I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 14 Compost and Red Deer

At dawn, Luc picked up a wooden shovel and opened the door. The moist air wrapped around his cheeks, and a breeze with the fragrance of soil penetrated his nostrils. Luc took a big step and walked towards the foot of the mountain.

Stopping about thirty yards from the cabin, Luc stared at a raised mound of earth, raised his wooden shovel and began to stir.

In an instant, a pungent smell emerged and filled the mountains and forests.

This is Luc's composting area, where Luc makes fertilizer.

Before he set out on his journey to find grain, Luc had been interested in collecting fertilizer. Without cow and sheep manure, human manure became the main source of fertilizer.
If you want good fertilizer, time for fermentation is essential. Human feces contain a lot of nutrients, but also a lot of impurities. If you want to turn it into fertilizer that does not harm crops, it takes at least three months of fermentation.
Luc was turning over the manure. The composting environment is actually very demanding. It cannot be too dry or too wet. It took him a long time to find it at the foot of the mountain with good ventilation. The recent rain has forced Luc to come here frequently. He covers them with thick thatch like he would a baby.

Luc doesn't have three months
It has only been more than forty days since Luc set foot in this forest.

Now it is still half a decade before the grain is sown, and the two together are not enough for fermentation. In desperation, Luke had to use the most stupid method, stirring frequently, so as to try to ferment as soon as possible.

But besides time, Luc has another problem

——He doesn’t have enough shit!

Luc is only a man after all, and even if he can excrete enough, he can't produce enough feces to cover one-fifth of an acre.
Not to mention the existence of an insider.
In the wooden house, little Charlie ran out and ran straight to the fertilizer, but was knocked aside by Luke with a wooden shovel.

Damn it, there isn’t enough feces, and you still want to steal some?
Luc took back the wooden shovel, the second one he had made, the first one being broken.

What is the principle of fertilizer?
In general, it involves a series of theoretical knowledge. In simple terms, it is to provide fertility for the soil, and the fertility is not only provided by feces.
River mud, kitchen waste, and even wood ash can be used as substitutes.

That’s right, it’s wood ash again.

This guy is a panacea in the dark ages.
So Luc added the above materials to the feces and barely made enough fertilizer.

At the same time, in order to achieve better conversion, Luc also carefully chopped the compost materials into smaller pieces, hoping to fully decompose them.

When it was time for breakfast, Luc washed his hands and cooked. In fact, it was far from simple to open up a piece of land for planting. Even if Luc did so much work, the fertilizer that was unearthed would still damage the land and thus the crops.

But Luc wasn't worried. First, there was plenty of unclaimed land in the forest, and Luc would slowly reclaim it, and by next year, there would be a truly cultivated piece of land. Second, even if Luc prepared hastily, his final grain output would undoubtedly surpass that of other farmers of his generation. After the harvest in March or April of next year, combined with the game he could find in the mountains, he would have no problem surviving year after year.

After breakfast, Luc put on his equipment, took off the deerskin and antlers and walked out.

That’s right, I’m going to start hunting the biggest overlord in the nearby mountains and forests besides myself - the red deer!

On the first day he came here, Luc was already drooling over the red deer, but due to his lack of shelter and strength, he did not act rashly.

The benefits of elk are self-evident; the scavenged deer hide alone has yielded considerable benefits. Luc closed the doors and windows; he wasn't planning on bringing little Charlie with him this time. Dogs grow differently than humans; they become full-grown puppies in about a year. Although little Charlie was an inch taller than usual, it was far from hunting time. He had already stirred up a hornet's nest last time, so he needed to be even more cautious this time, without a single ounce of carelessness.

The red deer does not have the beautiful skin color like the spotted deer as most people think. The red deer is dark brown all over, has an ugly face, a huge body, runs fast, and has antlers, making it a very difficult animal to hunt.

Elk herds are basically a matriarchal society. In a large herd, adult male deer are rarely seen. The herd is led by a female deer, who leads a group of orphans and widows. The male deer all roam around the herd alone or in groups of two or three.

The dead deer found in the forest last time was most likely a male deer.

Luc came to the place where the deer must pass. After dozens of days of contact, Luc had already grasped their activity routes. The habits of red deer were exactly the opposite of those of bees. They mostly basked in the sun on the hillside during the day, and were active frequently in the early morning and evening.

A good hunter must be someone who understands the living habits of various animals and makes corresponding adjustments.

The digger Luc dug a trap first. The elk was almost as tall as himself. In order to trap it, the pit needed was definitely not ordinary deep.

It took a whole day to dig, from morning to night. He only went to the fields and septic tanks in the middle, and only dug half of the way. It was not until the afternoon of the third day that Luc finally dug out the pit.

Hunting and hunting coexist. Setting traps and waiting for deer to fall into the trap is actually very passive. Active attack is the better way.

But a creature like an elk, let alone whether you can subdue it alone, you can't catch up with it in the first place.
To hunt successfully, you must have a weapon - a bow and arrow!
According to Luc himself, the bow and arrow is one of the most vicious weapons of mankind. A good bow and arrow has a long range and great power. It can be used not only for surprise assassinations but also for defeating the enemy in a head-on confrontation. However, it is precisely because of its viciousness that almost all knights despise archers.
In their simple and foolish minds, a knight who had been trained in horse riding, swordsmanship, and lance since childhood, and who possessed noble blood and sturdy armor, was actually shot to death by a poor, dirty, lowly, and unchivalrous archer. Isn't this the greatest insult to the knight class?
A true knight would not bother using a bow and arrow!

Unfortunately, Luc is not a knight, so he has no psychological burden, and luckily he knows some archery.
Although I'm not very proficient in it.

But it is more than enough for hunting.

But Luc set up the trap, took the deerskin and antlers, hid in a patch of tall weeds, put the deerskin on his body, raised the antlers above his head, and sighed in his heart.

But the bowstring of a bow and arrow requires deer tendons to make. Without a bowstring, there is no bow and arrow, and without a bow and arrow, there is no way to hunt deer, and without a deer, there is no bowstring. This is basically a vicious circle.

Therefore, Luc can only honestly play the ancient hunting method - playing the stag!
It was already September, and Luc would often inadvertently hear the loud calls of deer in the mountains and forests.

Of course, it’s not the deer singing, but it’s the mating season!
September and October are the breeding seasons for deer. The male deer that have wandered outside the herd come back one after another, vying to attract female deer to mate with them by calling out. As for how many female deer come, the male deer will accept them all, the more the better.
This greedy look will of course make other stags dissatisfied, so at this time stags often collide with each other, using the most primitive wrestling between males to win the qualification for reproductive rights.

Setting traps and waiting for the rabbit may take forever to attract red deer, but using deerskin and antlers to pretend to be a male deer can attract both female deer eager to mate and male deer driving away their own kind. It is the best strategy!

Luc, who has great talent for languages, tried hard to hold the antlers steady and used his vocal cords to make deer calls, which echoed through the mountains and forests.

After shouting from the afternoon until dusk, a red deer finally appeared in Luc's sight.

(End of this chapter)