Rise of Rurik

In Novostala Rurik was informed of something further south, the Lovady River, which supposedly leads to Smolensk, went straight to the south, and the Ostarans made some exploration, but hunted There is nothing new except for some squirrels and otters.

The men were in charge of pioneering, but they were professional farmers in their Nordic homeland, and the footsteps of exploration did not extend too far, nor did they find merchants from the south.

The forest is quiet, and the presence of birds and beasts accentuates the silence here. It seems that a large area to the south is a no-man’s land.

"It seems that this is the principality's southern border, and some defensive measures should be taken to prevent accidents."

Rurik felt that his conjecture was correct. Since the waterway can extend all the way to Smolensk, it would be better for the other side to maintain peace. If there is hostility, the other side can go down the river, so the new Ostara is very good. Sadly, it became a battlefield again.

Such speculation surprised Carlotta. She once again remembered the horror of being dominated by the tragic tragedies in her homeland. As for how to deal with the crisis, she naturally needed the military asylum of Prince Ross. In addition, the new city of Ostara must also be fortified.

Rurik was happy that the cattle and sheep here had the potential to thrive, but his hopes of drinking milk and eating cheese were all in vain.

The fleet circled around Lake Ilmen, and all the submissive farms were inspected by the prince.

Rurik had a very important harvest. He saw those farmlands with his own eyes. Comparing the growth of wheat in different farms, it was obvious that Novgorod and Mstisk, which completely adopted drilling technology, had a very good layout of wheat. The effect of sprouting is also better when it is regular.

The seed drilling technology not only brings the final year-on-year high yield, but also saves labor during the harvest period.

The harvest season of wheat is finally here!

Rurik's fleet had just returned to Mstissk, when a light rain came unexpectedly.

The rain came at an untimely time, as if the gods were making fun of people. The climate in Eastern Europe is always like this. The summer rain is always accompanied by severe cooling, especially the rain in August. Even the light rain makes people feel full of autumn.

Fortunately, this is only the rainfall caused by the fluctuation of the airflow. If there is an arctic cold current going wildly south, it will cause severe frost disasters, which will almost destroy this year's autumn harvest. The erosion of the cold snap often occurs in September, and although the possibility of appearing in August is not high, once the season of crops matures, no one dares to oppose the gods, and the autumn harvest will never be delayed until September.

The local Slavs are preparing farm scythes,

There are also a number of short-handled small sickles to assist.

The method of autumn harvest is like this. Facing the large fields of the farm, the labor force of the entire farm, both men and women, is assembled.

The strong-aged men all hold long-handled scythes, and they can be divided into multiple groups, and each group operates the scythes in rotation to achieve the effect that the scythes are always harvesting. The scythe reciprocates in a semi-circle on the farmland. This process is very dangerous. The straw is cut down frantically. If there is a person standing in front, the scythe will cut off the calf of the predecessor at once under the swing of the man.

The chopped wheat straw and the drooping ears of oat were pushed to both sides by the scythe. Women and children followed closely with hemp ropes and straw ropes. Resist walking directly.

Some flat land will be rammed in advance, and stones and wooden piles will be rammed out of the hard ground, which is rare in the local area, as a threshing ground.

Here, bales of straw are unloaded, to be pounded by men with wooden flails.

Farms with conditions will also carry out pre-processing, that is, the guillotine knife will cut off the wheat ears of the bundles of wheat stalks, and only the densely gathered wheat ears will be beaten by the flail.

Because every grain of European oat is densely wrapped by bran, it is a manual job to knock out the grain, and it also requires a lot of labor from the farm.

Although oatmeal has its disadvantages of harvesting and processing, local people have no choice in their long-term life. People on the shores of Lake Ilmen traditionally grow only oats, with rye as a supplement.

The people of Novgorod City are also preparing for the traditional autumn harvest. They do not have more advanced wheat harvesting tools, and Rurik is currently in no mood to come up with any more harvesting machinery. Wheat harvesting is still labor-intensive work, and the advantage of having more people at this time is most vividly displayed.

It is sunny after the rain, and the pleasant sunset gives the immigrant Rus a great sense of security. As the temperature rises, the process of heading and yellowing of wheat is greatly accelerated.

The drooping ears of wheat turn yellow and are harvested with a sickle.

Even if the immigrants from Rothburn were planting wheat on a large scale for the first time, everyone knew how to judge the timing of the wheat harvest.

They would break apart the dense bran of the oatmeal and chew it to determine if the grain was ripe.

