Three weeks have passed.
Recently, I've been eating with the servants. After all, my stepmother ordered to. It seed she wanted to treat as one of them by surrounding my als with servants. Naturally, it ca as a blessing to , and I had been giving ingredients to Dom to cook for all of us to eat together.
According to Giresse, these ingredients were considerably high quality, and I've been lavishly using salt and pepper. Honestly, it's the first ti since I reincarnated that I enjoyed the food.
"Grey-sama, it's delicious," Satella said as she happily bit into the at. The other servants nodded vigorously.
"Yeah, if the at is high-quality, just sprinkling salt and pepper on top makes it delectable." I replied.
"Young master, the amount and quality of this at is already on the level that a hunter would get. No, it's even better!" Dom said as he drank the soup, unusually excited.
Recently, when Dom and I are free, we've been testing out various recipes.
"Well, my bow skills have gotten better." I said.
"I wish I could let my parents eat this kind of food!" a servant said.
At his words, a shadow fell over everyone's faces.
The Millard territory was poor. Reason being they didn't practice animal husbandry and the produce they got was limited. Rye was their staple ingredient, and they made als by adding wild plants and any at they could find on the mountains.
Simply put, they were living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
"If you don't have any agricultural systems set in place, your lifestyles probably won't improve," I said.
"Agricultural systems?" a servant asked.
"Ah, you can't rely on the unexpected nature of hunting and gathering. In the first place, hunting at relies on the hunter's skill, and gathering wild plants relies on the gatherer to distinguish edible from inedible. That's why you'll never be able to know how much food you'll get."
"Then what would you propose instead, young master?" Sebastian asked. It was a rare act for soone so taciturn.
"Let ask you this instead: why do you think this territory is poor?" I said.
"Isn't it because the land is barren every third year we experience a severe dip in the amount of food we can gather?" a servant answered.
"Exactly. The climate is dry around here, so the ground's retention rate of water is remarkably low," I explained. "There's no way you could grow crops here. And since you can't grow crops, you have no feed for livestock. It's truly a downward spiral."
"But there's nothing we can do about that..." another murmured.
"That's not true. If the land is barren then make it fertile. First, you buy livestock. Then, you plant a pasture filled with clovers and other plants."
"What are clovers?"
"Plants similar to soybeans, I an soy. You can use soy if you want too. These types of plants have bacteria in their roots that absorb large amounts of nitrogen to synthesize protein, which helps the land. The plants are also filled with protein, so you can fatten up your livestock with them," I explained.
Right now I'm talking about the Norfolk thod of fertilizing the land.
Originally, a three-field system was used. Under this system, the land is separated into three parts. Firstly, legus that fix nitrogen into the soil are grown. It would then(secondly) be filled with winter wheat or rye which depletes nitrogen. And lastly, it would be used as grazing land for livestock, which required the land to be left fallow.
The Norfolk thod was more efficient by using a four-field system that didn't require leaving an entire plot of land fallow. This was, in a way, revolutionary. I an just look at Europe. When they used this thod, their population began to explode.
Reviews
All reviews (0)