The Start of Spring Planting

Chapter 37: The Start of Spring Planting

April 1st, the warm sun spilled over every inch of White Bear Territory early in the morning.

The cold wind still lingered, yet it carried wisps of warmth, signaling the arrival of spring.

Lynn stood on the castle watchtower, overlooking the entire White Bear Territory.

The snow on the fields had melted away completely, revealing vast stretches of damp, dark soil.

The serfs had already gathered beside the public land outside their respective villages. They had shed their heavy sheepskin coats for light linen garments, their faces filled with the nervousness and anticipation of a new year's harvest.

Old Albert arrived beneath the watchtower on a thin horse and looked up. "My Lord, please issue your orders!"

Although he had climbed out of bed at three in the morning, Old Albert was still full of vigor.

Plowing was the most important event in White Bear Territory, concerning the harvest for the entire year, so he could not afford to be careless.

"Very well, begin."

Lynn saw the heavy plows placed beside the serfs, as well as the compost piles by the strip fields. The seed selection techniques had also long since spread throughout the entire territory.

This year was destined to be a bountiful one.

Following Lynn's command, the entire White Bear Territory stirred into action.

Without the need for the farm managers to crack whips, the serfs spontaneously began to plow the land with their heavy plows.

In a village beside the castle, over a dozen heavy plows pulled by sturdy draft horses formed neat lines, carving straight, deep black furrows into the nearly 500-meter-long strip fields. The scene was magnificent.

The plowshares of the two-wheeled heavy plows were made of pure iron, hard and sharp. Like a hot knife through butter, they sliced through the damp, heavy soil that had not seen the light of day for thousands of years, bringing up the rich nutrients hidden deep within and cutting through stubborn grass roots in the process.

The moldboards followed the plowshares, further breaking up the overturned clods and turning them over in the same direction.

The side of each heavy plow was also fitted with an iron-clad side plate, which provided weight to ensure the plow moved in a straight line and kept the furrows neat.

According to the old rules of White Bear Territory, the serfs had to plow the Lord's public land first during the coming week.

Only after finishing the assigned 18,000 mu of public land could they return to tend to their own allotment land.

Therefore, the serfs were highly enthusiastic about their work.

To maximize efficiency, even when working the public land, the entire family turned out.

Adult male serfs were responsible for driving the horse-drawn heavy plows, while thirteen or fourteen-year-old children followed behind, wielding hoes to break up the large, thick clods of earth turned over by the plows. Smaller children were responsible for picking up tree roots and stones from the soil.

As for the pregnant female serfs, most remained at home to handle chores, tend to vegetable patches, care for livestock, and prepare dinner.

In Lynn's view, although the serfdom system still carried the word "serf," it was far more advanced than slavery.

After all, serfs possessed their own private property: their allotment land.

Tempted by this piece of fat, they were willing to work for the Lord and cultivate an area of public land equal to their own allotment.

Setting aside other harsh taxes and levies, the public land alone amounted to a 50 percent income tax collected by the Lord from the serfs.

It was just that this tax was paid in labor.

Lynn had considered distributing all the Lord's allotment land to the serfs and simply collecting taxes based on the size of the land owned from then on.

This could further stimulate the serfs' enthusiasm for production and land reclamation, and increase the grain output of the entire White Bear Territory.

After all, if they only had to pay enough tax, the rest would be their own—how could their enthusiasm not be high?

But at present, this was clearly unrealistic.

Firstly, White Bear Territory had been using the serfdom system for over a hundred years, and the ancestors of these serfs had mostly come from the Southern Border.

Whether it was the serfs themselves or the stewards and farm managers, they were all accustomed to the existence of serfdom. To them, serfdom was as natural as breathing.

Rashly abolishing this system would cause chaos in the territory and, in the short term, actually reduce the grain output of the entire region.

Secondly, there was the issue of how to collect taxes.

The stewards and farm managers were essentially the Lord's tax collectors, supervising the serfs as they paid their taxes with labor.

This method of tax collection was not difficult; it only required knowing how to farm and how to wield a whip.

But if the land were distributed and taxes were converted into rent in kind or money, the competence of these tax collectors would be far from sufficient.

Their literacy rate was too low, and those who could perform simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, or keep written accounts, were few and far between.

Lynn first had to cultivate a batch of capable officials before he could consider abolishing serfdom.

In other words, he had to develop education first.

At this moment, Lao Liu, led by Second Brother, climbed up the watchtower. "Big Brother, you were looking for me?"

Lynn turned around and patted his slightly thin shoulder. "Lao Liu, how long have you been with us?"

Lao Liu's face still carried a hint of youthful innocence. He thought for a moment and replied, "It should be almost a year."

Lynn smiled. "You joined last May. I still remember that you begged to join us. You were a monastery student with a promising future; why did you have to become a horse bandit?"

"I just thought the iron masks you wore were cool, and being a horse bandit is so free! You can rob whoever you want, kill whoever you want. Besides, my father had already passed away by then; even if I hadn't become a horse bandit, I couldn't have stayed in the monastery."

Lao Liu was always honest in front of Lynn.

His desire to join was, to put it bluntly, because he had nowhere else to go and could only hope the horse bandits would take him in.

At this time, knowledge was monopolized by the nobility and the church.

The education of the nobility was only for the nobility, and if commoners wanted to acquire knowledge, they had to spend a great deal of money to attend church schools.

Lao Liu's father was a merchant who could support his studies.

His annual tuition was as high as two gold coins, enough to buy 1,500 kilograms of rye in White Bear Territory—the rations for two serf families.

Expenses for books, stationery, lodging, and other miscellaneous costs were equally expensive, sometimes even higher than the tuition itself.

In the bookstores of Three Rivers City, a hand-copied parchment textbook would never cost less than one gold coin.

In the monastery school, Lao Liu studied hard and diligently, and his grades were always among the best.

If there had been no accidents, he would have graduated with honors and had a great chance of going to a church university in a big city for further studies.

If he could successfully complete his university education, he could become a noble member of the clergy. His future would have been bright, and the fate of his entire family would have been rewritten.

But before he could even get his diploma, his father and brother died one after another from illness. Having lost his source of income, he was about to be kicked out of the monastery.

Just then, Lynn and his men raided the monastery, so he joined them and became a glorious horse bandit.

Lynn asked with a smile, "So how do you feel now? Do you have any regrets?"

"To be honest, it's really great. Not only did I become a horse bandit roaming the Northern Border, but I also get to experience what it's like to be a noble by following you, Big Brother. It's much more comfortable than being in school!"

"Is that so? Then what if I wanted you to go back to school—what would you think?"