After waiting for the whole warm period, Rurik stood here with his army, all the conditions were ripe, and the first oats were sown in the harvest season!

All the labor force (including children) that can be mobilized in the entire Mstissk is up to 4,000 people.

Rurik didn't have time to manage the wheat harvest in Novgorod not far away, so he focused on the work in the main grain-producing areas that he could firmly control, especially his own wealth.

Those wheats were also heading, and the ears were still dark green. Their appearance made the people quite curious, and it was not uncommon for Rurik to see this. On the contrary, there are oats everywhere, which makes Rurik strange, and regrets that the fields are planted with low-yield oats.

In Rurik's concept, the wheat ear from dark green to withered yellow is a very rapid process. Maybe the first-ripening oats are harvested, and the wheat can be harvested.

Nothing is more important now than the wheat harvest.

It was a fine morning, the sun in early August was still warm, and the morning fog that filled the entire lake gradually dissipated. The comprehensive unloading yard for ships and materials reserved here is now the most ideal gathering place for personnel.

When 4,000 men, women, and children issued the decree, Rurik rolled cardboard into the shape of a trumpet, stood on a slanted trolley, and held a paper trumpet to preach to his tribe.

"Our immigration is over! You are all the Rus who immigrated to the Novgorod region! The land under your feet was conquered with the sword and ax of Rus, the seeds you sowed, and now the wheat is ripe! Odin Bless us, now we are harvesting the wheat, and it will be done victoriously in two weeks!"

He repeated similar words. At first, there were sporadic people cheering, and it gradually turned into a crowd.

Just look at these people! Among them, the men carry scythes on a large scale. The Rus people who have huge iron resources can use carbon steel tools recklessly. A batch of comprehensive scythes made in their homeland now have a wonderful use. .

Strictly speaking, oats, wheat and rye are all derived from awn grass similar to foxtail grass. Their essence is grass. The so-called autumn harvest crops are similar to the way they work to collect pasture for livestock.

The scythe is used throughout Europe to harvest crops, which is directly related to the radiation of agricultural technology in the Roman Empire a long time ago. Many barbarians have transformed from fishing and hunting to farming, and the first is to learn Roman agriculture. They were originally Slavs living in the northern border area of ​​Rome. Even if they immigrated to the distant Lake Ilmen, the Roman skills they learned would not be lost. And several large Germanic tribes, such as the Franks, who have been mercenaries for the Roman Empire for a long time, the expansion of the Franks is spreading agricultural technology to the north by the way.

Even though the agronomy of Rome was not very good and it was continuously lost in the process of spreading to the north, the two skills of harvesting wheat with a scythe and ramming and shelling with a flail can be said to be inherited by the three groups of northern Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic.

There are more than 100 scythes here in Mstissk, and they also modified their steel saber at a critical moment, because the hilt is mostly a wooden block sandwiched by a core of iron, surrounded by hemp rope and tendons. The circle was wound, the hilt was disassembled, the sword was tied horizontally to the wooden pole, and a simple scythe was born.

The strong men of the first flag team have begun to act separately, and they rushed to their own fields with their wives and children. The man manipulates the scythe to cut the wheat like killing the enemy, cutting everything off. Women and children are busy gathering wheat, and everyone dare not take much rest. This is related to the major event of next year's livelihood. Even if they are so tired that they almost cough up blood, they must continue to struggle.

Rurik was holding a long-handled wooden flail, and at the top of it was a three-section stick tied with rope. With the whiplash effect, he whipped the flail hard against the mounds of oat stalks.

The prince is showing off to his people, and he is not just showing off, because this pile of oats is legally the property of his cousin. He was a prince at that time, but now he prefers to help his cousin with farm work as a younger brother.

He sweated profusely and had to use a lot of force in the ramming process. The accumulated exhaustion has made him unwilling to speak, he just repeats the pounding movement, and endures the exhaustion of his arms until the night.

The moon rose, and Rurik, who was sweating profusely, sat in a bonfire. He was accompanied by a group of old buddies. These were all young cubs under his command. Everyone was busy for the first day, but now that they have rested, no one is sloppy.

Everyone sweated profusely, and the old clothes had just been handed over to the women to be cleaned, and they were being baked by the bonfire. Everyone put on spare clothes, and everyone sweated their whole lives in one day because they felt weak.

Fisk felt chills all over his body, and his three wives and concubines were sitting beside him and heating the fire, and the chills felt exactly the same.

