I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 219 First Steelmaking
A noble, comfortable, and elegant aristocrat should be sitting by a warm fireplace in winter, eating soft toasted bread and smoked meat, gazing at the white snowflakes, and living a shameless life with his wife.

If they are wealthy enough, they might even keep a mistress and occasionally go on secret dates, seeking new thrills in places like mills and towers.

This is the life a degenerate lord should lead.

Only Lord Luke, the master of Knights Castle, the builder of the Common Way Hall, and the Holy Knight, stood in front of the pigsty early in the morning, looking at the stone wall with a gap that had been smashed open, and kicked away the frozen pig manure.

"You mean that sow is running all over the hillside right now?!"

Hearing the short grunts of the other wild boars in the pens, Mary said sheepishly, "Don't worry, Master Ryan and my son Miller have already led men to capture the escaped sow."

"Whoo~"

Watching Jill and the others tie up the remaining pigs with ropes, Luc said with a headache, "Just make sure they don't wander into the fields or orchards."

The pigs have been raised for some time now.

Unlike goats and pheasants, wild boars are extremely difficult to domesticate. Apart from one that froze to death and was eaten a few times for its pungent pork, no one has ever been killed since.

It's not that they can't be fattened up, it's just that these guys do nothing but eat and sleep, and never mate.
This winter, not long ago, Mary told me that the sow seemed to be showing signs of estrus. Before I could be happy for a few days, she ran away!
"Is the pigsty really that flimsy?"

Luc had specifically built the pigsty walls with sandstone, and they were just smashed open like that?
"Perhaps the master should build two layers of walls."

Luke underestimated the ferocity of animals in estrus. He sighed, mounted his warhorse, and prepared to catch pigs with Ryan and the others.

First, we took a walk around the fields. Fortunately, the fields and orchards were not damaged.

"Wait a minute, the apple tree is blooming?!"

Luc suddenly pulled on the reins and looked in surprise at the apple orchard to the north.

Without bothering to catch the sow, Luke rode quickly to the apple orchard.

The apple grafted onto the mountain hawthorn tree has been there for several years. Even if it were to bloom, it should have waited until early spring. However, a five-petaled flower has bloomed ahead of time, adorning the lonely trunk and standing out prominently.

"Master, you've arrived?"

Peter emerged from the depths of the orchard and saw Luc looking at the petals with delighted eyes. He smiled and said, "Actually, it bloomed yesterday, but I didn't think a single flower could prove anything, so I didn't tell you."

"However, if nothing unexpected happens, new apples will be harvested this fall."

"You did a good job. What reward do you want?"

The delightful surprise in the apple orchard dispelled the annoyance of catching the pig, and Luke contentedly turned his gaze away.

"The personal reward is insignificant; if you want to reward me, I think you should go and take it."

"Stop, stop, stop!" Luc interrupted Peter, his teeth aching, so overjoyed he almost forgot the man was crazy. "When the new apples come in, I'll reward you with half a barrel of this new cider!"

Leaving behind a message, without waiting for Peter's reply, Luc walked out of the orchard on his own.

Besides the orchards, there is another area where industrial development is quite good.

That's a fishpond.

The old man who specializes in raising fish is much more reliable than Luke. When winter comes, the fish in the fishpond dive into the deep water to hibernate. With reeds and wild alfalfa all around, there is no shortage of food, allowing Luke, who occasionally has a craving, to catch a few fish to eat in the dead of winter.

Once outside the orchard, Luc laughed. He saw Ryan Miller and his men carrying a sow hanging upside down on wooden sticks, walking back home. The sow's squeals could be heard from a distance. Ryan was yelling at the sow as they walked, making for a very comical scene.

"Damn it, this sow in heat is so hard to catch, even harder than when we hunted pigs! If it weren't for the pack of dogs, we really wouldn't have been able to catch it."

Ryan brushed the dirt off his clothes and couldn't help but grumble when he saw Luke's figure.

"Hahaha, anyway, we caught it. Let's put it with that boar and let it mate a few times, then it'll behave."

Luke couldn't help but laugh as he looked at Ryan. Ryan was now a prominent figure in the manor, and the fact that he almost got knocked over while trying to catch a pig reminded him of the days when the two of them were pioneering the land together.

After instructing Ryan to reinforce the pigpen with another layer, Luke went to an open space, took out the piece of iron, and began to study it on his own.

The construction of bridge piers on the river requires breaking through a larger section of ice.

Luc planned to use at least eight oak logs for each bridge pier. To ensure the ice surface would not break, he specially commissioned Little Maiman to build a grid-like wooden frame to stabilize the ice.

Before the wooden frame was finished, Luke decided to see how to decarburize the iron.

"Hmm, maybe we can try baking it for a while longer, raising the temperature to melt the charcoal on its own?"

Luc grinned. Jason had already tried the carburization of ordinary iron. In order to increase the amount of carburization, Jason specially spent time forging the iron into thin sheets, then sealed the charcoal fire and iron sheets together with clay to keep them warm for several days. Then he took them out and hammered them repeatedly. Finally, a defective product appeared.

Thinking of that strange weapon that took an extremely long time to develop, barely approached the category of steel, yet was unevenly distributed, mostly iron with only a small portion resembling his own fine steel cross sword, Luke couldn't help but rub his temples.

Carburizing steelmaking won't work.

"Have Jason break this piece of iron into a thin sheet, and then try it without adding charcoal for insulation."

Without hesitation, when Luc arrived at Blackridge Valley, Jason and his new apprentice were huddled together, seemingly engrossed in some unknown discussion. It wasn't until Luc dismounted that they realized what was happening. Before they could even ask, Jason grinned broadly and exclaimed:
"Sir, I was just about to come to you! Please come quickly and see if this is steel."

"steel?!"

Upon hearing this, Luke strode forward and looked down. He saw the strange iron sword being heated on a fire. Its previously uneven surface had become smooth. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the steel, almost identical to his own cross sword, was right in front of him.

"That's real steel!"

Luke took a deep breath. Although it still looked inferior to his own fine steel sword, being able to refine steel was definitely a milestone!
Luke couldn't help but ask, "How much of this steel do you produce in a month?"

"...one, or none at all."

Luc's smile froze on his face.

"Sir, this was purely by chance. I don't know how it happened; it just came together in a daze. I think it must be God's blessing. But as you know, these kinds of things don't happen all the time, so... actually, I still don't know how to forge steel."

Luc pursed his lips, realizing he had indeed been too hasty.

With iron production not yet stable, pursuing steel production is indeed unrealistic.

He told Jason about the iron block he was carrying and his ideas, telling him to temporarily stop blacksmithing when it got cold, and that he would build Jason a decent brick kiln. Then he returned to the Agate River to continue his bridge-building project.

At the same time, at the dilapidated Telf Bridgehead.

George, who had just finished sleeping with a prostitute at Cooper Castle, was brushing his traveling horse when he suddenly heard a commotion. Looking up, he saw Berry, along with his son, Furman's retinue, and seven or eight soldiers, plunging into the deep mountains.

(End of this chapter)