Ch32.1 - A Bumper Harvest of Oats (Part One)

Cui QiChao took XiaoBai out of the wooden bathtub, a dark expression on his face. Pinched at the back of its neck, XiaoBai struggled as shivers wracked its body. Water droplets covered Cui QiChao’s face; some fell from his eyelashes and dripped onto his chest.

XiaoBai thought, although his heart was poisonous, he looked good… This was still acceptable.

But soon, XiaoBai no longer had the time to worry about other things. Cui QiChao rubbed its body amidst the water with a calm expression. Then after wiping it half-dry with a cloth, he went out of the tub naked and found a clip. He clamped the back of XiaoBai’s neck, wrapped it in a white cloth, and hung it on the window to allow it to bask in the sun.

XiaoBai stared at Cui QiChao’s face and felt that it wasn’t in a good predicament. “Meow…” 

Cui QiChao said, “From tomorrow onward, you will catch mice in the castle.”

XiaoBai: “!!”

XiaoBai wanted to come down, but the clip on it was like a Poseidon needle, pinning him to that spot.

Cui QiChao went back to the wooden bathtub, washed the bathtub (XiaoBai made the water dirty), and sullenly put on his clothes. Fortunately, it was possible to float in water, and XiaoBai wasn’t too heavy. Otherwise, what would he do if XiaoBai pressed down on it and caused a reaction?

Because Cui QiChao felt that cats lived too miserably in the middle ages, he indulged XiaoBai even more than he previously did. Who knew that XiaoBai couldn’t be pampered and that problems would arise when he was indulged?

Cui QiChao put XiaoBai down only when it started wailing outside and people were discussing what posture the Lord had used to abuse the cat today.

XiaoBai didn’t want to eat mice. He preferred peas soaked in goat’s milk. It came close to Cui QiChao, and because of its desire to survive, it rested its belly on Cui QiChao’s foot and hugged his calf, acting coquettish.

Cui QiChao said coldly, “Go away, you’re not cute at all.” 

He didn’t expose XiaoBai. He had long known that XiaoBai wasn’t a cat. This kind of artificial cuteness was like saccharin made from factories. Its essence was soulless.

XiaoBai: “……”

XiaoBai turned its head to eye the orange cat. Since the orange cat had enough food, the orange cat puffed up like a balloon.

In the corner, the round orange cat shrunk its body. 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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In an instant, XiaoBai grew jubilant.

Cui QiChao continued, “But in the future, you will eat after DaBai and DaJu and learn the rules from them.” 

Because the other cats had suffered hardships before, although DaBai and DaJu hadn’t received any training, they were more obedient than XiaoBai. They would never scratch him and would never touch what Cui QiChao didn’t want them to touch. Furthermore, they would never have the guts to jump into Cui QiChao’s bathtub.

The order of eating determined one’s status in the group. In the past, Cui QiChao ate first, XiaoBai ate second, and the white cat and the orange cat ate last.

Now that Cui QiChao had commanded it to eat last, wasn’t he artificially adjusting the ranking? In the future, XiaoBai would no longer be the happiest cat in the middle ages but the third happiest cat?

XiaoBai found it hard to accept this. 

“If you dare attack DaBai and DaJu, I’ll castrate you,” said Cui QiChao in an icy tone. He knew that XiaoBai could understand his words.

Sure enough, although XiaoBai still pretended not to understand, its eyes didn’t sweep over DaBai and DaJu again.

.

Cui QiChao’s vegetable garden was close to the grassland, with cabbage, carrots, parsnips, pumpkins, and so on planted on it. Surrounding his garden was an orchard containing apple trees, blueberries, olives, figs, grapes, and so on. 

However, the serfs treated them no differently from growing grain. Once they were planted, they simply relied on the heavens to take care of them.

Cui QiChao couldn’t accept this. He permanently decreed these serfs would tend to these crops, wanting to carry out intertillage and pruning.

Aside from weeding, there were many things one could do to induce crop growth. Cui QiChao’s considerations didn’t involve needing to successfully induce growth in one go. Instead, he considered the serfs’ physical strength. Combined with irrigation and weeding, they could keep the plants ventilated and warm, as well as promote the growth of the plants’ roots.

Before the ditch was dug, Cui QiChao waited until the precious heavy rain was over before asking the slaves to weed and cultivate crops. He also let the craftsmen make foot tools for the slaves to use in order to save a lot of time. 

