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

Chapter 115 Silage
Roman acquired a new batch of slaves, and provided them with an extremely high standard of living, thus their obedience was off the charts.

Oh no, it seems like being a slave is better than not being a slave.

This gave Roman more manpower at his disposal.

He accelerated the recruitment process.

At 260 days.

The number of soldiers in Sig Town has grown to over 400.

Professional soldiers consume enormous amounts of food, especially meat, which is extremely high, exceeding 10,000 kilograms per month.

Roman was forced to organize an army and launch another large-scale hunt.

This time, it's not just the forest north of the manor.

The mountains, forests, swamps, and rivers to the south, east, and west are all within the hunting range.

Roman ordered his men to weave dozens of fishing nets and dredge them along the river.

The basin is crisscrossed by waterways and has a well-developed river system. The fishermen in Sige Town actually catch very little, but the river resources are abundant.

This autumn hunt lasted for a week.

In total, they brought Roman over 100,000 jin of prey and tens of thousands of jin of various fish, including cod, trout, and a large number of lampreys.

This approach is akin to draining the pond to catch all the fish.

Although many cubs and pregnant mothers have escaped the hunting circle, the wild animal population will definitely decrease significantly next year. If this continues for two years, the damage to the natural ecosystem will be devastating, and it will definitely take at least ten years to recover.

Roman just didn't care. How could wild animals survive on land where humans set foot?
He plans to undertake large-scale land development in the future, so reducing the land use is fine.

By next year, the farm will definitely be fully established.

Relying on hunting to satisfy the need for meat is pure wishful thinking.

The climate and soil of this land are extremely suitable for the development of animal husbandry.

The soil is moist, the climate is mild and rainy, and there are plenty of grasslands. Basically, every noble's territory has a pasture full of juicy and abundant grass.

However, raising them is very difficult.

……

Because an increase in the size of the army means a decrease in qualified labor.

Although the arrival of slaves filled the gap and prevented Roman from being without available labor, the predicament of a shortage of able-bodied young men still loomed before him.

Young and middle-aged laborers, women of childbearing age, and teenagers. Only slaves in this age group have value.

If a large number of slaves are to be purchased, it will be inevitable that some will be mixed with others, or vice versa.

Roman couldn't expect a large quantity of slaves with high quality; acquiring them was too difficult, requiring travel to many places, or he could only buy conscripted prisoners of war from the battlefield who hadn't been redeemed.

This requires connections and time.

Unfortunately, Roman didn't have that.

He was granted a fiefdom for less than a year, but he failed to establish himself or make a name for himself.

All the nobles on this land were unaware that there was a lord named Roman in this rugged and wild corner.

Roman didn't like making friends with nobles, and he was completely unaware of the power struggles among them. He had very poor social connections, and he didn't even know all of his own brothers and sisters.

Making many friends is impossible.

Those idiots don't deserve to be his friends.

As a result, Roman was unable to relocate a group of people from the noble families he knew to develop the town of Sig.

To buy things, we still need to rely on merchants for trade.

He personally severed the connection that could have been established with Count El of Irontree Territory through the salt and iron trade.

Roman didn't care; what would trouble him was a nobleman offering him aid. Should he kill him or not?
The manpower shortage is a long-term issue.

Or rather, the more people there are, the more people are needed; there are never enough people.

The town of Sig has a population of nearly four thousand.

However, not all of these people are readily available; they should be distributed evenly across various fields.

Some people were weeding and farming, some were logging and forging iron, some were boiling salt, and some were taking care of young livestock...

More people are building farms, mining coal, and smelting iron and steel.

There are about 300 people at the food camp, responsible for the mill, oven, wood chopping, cooking, food delivery, washing dishes, and taking care of children under five.

Which task does not require manpower?
During the hottest part of summer, they boil tens of thousands of kilograms of water every day to make herbal tea, and each worker drinks ten kilograms of herbal tea every day.

With the heavy responsibility of preparing three meals a day, having too few people will make it impossible to keep up and will only affect the collective's productivity.

It seems like there's a lot of labor involved, but once it's divided among everyone, there's nothing left.

