Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 234 - 3: The Second Year’s Autumn Harvest

Chapter 234: Chapter 3: The Second Year’s Autumn Harvest

"Build the roads! Hurry up and build those roads!"

Autumn had just begun.

And Roman was already grasping the reins of infrastructure construction.

Harvest was imminent, yet the infrastructure of the roads was not yet complete.

The roads extended for one hundred and fifty kilometers in total, connecting every settlement and dividing tens of thousands of acres of farmland into numerous blocks, squared and with a sense of regularity.

Roman was somewhat obsessive-compulsive and deeply understood the importance of planning.

Poor initial planning meant a crazy amount of hair loss later on.

Laying a solid foundation was always what Roman strived for.

He utilized the convenience of the big map view to design the residential areas and farmlands reasonably, including the roads within the planning scope.

He started with building the Salt Roads, where the main structure of lime roads was made of sand, stone, earth, and grass.

Sometimes he resorted to using materials at hand, filling in with silt, after all, the schedule was tight.

Naturally, the quality was a complete mess, and it took just over half a year for the roads to crack, with some sections splitting in two becoming quite normal.

This time, Roman had high demands for the quality of the road surfaces.

At the start of early autumn, he specifically established a road-paving team, gathering a workforce of three thousand laborers.

The structure of the road was as follows:

Digging a flat trench, the bottom layer was made of larger crushed stones for the foundation, the middle layer of crushed stone and gravel, and the upper layer was paved with hard stone slabs sealed and held together with lime.

A three-layer structure, adding up to sixty centimeters in thickness, the quality was extremely high, stable and sturdy, unaffected by wind and sun for twenty years.

Roman set up drainage ditches and channels to divert water and ward off rain erosion.

Then a large-scale quarrying operation started.

He imagined that with hammers and chisels, quarrying stone should be simple.

After all, a bit of hammering and chiseling, and a broad and flat stone would emerge.

It wasn’t an exaggeration at all.

The stone masons of the era were very skilled; otherwise, those tall castles couldn’t be built, and their stone quarrying skills were very adept.

However, he discovered the efficiency was low.

Because Roman only had about a hundred stone masons.

He directly dispatched a thousand people to the quarry to become stonemason apprentices.

But apprentices take time to learn the craft, so the speed of road-laying did not meet expectations.

Nearly two months had passed.

The project was still not complete, and to this day, only three-quarters of the work was done.

An average person couldn’t even pave one meter of road per day.

Roman was at his wits’ end.

On one hand, he sent Green and Aaron to continue to recruit labor.

On the other hand, he had no choice but to personally supervise, adjusting the allocation of personnel to ensure the completion of this infrastructure task before the harvest.

...

With the Lord personally supervising, the efficiency of the road-building increased by thirty to fifty percent, narrowly finishing in mid-autumn.

Welcoming the harvest!

The autumn harvest in Origin City was everyone’s business.

It was also the business of the residents of Kant Territory—this time Roman had plundered four to five thousand people and brought them to toil away.

Farmers were not unfamiliar with agricultural work.

The only unfamiliar aspect was the yield.

Of course, in Roman’s view, these yields were still quite low.

Totalling sixteen thousand acres, twelve thousand acres were soybeans while the remaining four thousand were peas.

Yet, the average yield per acre of soybeans was only one hundred and forty pounds.

Since some lands were newly reclaimed this year, it dragged down the average, with some good fields producing up to two hundred pounds per acre, but the yield of poor lands was less than one hundred, with huge variations. Even if Roman fertilized two thousand pounds per acre, it was ineffective.

In contrast, peas had a higher yield, close to one hundred and seventy pounds per acre.

A total of over twenty-three million pounds of legume grain reserves.

It was still a huge harvest.

Moreover, this year Roman had planted more vegetables, and just this autumn, he harvested roughly over two million pounds of various vegetables.

They certainly couldn’t be consumed in the short term.

But some vegetables were suitable for storage, keeping for two months was not a problem.

Pickle and kimchi could last the entire winter.

At the breeding farm, the pigs, sheep, and chickens were ready for slaughter, and the staff members of the breeding department butchered them until their hands grew weak, providing the main kitchen with the freshest meat.

At this joyous harvest festival,

Roman had someone announce the start of the celebration.

There was no helping it; last year, with only a few thousand people, Roman stood on a high platform, visible to all, a cynosure of all eyes.

But now, with a population of nearly twenty-seven or twenty-eight thousand, it was impossible to gather everyone together—a veritable sea of humanity.

Therefore, they arranged the celebration locations across five or six spots.

The festival would only last two days.

Autumn planting was about to begin.

More than twenty thousand mu of winter wheat were planted.

All on land that had been well-managed this year, though it might not be considered mature, it had still yielded results.

They also arranged for people to burn and plough the land deeply, aiming to reclaim a few thousand more mu of vegetable fields, all planted with vegetables that could overwinter, with radishes and lettuce as the priority.

Winter was fast approaching.

The farmers raced against the clock, seizing every moment to plow and harrow the land, sowing the wheat seeds along with peat and manure into the fields.

After more than two months, Roman began to worry again about his expeditionary forces.

Dick had taken away all the old, experienced soldiers.

Every day he monitored the Apostle Realm interface and saw last month that the interfaces of seven Angel Envoys suddenly dimmed.

He guessed they had encountered a small-scale battle, but it must have been minor and not fierce as Dick and Dota and others were safe and sound.

Even so, this made him tense, fearing subsequent, larger wars.

Sometimes he felt anxious during the day and tossed and turned at night, but in front of others, he always remained calm, cool, and composed.

Roman was not one to be controlled by others.

The lesson learned was that, in the end, it all came down to a lack of strength, which was the source of his unease.

It was a fear of insufficient firepower.

Roman began to focus on military equipment.

Various pieces of furniture could be left to the apprentices to manufacture.

Qualified carpenters made various weapons for Roman.

Among them, crossbows were cost-effective.

Archers could master their use in just two days.

Untaught farmers, with just ten to fifteen days of training, could also master the use of crossbows.

Although Roman felt these were just interim weapons.

They would be phased out in three to five years at the latest.

But at the current stage, crossbows were still a way to quickly enhance combat power.

This was an autumn full of incidents.

There was no telling if a large-scale battle would break out next year.

Now that there was an abundance of manpower, there was no reason not to mass-produce crossbows.

The production target Roman set for Vic, the person in charge of the Wood Factory, was to manufacture three thousand crossbows of various specifications by the end of this year.

He wanted both heavy crossbows and light crossbows.

Not all were meant for the military; farmers were to have them too.

Compared to the military’s devilish training, the intensity of the farmers’ work was negligible.

In fact, their tasks seemed heavy.

But compared to the past, they were actually lighter.

Everyone would have breakfast and then go to their respective tasks. At noon, they’d take a break for lunch, work until evening, then have dinner and go home, even having leisure time to stroll around the market by the docks.

This rhythm of life was very regular, and once accustomed, it was easy to find time.

Because Roman focused on the big picture, how could he possibly press all the labor force to death.

That was unrealistic because it was impossible to supervise.

The efficiency of collective labor was high, so there was a great margin for error. For instance, if you were given three thousand people to reclaim five thousand mu of wasteland in a month, results must be seen.

As long as the quality of work met standards and there were no delays, then it didn’t matter if some people took leave or slacked off occasionally.

But unwilling to work?

Then don’t blame the Lord for being harsh.

Unless for objective reasons, every lazy person counted, and all would be beaten severely. Those who weren’t beaten to death would be hung up.