Maybe some people would think that cutting off some branches would affect the harvest. But in fact, proper pruning could allow the crops to grow more healthily, and in this way, the fruits wouldn’t develop in an improper manner.

For example, if the main vine in crops bore fruits or vegetables, the side vines would be removed. But if the side vines bore fruit, then the main vine would be pinched. The parts that didn’t bear fruit wouldn’t take nutrition from the soil in vain. The same applied to fruit trees. If the main tree bore fruit, then the side branches would be removed.

Because the vegetable garden and the orchard were close to the grassland, Cui QiChao asked the slaves in the castle to continue working there while they also took care of the cattle and sheep and herded them. He didn’t have to rush them to complete their chores in the castle.

To be honest, they were busy in the castle every day. They were either dirty or dusty, probably because of the state of the castle. Sooner or later, Cui QiChao would build his house in a place with the best sunshine. 

Compared with what the nobles should do, Cui QiChao was more willing to work with the slaves here to harvest sweeter fruits. As a Lord, it was fine if he supervised the cook in cooking. However, pruning was something he shouldn’t even think of supervising. The normal pastime he should partake in should be hunting.

The knights couldn’t help but flaunt their valor in front of the Lord Baron as they watched the stewards speak flatteries one after another.

The Baron didn’t seem to like hunting very much. When he came to the castle, he didn’t propose to go hunting with them. And when they mentioned it, the Lord Baron only nodded his head reluctantly.

In private, the knights discussed that the Lord wasn’t like typical nobles in terms of body figure. He wasn’t as strong and was even a little on the delicate side. Of course, this didn’t mean he didn’t have a dignified air to him. On the contrary, for some reason unbeknownst to them, even though the Lord clearly did not have a tall and broad figure, a great sense of fear still arose within the people whenever he frowned and snorted. 

When other people headed out, they would take their longbow, short bow, long gun, short sword, or hound, or even falcon.

Cui QiChao went out with the three cats tied together by three ropes. Although he had lowered XiaoBai’s status, the white cat and orange cat habitually followed behind XiaoBai. XiaoBai was also good at keeping up to pace with him. The rope didn’t need to be tightened for it to obediently follow him.

The knights weren’t surprised by this scene. The people inside the castle witnessed this everyday. The master would chain these cats and bring them around, and these cats would also follow him. They weren’t like ordinary cats, who would run away once they spotted humans and would attack and scratch people if they attempted to catch the cats.

It seemed that the Lord Baron had severely beaten them into submission. If the cats were really possessed by demons, they might have been beaten by the Lord. They even suspected that the leftover garlic whenever the Lord had his meal had been stuffed into the cats’ stomachs. 

Cui QiChao rode lazily on his horse and walked the cats. He went through the cultivated land in the south and arrived at the woodlands.

His pigs were scattered in the forest, freely eating acorns. But when Cui QiChao saw them, he could hardly recognize them as pigs.

Most pigs that Cui QiChao had seen in modern times looked more like small and medium-sized dogs. But these pigs only weighed about 20 jin on average. The biggest one was estimated to be 30-40 jin heavy and was barely able to reach people’s knees. They were covered with gray-black hair and had tusks. Their bodies weren’t even as round as his cats.

No wonder the pork tasted so bad. 

Cui QiChao was very upset about the pork that had the scent of filth and stink.

It was at this time the head of the knights also said, “Lord, we saw deer in the forest a few days ago. If we are lucky today, we may be able to hunt it down.”

“Mm,” Cui QiChao responded.

He then found the head of the knights looking at him expectantly and couldn’t help but meet his gaze. 

In a shy manner, the knight asked, “Do countries in the east also eat venison?”

Cui QiChao: “……”

Cui QiChao said, “People from the eastern countries eat everything.”

This was obviously about whether the Lord Baron would lead everyone to greater heights in terms of letting them enjoy more delicious foods. 

But he wasn’t blabbering nonsense. He would dare to eat whatever the knights hunted…

Cui QiChao didn’t know how to hunt at all. After waving his sword twice, his attention was attracted by the nearby people who were clearing up more land.

In order to have more arable land, this project was currently being carried out. In woodlands and arable lands, the slaves cut down the trees and the bushes and ploughed the soil with four horses and four cows.