……

It's just development, farming, and animal husbandry; it's nothing special.

The alfalfa and ryegrass that Roman planted along the riverbanks in the summer are now ready for harvest.

The grass on those two thousand acres is growing very well, with full leaves and juicy, delicious grass. It is no problem to yield a thousand catties per acre, which will amount to more than two million catties of grass. It needs to be harvested as soon as possible.

It's autumn now, and the pasture will soon wither and die.

By winter, I fear there will be no fresh pasture left.

Livestock can only eat hay in winter, so they all lose weight, even warhorses, and it doesn't work even if they are fed concentrated feed.

However, for aquaculture, feed is indispensable under no circumstances.

Without fresh pasture and feed, and having to rely on fat to withstand the cold, it would be strange if they didn't lose weight.

Some herders migrate to escape the harsh winter and find suitable pastures.

Herders who cannot migrate slaughter large numbers of livestock in the autumn and winter to avoid waste.

However, this is not appropriate for farming families, as farmers cannot afford to eat meat.

They would buy piglets and lambs in the spring or early summer, and then sell the adult livestock in late autumn and winter for grain, or for a few copper coins or a silver coin, which they would then save up.

As Roman saw the number of livestock offspring increasing, he knew that the future would definitely require a large amount of fresh feed.

At this time, silage is the only option.

Feed stored using this method can still provide livestock with abundant nutrition in winter, as it is high in sugar, easy to absorb, and improves digestion.

From a human perspective, this is equivalent to the difference between raw meat and roasted meat, with roasted meat being left to sit for a longer period of time.

When the pasture grass was at its peak growth, Romand would harvest it in large quantities with a sickle, shred it with a chaff cutter made by Lax, and finally put it into a cellar to be sealed and fermented.

Pasture alone is not enough.

Roman will also turn 500 acres of soybean stalks and green soybeans into silage to meet the feed needs of all livestock during the winter and early spring.

The old methods of free-range and grazing are not suitable for large-scale farming.

They must be kept in captivity to reduce their activity levels and increase their meat yield.

He plans to raise 1,000 pigs, 2,000 sheep, and more than 5,000 chickens. In addition, he will need to add draft horses and oxen for the livestock sheds, and including this batch of wild horses, he estimates that he will need to add about 1,000 large livestock as well.

Don't expect to survive the winter without three million catties of silage.

This quantity is enormous, requiring sufficient time and manpower. Chopping it with a chaff cutter requires manpower, as does digging pits and building walls.

With this projected scale, it would take at least a thousand laborers to take good care of all the livestock, which means that a quarter of the town's population is now tied to this job.

When it is impossible to improve overall labor efficiency, one often has no choice but to settle for second best.

This is also a drawback of large-scale farming when conditions are not suitable, as many things can only be done by pure human labor.

Fortunately, they are all cubs now, so raising them is not too difficult, and Roman still has plenty of time.

He wanted the livestock to continue gaining weight during the winter, so he sent Daken around to buy young livestock, and the number of young animals brought in was increasing with each boatload.

The upstream merchants also learned of this situation and were very willing to send livestock calves that were not suitable for raising in winter to Sige Town in order to make a profit.

……

After autumn arrives, the high temperatures subside, and the air becomes refreshingly cool.

Roman rode his steed and headed northwest.

There is another benefit to building roads.

That means there are more resource acquisition points.

A dirt road stretching over a hundred kilometers will inevitably traverse various terrains, including bordering a grassland.

The vast green fields are an extremely expansive natural pasture with lush vegetation.

If development is desired in the future, this grassland can be used to build new livestock farms for grazing, which can greatly save manpower.

Roman came here not only to survey the terrain, but also because he had received information.

Some people have spotted wild horse herds in this natural pasture.

……

Wearing a straw hat and riding a horse, Roman roamed the green wilderness, searching for traces of wild horses.

He soon found the herd of wild horses.

There were about seventeen or eighteen of them.

Roman felt that there was more than one herd of horses in this basin; otherwise, the herd could not have survived and would have been wiped out by the slightest disturbance.

