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

Chapter 119 Autumn Harvest
The arrival of these slaves not only filled the labor shortage in Sig Town, but also supported a recruitment drive.

Roman generously recruited 200 men this time, bringing the total number of soldiers in Sig Town to 600.

This proportion is very high.

The total population of Sigge Town is only 4500.

These soldiers are completely off-the-job and consume enormous amounts of resources. They do not perform any production tasks.

But Roman has to support them.

Three meals a day, with meat, eggs and dairy products provided!
Eggs and milk cost only a few dollars; a single copper coin could buy seventy, eighty, or ninety pounds.

As soon as the caravans arrived in Sig, Roman bought them all!

Eat as much as you can, as long as you can eat!

Their sole objective is to undergo rigorous training every day to improve their physical fitness!

Even during rest periods, literacy education should be conducted.

Those who perform exceptionally well will receive certain rewards from Roman, such as gold, silver, or bronze coins, preferential treatment in their lives, or even an audience with him personally.

Those who fall behind in their studies will have to undergo physical punishment training.

The intensity of those training sessions was terrifying.

Treating an ordinary person like this is something they can't endure; they're easily driven to the brink of collapse.

But the army and military camps have a special atmosphere, creating a mysterious attraction that makes it impossible for promising talents to escape. It's like a melting pot, subtly removing certain bad habits and shortcomings from their very being, letting them flow out of their bodies and making them pure and strong.

That's not enough. We also need to conduct ideological education and military training, using various methods to temper them and ultimately forge them into qualified steel.

tempered into a steel!

Roman kept repeating this to himself as he recruited new soldiers.

……

It's autumn now. The temperature has dropped.

Roman belatedly realized that he should prepare winter clothes for those idiots.

With a refreshing autumn breeze and vibrant colors painting the forests, it is harvest season.

Merchant ships arriving in Sige Town were also laden with a variety of heavy goods.

Various fruits and vegetables, such as fresh turnips, pumpkins, radishes, grapes, figs, and pomegranates;

The young animals of livestock are born at the wrong time; ordinary families cannot afford to raise so many young animals in winter and have no choice but to sell them.
There are also large quantities of grains and miscellaneous cereals harvested in autumn;
A merchant, having heard that Sig Town was offering high prices for slaves, bought four or five slaves elsewhere and transported them here to sell to the local lord…

Roman levied very low business taxes, thereby establishing long-term trading relationships with merchants.

The effect is obvious.

All the merchants who came here became "returning customers," regarding this place as a second "free city-state."

Without the constraints of commercial taxes, merchants could make a greater profit by transporting goods to Sig Town.

The land output of Sigge Town this year is enough to feed more than 4,000 people.

Roman forbade the town of Sig from selling grain outside, while simultaneously buying up all the goods brought in by the merchants.

These vegetables are very cheap, and even ordinary farmers can afford to buy and eat them. However, the town of Sige is currently in dire need of various non-staple foods—Roman didn't grow any of them—not counting the ten acres of vegetable fields at Origin Manor.

Fruits and vegetables were immediately used as part of the work lunch.

The grain is stored and processed into working meals.

Young animals must be properly raised so they can become work meals in the future.

Roman's attitude toward food was to hoard it as much as possible while also indulging in it.

Those were all small merchant ships, doing small-scale business.

This person takes away 200 jin of salt, and that person takes away 500 jin of salt; they can also consume part of the output of Sige Town.

Occasionally, larger caravans would arrive in this increasingly well-known remote place.

But that's about it.

Large caravans could not reach the town of Sig.

Morey's kind of merchant ship is the limit.

He only stayed there for two days. Merchants are always on the move; it's their fate. It's normal for them to pass by their homes three times without going in. He quickly left with tens of thousands of kilograms of salt and two hundred barrels of maltose.

He has made a lot of money now, but it's impossible for him to buy large merchant ships.

Because the larger the merchant ship, the deeper its draft, making inland navigation inconvenient. Once it enters the Silver Dragon Canyon, the reefs will break through the bottom of the ship, allowing only smaller ships to pass. Even so, one must navigate with caution.

Roman knew the limitations of Sig Town, so he wasn't in a hurry. Silver Dragon Canyon was just a small hurdle.

His future goal is to transform this place into an eternal city.

Become the center of this land!
……

Six days after Morey left.

The grasslands have turned yellow and withered.

The seasons change slowly, yet abruptly.

It moves forward at a leisurely pace, so you don't realize it's getting closer, until one moment you're surprised to find that the season has entered a deeper phase.

Roman wouldn't make that mistake.

After the pig farm was completed, he focused most of his attention on the vast soybean field.

After five months of growth, the lush green stems have turned yellow, the fuzzy pods have swelled and dehydrated, and the leaves have slowly withered and fallen off...

Until a large hand shook the withered plant.

Then I heard a rattling sound inside the pod, but it didn't burst open...

Roman knew.

Autumn harvest time has arrived!

……

When he was making silage, he ordered people to harvest 500 mu of green soybeans in advance.

The remaining 5,500 mu of land are also in dire need of harvesting.

Having witnessed the wheat yield, the farmers were no longer astonished by the abundant soybean harvest, but now there were slaves who had come to Sgar after the summer harvest.

Before the sun has risen and before the dew has evaporated.

These slaves, who had only recently arrived in Sige Town, stared blankly at the farmland before them. Those who could participate in the harvest were mostly laborers with planting experience and common sense about farming, and they had never imagined such a thing.

Soybeans are planted densely, the soybeans are swollen and plump, the leaves have withered and fallen, the whole soybean plant is bare and crowded, like countless thin and withered branches stuck in the ground, hanging with heavy shriveled pods, pointing diagonally to the sky.

Roman generously shared the joy of the harvest with his people and slaves.

For this autumn harvest, he mobilized nearly 2000 people. Only students, soldiers, craftspeople, and cooks were not involved—each of them bore their own heavy responsibilities, maintaining the current or future operation of Sige Town.

All other work was halted; those who boiled salt, mined, and smelted iron were all called in.

Farming never has too many people.

Thanks to Morey, there is now enough manpower in Skye.

Roman still personally participated in this autumn harvest.

Holding a sickle, he bent over and moved forward, keeping the sickle close to the ground, leaving no soybean stubble, and preserving the root nodules of the soybeans in the ground.

He informed everyone to harvest in this manner.

Soybean roots fix nitrogen, and nitrogen remains in the root nodules. Pulling them up by the roots is wasteful; you only need to harvest the soybean plants above ground and let the root nodules decompose in the soil.

Bean stalks are hard, unlike the flexible straws of wheat.

The soybeans are difficult to harvest with a sickle, and the planting is dense; even an adult cannot harvest an acre of soybeans in a day.

Holding a sickle, they worked from morning until noon, and then from noon until afternoon.

The whole process lasted three days.

Finally, by evening on the fourth day, all the soybean fields had been harvested and transported to the threshing ground.

Hundreds of livestock pulled stone rollers, moving back and forth across the vast threshing ground.

Threshing soybeans is much simpler than threshing wheat.

This autumn harvest was unusually easy.

The soybean stalks, which could be used as animal feed, were taken directly to the livestock shed.

After clearing away the bean stalks, the threshing floor was left with only plump, swollen soybeans.

The soybeans, glistening in the sunlight, resembled yellow pearls and covered most of the threshing floor.

The soybeans are very dry and can be stored directly in the warehouse; simply ensure proper ventilation afterwards.

Three more days passed, and after all the storage work was completed, the record for soybean production fell into Roman's hands.

The 5,500 mu of land yielded a total harvest of nearly one million jin.

(End of this chapter)