Because there weren’t enough cattle, they had no choice but to use horses to help with farming work. In fact, horses worked slightly more efficiently than cattle. However, horses had the potential to become excellent war horses. War was a common occurrence during this period, so people naturally weren’t willing to use horses for farming work. 

Cui QiChao observed that as they ploughed, they stopped occasionally to let the animals rest for a while. He sensed something wrong from this. When he got close to them, he found that the harness on the horses was the same as that of the cattle…

It had probably just been a short while since humans in the medieval ages started using horses to help cultivate the land, so they had yet to design a harness specifically for horses. When they placed an ox’s harness on the horse, the horse wouldn’t be able to breathe, which was why they had to stop frequently, or else the horse would be strangled to death.

The knights returned with a fox and a deer and watched the Lord Baron walk away from the troops.

“I think we need more craftsmen in our territory,” Cui QiChao told them. 

He discovered that the usage of tools was still too immature in this era. Tools were clearly an object that will lead the evolution of humans. Craftsmen are now forced to make farm tools every day. Cui QiChao still thought that it was far from enough. There are too many things to improve. Now this was another tool they should make.

The knights looked at each other. “Isn’t this an easy problem to solve? The craftsmen have followed their fathers in learning the craft since they were young. Otherwise, we can go to other territories and bring some craftsmen back?”

“Ah, yes, we haven’t engaged in a war for a long time. Let’s go to war with the people in the north.”

This scene was slightly amusing. There were only around twenty to thirty knights in Northumberland. Including the servants, the serfs, the tenant farmers, and so on, there were around a hundred of them. They couldn’t possibly send all of them out to war, right? 

The scale of the war made Cui QiChao unable to perk up his spirits in order to be more serious about this matter.

“The oats are about to be harvested very soon. There’s so much work to do here. Let’s forget it. I won’t attack people if they don’t attack me,” said Cui QiChao, causing the knights to grow very confused.

What did you mean by you wouldn’t attack people if they don’t attack you? Such a concept didn’t exist in their brains.

Ch32.2 - A Bumper Harvest of Oats (Part Two)

Giveaway chapter, selected by berrycake for the CG10K contest—-Bonus Chapter (1/3)

Cui QiChao denied the knight’s request to invade other territories and rob people. In fact, he had instead ordered people in his castle to buy some shepherd dogs from other territories in order to liberate part of the slave labor force and let slaves produce some farming tools for him. He was aiming for something in particular – horse harnesses. In the middle ages, there were never enough laborers, and serfs often died of exhaustion and starvation. Even if there was plenty of land, there was always a shortage of people who could farm.

For nobles, slaves were not as valuable as shepherd dogs, and those shepherd dogs were traded using oats. They were bred by herdsmen, raised on large grass slopes in their territories, and were taught to share the worries of their owners by acting like hunting dogs.

Dogs from the southern territories had smooth, short hair and stocky builds. Cui QiChao noted that they looked slightly like an Australian Shepherd dog, only their hair was a bit short. These dogs were highly intelligent, enough to observe who their boss was in the newly formed pack and bowing their heads and smelling his hands as soon as they saw Cui QiChao. 

XiaoBai was being led by a rope and was eyeing Cui QiChao’s legs. In this life, it couldn’t even enjoy the great treatment of sitting on Cui QiChao’s shoulders. It looked at the shepherd dogs and felt very jealous.

It wasn’t as if XiaoBai wanted to be put to work again – if the people in this era weren’t so discriminatory against cats – but on the other hand, it felt like its ability to work was far greater than these silly looking dogs. It doubted their working abilities.

The shepherd dogs didn’t seem to like XiaoBai very much. They may have noticed his unfriendliness. After they licked Cui QiChao, the unfriendliness escalated, causing a fight to break out immediately.

XiaoBai stretched out his claws to scratch the shepherd dog, and the shepherd dog growled. The frightened slave held the rope tightly, almost thinking that the dogs were going to attack people.

Cui QiChao also tensed the rope in amazement. He saw XiaoBai and the shepherd dog roaring at each other, separated by a distance of the length of a person, and Cui QiChao’s body almost straightened up due to the tension.

The servants were also stunned. In their opinion, these sorts of situations should’ve only happened between two dogs.