These wild horses hadn't seen many humans, so they weren't very afraid. When they saw Roman, they actually came over and communicated with the white horse under Roman's rump by smelling and neighing.

After observing, he was somewhat disappointed.

These wild horses were not of good quality. They were about two meters long and one and a half meters tall at the shoulder, similar to wild donkeys. They couldn't compete with the tall and majestic highland warhorses from the east. Their yellowish-brown coats were not beautiful either, being fluffy and sparse.

Use them to form a cavalry unit...

It's not that it's impossible, but it's a very difficult task.

They lack stamina, dare not charge, and can only be used for transportation. They don't even have the strength to pull a cart, so they need to be fed with fine food and receive special training.

There's no way around it; without crossbreeding and selective breeding, wild horses can't even become pack animals.

But this is unexpected wealth; having it is already a blessing.

This is nature's gift.

Roman spent the entire day galloping across this natural pasture, searching everywhere for wild horse herds. He found that there were quite a few herds, about ten groups, some with more and some with less, totaling about two or three hundred horses.

It would take four or five hundred gold coins to make a living in the market.

Roman didn't value money much—he had even found a gold mine waiting to be developed.

But horses are hard to buy even if you have money.

This fully demonstrates the truth of the saying, "A horse won't get fat without night grass."

Even though wild horses are untamed and require professional horse trainers.

But there are only grooms here to feed and care for the horses, and it's unknown how long it will take to successfully tame them; it could take several months.

Roman sketched a detailed map of the grassland on a piece of paper, marking the approximate location of the wild horse herd.

The increasingly cool weather allowed Roman to complete the survey work relatively comfortably.

The grassland is covered with lush wild grass, like a boundless green ocean, with long blades of grass undulating like waves.

Unfortunately, it's too far away.

The reach of Sig Town cannot extend here.

Roman returned to Origin Manor and handed the wild horse distribution map to Seth, asking him to devise a plan to capture them all. He then went to the ranch to check on the construction progress.

The construction team worked quickly, and under the guidance of more than 30 bricklayers, the chicken coop was already completed.

These bricklayers had all previously worked on brick houses and could quickly adapt to similar construction methods.

After all, bricklaying is really not a difficult skill, and Roman's building wasn't anything complicated.

The chicken coop has a simple structure and good ventilation. Inside, there are wooden openwork chicken cages with manure collection boards underneath.

The aim is to reduce land occupation, save feed, and reduce disease prevention.

But you can't put all your eggs in one basket.

They should be raised separately to prevent them from being wiped out by a single disease.

Laying hens are specially selected and raised separately for incubation and chick rearing, and are then bred selectively.

In the future, those laying hens will continue to lay and incubate eggs, providing Roman's apostles and people with a portion of their protein—the other portion will come from goat's milk and cow's milk.

Dairy products such as butter and cheese are essential.

Each farm occupies at least ten acres of land—mainly because the walls are very long to prevent the animals from running around. It will be completed in about a month.

Roman filled everyone's schedules to the brim.

Meanwhile, Ruto was in charge of iron smelting at the blast furnace, and the output was very stable.

Shallow coal mines and open-pit iron mines are very easy to mine, and can produce more than ten tons per day.

However, as more and more coal and iron ore were mined and piled up, there was no time to burn them into coke and smelt them into iron.

However, the maximum output of a single blast furnace is limited; it cannot smelt all the iron ore unless a second blast furnace is built.

Ruto had already done his utmost to oversee a single blast furnace.

Even so, in the past half month, the steel produced in Sige Town has successfully matched the amount of steel previously purchased, with a total of more than 10,000 jin of steel being sent to the blacksmith shed.

The exquisite scimitars, spears, short swords, and armor forged by water-powered hammers were continuously leaving the blacksmith's workshop and being sent to the military camp, where they were handed over to the soldiers to help them get used to the feel of wielding steel weapons.

Now that we have wild horses, we should be able to use silage to tame their wildness and cultivate their obedience during the winter.

Next year, his soldiers will be able to experience the thrill of horseback riding.

There won't be a fifth update today.

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(End of this chapter)