I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 2: Digging is a Technical Job (Part )

There are always people who yearn for the countryside, but if given a choice, Luc, who has experienced it himself, does not want to feel the countryside at all.

In the forest, there are more insects and mosquitoes at night than during the day. No matter how tightly Luc wrapped himself up, he was still bitten all over his face. When he got up in the morning, he still felt a little itchy and painful.

Not to mention the countless reptiles on the ground. Even though the fire had blocked most of them, there were still some that were not careful enough to sneak into my clothes.
In the middle of the night, Luc even felt something crawling on his face. He subconsciously reached out to grab it, and it turned out to be a centipede as long as his index finger!
He threw it into the fire and added another handful of firewood, and then he felt a sense of fear!
If it is not discovered in time, it will get into the nostrils or ears, which will be terrible!
In this way, I woke up from my dreams again and again and spent the whole night in fear.

As the day dawned, when Luc woke up again, his first thought was: We must build a house, it’s urgent!
I simply heated up some leftover rabbit meat with the residual heat from the campfire. I had already found a piece of land yesterday, and now I just needed to make the tools to dig the soil.

That's right, Luc also needs a shovel.

As we all know, if you want to build a house, you must lay the foundation, and if you want to lay the foundation, you inevitably need to dig a hole.

The foundation pit is completely different from the pit used to catch rabbits yesterday. Without a shovel, progress will be greatly reduced.

So Luc prepared to make a wooden shovel.

After eating, Luke picked up his axe, found a harder tree, and spit into his palm. Then he started swinging his axe diagonally downward.

"Hmm."

Luc was breathing heavily. He had been fighting for a long time in chain mail, so he had great strength. Every inch of his muscle contained power. The axe hit the tree trunk, and the sound of "bang bang bang" echoed throughout the forest. Soon, a gap was cut out.

He switched to the opposite side and started chopping horizontally slightly below the slanted edge. When the sun came over the green hills, he finally cut through the tree, which was slightly thicker than his thigh.

He dragged the tree onto a rock, stepped firmly on it, and chopped it hard in the air. With a snap, the trunk split in two.

Luc took out a long section, scraped off the bark with an axe, and carefully flattened it. Finally, he used a knife to outline the shape of a wooden shovel on the white trunk.

At this point, the first stage of making the wooden shovel has been completed.

"The second stage is going to be much more troublesome. Go wash your face first!"

Luc wiped the sweat from his face. Land reclamation is so hard. You have to make everything yourself.

After washing his face, Luc continued to work: The second stage was simple, which was to carve out the wooden shovel along the line. However, this step not only tested his craftsmanship, but also consumed as much effort as cutting down a tree. It took him a long time to carve out a prototype.

The hot-headed Luc took off his linen shirt, calmed himself down, and began to scrape off the excess wood chips with a knife. After continuous chopping and polishing, a milky white wooden shovel finally appeared before his eyes!
"Man, you're so pretty!"

He lifted the wooden shovel into the air, and the sunlight shone down, making the shovel glow slightly. It took Luc about three hours to make the wooden shovel. Now there was still some time before noon, so Luc did not intend to waste it and decided to officially start the work.

Luke took his pickaxe and shovel and rushed to the vacant lot. He first planned to build a temporary residence. After he had a temporary shelter, he would slowly build a real house.

After all, a good wooden house, or even a stone house or mud house cannot be completed overnight.

But Luc couldn't wait that long, for example, there was no guarantee of a heavy rain. Because it was a temporary residence, Luc only planned an area about ten feet wide and fourteen feet long.

This area can probably accommodate a bed, a set of table and chairs, and a fireplace.

After outlining the boundary with a mattock, he began to loosen the soil. The clods on the surface were more difficult to deal with and needed to be turned over constantly, which took Luc a lot of time. Of course, the main reason was the lack of convenient tools. Once the clods were removed, the softer soil deep inside was much easier to deal with. He first used a mattock to make ridges, and then used a wooden shovel to shovel it all out.

At first, Luc was worried that the wooden shovel would not be durable, but he didn't expect it to be more than enough. It even saved a lot of effort in the soil-shoveling process because of its lightness, which made Luc particularly pleasantly surprised.

By the time the sun was high in the sky and his stomach started to growl, Luc had already cleared about one-third of the land. He stood up and pounded his waist. The shortcomings of the mattock were now revealed. The handle was too short, so he had to bend over to loosen the soil, which made his spine very tired.

"It would be great if the handle of the shovel or mattock was longer. Otherwise, I wouldn't build a temporary shelter, I'd just build a wooden house!"

There are really a lot of tools that Luc lacks. Not to mention the long-term ones, just take sawing a tree as an example. To split a tree into pieces of wood, simply using an axe is far less convenient than using a saw.

When laying the foundation, if he had a shovel, Luc could dig deeper and wider.

After a brief rest, Luc used his axe to carve a sharp wooden spear and waded into the stream to hunt for fish.

His lunch today is these fat fish!

The reason why I say he is blind is that when Luc stepped into the stream, the fish seemed not to see him and kept bumping into his legs. Luc felt that he didn't even need a spear to catch all these unsuspecting fish!

Of course, the reality is harsh. After the smooth big fish slipped from his hands several times, Luc obediently used his sharp spear.

But I have to say, perhaps there has never been any human hunting here, the fish are unexpectedly numerous and easy to catch, and you can almost catch one with every hook.

After catching five big fish, Luc finally went ashore. On the way back, an idea suddenly occurred to him: why not make a thickened wooden spear out of wood to turn the soil?
He did it as soon as he thought of it. While cleaning the fish's internal organs and grilling it, Luc casually chopped down a tree trunk as thick as his arm and carved a sharp point out of it in a few strokes.

After a while, Luc put it down with satisfaction and looked back to see the red deer coming to the river to drink water again.

Luke had seen the red deer in the morning, but they disappeared at sunrise. It seemed that this was their regular drinking time. The deer that reappeared also saw Luke, and the female deer leader called out as if to say hello.
But the female deer didn't know that the upright animal, which seemed harmless in her eyes, was actually drooling over the antlers of her companion.
"Digging with this thing must be very fast!"

Luc's eyes were dazzled by the sight of a pair of three-foot-long antlers. If he could hunt a deer...
Deer are full of treasures. Not only can their antlers and skin be made into boots and clothes, their blood can be used to loosen up the muscles and bones, their meat can be used to fill the stomach, their tendons can be used to make bowstrings, their bones can be made into spears and shovels, and even their heads can be used as ornaments.
However, the frequent appearance of red deer here confirms Luc's previous guess - there are no large carnivores nearby, at least not now.

At the same time, he also noticed that, unlike yesterday, the deer were not only drinking water, but also chewing a kind of red fruit. Luc had never seen this kind of fruit before, but as long as the deer could eat it, he could probably eat it too!
Wait until the red deer leaves, then go and see for yourself!

What he lacked most now was food, especially after the land reclamation, he needed more food. Luke took a big bite of the grilled fish. There was no seasoning and it was bland, but he still ate all five fish.

Touching his bulging belly, Luc simply digested his food and continued his pioneering work.

(End of this chapter)