Cui QiChao awkwardly lifted XiaoBai up, “Alright, take the dogs down, and don’t let them come into the castle.”

As soon as the shepherd dog left, XiaoBai immediately calmed down. 

There was no one around. Cui QiChao raised XiaoBai and looked at its hairy face, under the cast of light. “Your jealousy level is a little too high.”

XiaoBai: “……”

It wasn’t jealous, it doesn’t feel jealous. It merely looked down on the dog’s working ability.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Cui QiChao suddenly felt much more receptive to XiaoBai’s earlier impudent behavior. Although it was not a real cat, it was still very cute. He went closer to touch its nose. 

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A few days after the completion of Cui QiChao’s water conservancy project, which had the admiration of the serfs for the automation and efficiency, his oats entered the heading stages. 

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It was the slaves of the castle that first discovered this.

These slaves belonged to the Lord’s private property and had to take care of the Lord’s cattle and sheep. This year, the Lord said that everyone should cut the oat grass at the heading stage to feed the cattle and sheep.

The protein content of oat grass in this period is the highest, and the yield is also good. In fact, when oat grass grows, everyone in the manor can see that the Lord’s oat grass seems to grow better than everyone else’s. His grass was taller, and he had more grass yield. 

But none of that mattered to the slaves – it was simply just more grass. They couldn’t understand how much more fruit it would yield.

Now, as the oats were in the heading stage, the Lord’s slaves were holding onto the ears as he observed it for a long time. The slave felt that the oats had a different appearance from the ones they harvested before. The lemma of the oats is hard, each branch is heavy, and the stalk of the oats bent and drooped. Most importantly, the oat had a whole seven nodes, and the number of grains per head was also a lot.

The mouth of the slave opened in astonishment. This… had the Lord increased the yield? Although he had poor arithmetic skills and he couldn’t be 100% certain how much mu of land could increase in how many percent of yield, even he could see that this was definitely too much.

The slave didn’t even want to think about continuing to cut the grass, so he went over to the fence and ran to the serfs’ share of land. 

But those oats didn’t increase yield. They had the same yield as they did previously. After comparing the two, the slave found that the serfs’ oats were much shorter, and they only had five or six nodes per plant with no more than ten grains per head.

The effect of what the Lord did was very obvious.

The slave collapsed onto the ridge. Heavens, he looked after the fields every day – he could be sure that the difference between them was that the Lord ordered people to plant some grass on his private piece of land. Other than that, the Lord merely commanded people to water his plants more. The Lord also said that these plants could be used to feed the cattle and sheep, which led them to think that the conditions of his plants were merely subpar.

Now, however, it’s easy for slaves to comprehend everything now. Growing grass between crops equals increasing production. 

Wasn’t this obvious enough? The kale had also grown better than they did previously. But all of them didn’t realize it until it was the heading stage.

“What are you doing, you lazy pig?” The patrolling village head saw the slave sitting on the ridge of the field, and he quickly pulled out the rod in his hands.

The slave quickly got up and said, “I’m just looking at the Lord’s oats. It seems that they have grown more in abundance.”

The village head looked down suspiciously, and suddenly noticed what the slave was talking about. It’s really, really a lot of oats! A few days ago, they weren’t able to tell, but it was more obvious to the eye today. There were more nodes and heads of grains in each of the Lord’s plants. 

The news of the increase of oat production on the Lord’s private lands soon spread all over the fief.

Everyone ran to see the oats in the Lord’s field, and their eyes turned red from it.

“See it?”

“Of course! I counted each head of grain! There are twelve heads each! And seven nodes!” 

“Tsk, tsk… How much more oat would be produced in this case?”

“My God, if only there were as many oats growing on my family’s share of land!!”

“I have to say, the grass that the Lord planted was originally growing near to my house, but they were eaten up by sheep…”

“Who knew that they would still have such a function?” 

“Think about it! The Lord knows what to feed grains to kill insects. Of course, he also knows what cure to feed the crops to let them grow taller!”

What kind of magical solution is this? No wonder the Lord insisted on planting these plants in the field and kept it close to his own land.

God, these grasses have originally been growing in the wild previously. Anyone can pluck them, and no one in the village would’ve even cared.

If the yield of oats increased, and if the yield of the kale also increased, would the yield be increased when it was time to harvest wheat? Wheat, after all, was more valuable than oats. 

