance to prevent complaints.”
Kalisa’s face was still expressionless, but she was adapting to administrative work faster than expected.
Although her work had begun through threats, it seemed to suit her aptitude better than merchant work did.
However, a few times, she had caught Aiden as he passed by and attempted to say things such as,
“Administrator. The truth about my past is....”
“Our family was originally from the capital....”
For her, it might have been something she had resolved herself to reveal, but all she heard in response was,
“Ah, I’m not curious. I didn’t ask. Don’t tell me.”
‘Let’s not cross lines when we work together.’
Aiden was a man who had no interest whatsoever in his colleagues’ private lives.
‘She must have dissolved her merchant company and joined us because this position will help her.’
That was enough.
Aiden had solved a significant part of the north’s chronic talent shortage, and Kalisa seemed to have made her own plans. That was sufficient.
“She does good work too.”
“...Thank you.”
At the sincere thought that had slipped out without him realizing it, Kalisa’s eyes rolled in surprise, then she bowed her head.
“...Ugh!”
The one groaning as he watched this was Jamie.
As he bit his lip and seemed to mutter, “Despite being a stone that rolled in from outside...!” the sight was so miserable that Aiden chose to pretend not to see it.
“I’ll say this in advance. If any bastards come tomorrow and throw a tantrum about wanting to sell goods, send them all to the trading post. Do not think of letting them open an unlicensed market nearby just because you feel bad for them.”
“Um, Administrator. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if an unlicensed market opened? You said before that if the scale of the private economy grows, an unlicensed market will naturally form, and that would be a good thing.”
“But I think I also said it would take a long time before that happened.”
“That is true, but I wondered whether this might be the chance for a market to form naturally under private initiative.”
“No. That would not be a permanent market created because the economic scale supports it. They would simply be violating the date and stubbornly insisting on it anyway. What unlicensed market?”
“Ah.”
“Let’s keep the distinction clear.”
“Yes, sir.”
Only then did Jamie accept it.
“The seeds and seedlings secured by the trading post are properly prepared, right?”
“There are not many cases where people have spare seedlings, so the quantity itself is not large, but there is a wider variety than expected. I believe quite a few people will be interested.”
At Aiden’s question, Kalisa quickly answered.
The securing of seedlings and seeds that Aiden had ordered while making the cultivation calendar.
“It is essential for crop diversity, so pay attention to it.”
“Yes. Commerce Department employees will begin arriving in the more distant villages one after another, so in a month, we should be able to secure far more seed stock.”
Seedlings and seeds would normally have been work for the Technology and Labor Department to handle, but since the system had not yet been properly established, Kalisa had taken charge and was preparing it.
“Are there significant differences between villages?”
“There is little difference when it comes to grains and root vegetables, but there were considerable differences in specialty crops such as leafy vegetables, medicinal herbs, fruits, and herbs.”
“There were cases where people grew herbs or medicinal herbs separately?”
“It is difficult to say they are grown for sale. In most cases, people grow small amounts at home for personal use. Still, once gathered together, the amount was rather substantial.”
“Let’s try growing those properly on the lord’s castle’s directly administered farmland we planned in advance. We also need to check which ones grow well in the north.”
“Yes.”
The easiest things to sell from the north were still furs and hides.
But grain was always important.
There was a reason the term food sovereignty existed.
‘It would be good if we could find even one or two more crops that suit this land.’
Depending on the crop, some preferred cooler climates.
In other words, they were difficult to grow in the warm center of the empire.
‘If this goes well, they might become commodities.’
Of course, as farming usually went, there was no way remarkable results would appear in a month or two. But there was no harm in preparing in advance.
“For anything we have a slightly larger quantity of, let’s spread it to as many villages as possible through the trading post.”
“We have also set the prices low.”
There was one thing he had realized while purchasing seeds and seedlings.
Every village had at least one or two things that were almost nonexistent elsewhere.
In the central village where the lord’s castle was located, endive was grown in fairly large amounts, but in a village a little farther away, almost no endive was grown. Meanwhile, parsnips, which were common in that village, were difficult to find in the villages near the lord’s castle.
‘It is not as though they can easily obtain them through a seedling seller.’
This was what a lack of exchange between villages meant.
It even limited the kinds of crops that appeared on their dining tables.
“This is parsnip root?”
At that moment, a farmer who had entered the first floor of the trading post to look around was staring curiously at the sample.
“Yes. We guarantee its condition.”
“It really grows in the cold?”
“Of course! It was obtained from a northern village even colder than this place.”
“Is that so...? I once got seeds and planted them, and the roots grew well enough for me to dig them up and eat them, but flowers never bloomed, so I couldn’t collect any seeds.”
The farmer added suspiciously,
“If I can only dig it up and eat it once, it feels like a waste. If I cannot collect seeds, I mean.”
“That is probably because it is biennial.”
“Biennial?”
“When you sow the seeds, only the stems and roots grow in the first year. You need to harvest the roots that autumn and store them well through winter. Then, if you plant the roots again in the second year, flowers will bloom and you can collect seeds. Of course, by then, the roots become tough, so they are not really good to eat.”
“Ah, so that was it?”
At the employee’s explanation, the farmer cried out as if something had cracked open in his head.
“Can I buy one sack of this? No, two sacks?”
“Would you like it as seeds? We have seeds too.”
It was the trading post’s first transaction, and the first beginning of crops moving between villages.