The serfs lowered their heads to discuss this, and their expressions were slightly twisted with envy. They could not help but wonder: will the kind Lord allow his serfs to plant grass in their fields?

The answer is yes. It wasn’t as if people were thinking too optimistically. After all, they have to pay rent. If there are enough grass seeds, why wouldn’t the Lord let them plant it? Judging from the Lord’s previous behaviour of inviting everyone to eat mush, he is still a generous person, and these lands are all his in the end anyway.

Now when they looked at the oats, they felt much better. They didn’t feel envious anymore. They began to fantasize about what would happen after they were able to exchange for some of the grass seeds to plant in their fields. Yes, these seeds definitely wouldn’t be free of charge. But the end product would be that they would harvest and sow the seeds. That would be too blissful.

As for the stewards, most of them beat their chests and feet like serfs who had no crop yield. Only a few stewards would wake up from their dreams, laughing. 

Because at the beginning, they were the only ones who were bold and eager to flatter the housekeeper and tax collector. They asked if they could plant these grass in their fields with the Lord. Now, not surprisingly, the yield of their oats has increased!

Why, why didn’t they follow suit in begging the Lord in the beginning?

Although they didn’t lose anything, when they saw their colleagues picking up a bargain, to them, it felt more painful as compared to them misplacing their oats.

However, they couldn’t grumble about what the Lord did. They could only constantly badger the Lord to ask him if it would still be effective if they planted the grass beside their oats in the field. 

The Lord Baron Cui QiChao was not very satisfied with this result. The people of the middle-ages weren’t proficient in calculating the yield, but he can calculate it. The yield increase rate was about 10%.

The main reason was because he reached the land a little too late, and there were insufficient types of fertilizers used. He only used green manure and intercropped other plants. If it wasn’t for this, he can increase the output by 30% this year!

In the 21st century, when fertilizers were widely used, the yield of oats per mu will be more than 200 kg, and the yield of oatgrass will be 3000 kg or 4000 kg, not to mention the yield in the future. There will be more than 20 heads of grains per node, and just by simply taking care of it, there would be at least nine nodes per plant.

The yield of oats is generally lower than that of wheat. At this time, the average annual yield of oats per mu is only more than 30 kg only. 

Cui QiChao was still complaining, but the serfs were all jubilant as they discussed about this, because word has it that the Lord will provide grass seeds and the planting methods to all the farmers in his territory, and he would only receive a cut of the harvest, after the crops had been harvested.

Compared to what everyone imagined they would harvest, this was nothing to them. They felt that the Lord was an angel, coming from somewhere inconceivable.

When it comes to harvesting oats, both the fields with the improvements made and the fields that were treated as per normal have a mu of oats harvested. As expected, there are more oats in the master’s field than those of serfs and freemen. They only have more than 30 kg, but the Lord’s field harvested more than 40 kg per mu.

Many a little makes a mickle. It was as if those people who followed what the Lord did got more oats from doing nothing! 

Also, they had a good harvest of oatgrass this year. The appetites of the cattle and sheep was particularly good, and they love to eat these fresh grass very much.

Because the serfs became motivated in increasing their yield, they worked harder to do the tasks ordered by the Lord, because this was also something beneficial to them – since the grasses covered over the Lord’s fields like a green blanket, and the Lord asked them to cut part of the grass and bury it in their own fields to nourish the oats that had not yet been harvested.

Compared to the growth period of oats where one wouldn’t have to conduct topdressing, for wheat, topdressing can be conducted during the seedling establishment period, elongation period, and booting period and other times if the wheat experienced insufficient fertility. Even after the heading stage, some nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are still needed.

If the fertilizer was well applied, the yield will be high. The serfs didn’t even apply the basic fertilizer. The wheat, needless to say, must be experiencing a difference in fertilizer. It happened that the green manure could be cut several times. In three months, it grew almost ten centimeters. It just so happened that the green manure could be cut and buried into their soil. 

After more than a month, the arable land will be ploughed to prepare for the sowing of other seeds in the autumn. At this time, they could sow some green and fatty vetch, and the compost would be ready to use. One could already conceive what kind of fertile soil the winter crops would be able to enjoy.

Now, Cui QiChao can conclude that the yield of barley planted this year will be quite satisfactory when it is harvested next spring.