"Rurik..." Or was he the first to open the conversation, "We help them harvest wheat, and when our city of youth...they will help too?"

"Hey, they're all Russ people, you're actually worried about this? As long as I give an order, the soldiers must obey."

Arik saw the work of Ross's young cubs, and he followed his brother's words to assure: "Fisk, you can rest assured, I will not only help you, but also help you build the city."

"Oh! That's great. Thank you so much..."

"No need to thank you! Boy, your father and my father fought side by side and died for Ross in the same battle. You are now the flag captain of the sixth flag team, and you have a bright future in the future. I am also your brother, and you should help you. "

But how can Fisk Hode and Aric be brothers? On the contrary, the other party's words are very warm, more comfortable than this flame.

The iron pot pottery urn is cooking freshly made oatmeal. The boiled oatmeal is filled with some yellow root carrots and locally collected fresh ingredients to increase nutrition, and then frantically pour a lot of salt.

The way the Principality of Ross gets its salt has never been relying on the supply of the Balmers in the port of Narvik facing the Atlantic Ocean. The Balmers provide the best salt, and the price of buying these salts is not high, just the time cost of logistics. ridiculously high.

No matter how low the salt content of seawater in the Gulf of Finland is, it is still seawater. Even if more firewood costs are required, the work of boiling salt from seawater has been done on the spot. Fortunately, there are inexhaustible wood resources in the local area. Salt is nothing but a chore to add more firewood.

In this Novgorod region, no one eats salt more recklessly than the Rus.

People who were forced to rest at night achieved great results on the first day of the autumn harvest. For the time being, everyone didn’t want to talk much because they were tired. When the hot salty wheat porridge was cooked and everyone had a good meal, they recovered their strength, and then they went to the popular campfire to talk about the mountains. link.

Men boast about how much wheat they have cut this year and estimate their wheat wealth. They show off their sturdy arms and boast that one man can mow hectares of wheat without knowing why he is tired.

They finished bragging about their power, and then they started talking about women again.

Where there are people, there are always comparisons. They show off their real wives and concubines, and boast that they can give birth to more children than their hands can count. At this point, some people began to ridicule their princes. Couldn't the so-called more than ten wives and concubines be able to bear a total of one hundred children? They did not doubt the ability of the prince Rurik. First of all, the "bull of April" was tireless, not to mention that he was the son of God, and of course he was different from mortals.

Rurik laughed when he heard a comment about himself.

They can talk about desperately having children with their wives, which is what makes him happy. How has the Russ changed? When every man has a lot of wheat, a couple will say goodbye to the life of the past. They no longer have to selectively cultivate offspring because of limited resources, but have the capital to reproduce unscrupulously. . Besides, this autumn harvest is a very realistic demonstration of the fact that the number of people determines the efficiency of the autumn harvest.

If it encounters rainy weather, it is necessary to rush to harvest wheat. The weather is rare now, but everyone is completely immersed in the joy of the harvest. In line with the good habit of the Rus people to store wealth, each family can’t wait two or three days. The fields were harvested cleanly, and finally they were stuffed into their own granaries and took out 1/10 to pay taxes to the princes.

Rosian brawny men are generally a head taller than the traditional Slavic farmers in the region, and their stature is more robust, which is reflected in their greater efficiency in wheat harvesting.

The earliest oats sown were harvested in just three days, and the grains were hulled, shoveled into coarse sacks with a wooden shovel, and packed into the house.

As early as six years ago, the Rus began to improve their houses, and Rurik played a huge role in this regard. He made some improvements to the traditional Slavic woodcuts, and added closet facilities to enhance winter heating. The wooden floor above the ground greatly avoids moisture. Such a woodcut can be directly used as a granary, although everyone will still face the problem of rats, the latter is completely a small problem.

In this era, the Rus even used mice as food. It is a meat eater with squirrels and minks, but the leather of mice is useless. In the past, under difficult circumstances, the people of Rus naturally ate whatever they wanted, and rotten fish was eaten as is. As for the diarrhea and other diseases, no one cared.

The problem of rodent infestation that cannot be eliminated by the original storage technology is a problem, but Rurik has not yet thought about eliminating the problem of food loss caused by moisture and rodent infestation. He needs the people to quickly stuff the harvested wheat into their homes, and then continue to sweep the remaining fields.

People had to harvest the rest of the wheat for Raja Rus, and the Raja provided only free meals during the harvest.

The men have no complaints, because everyone knows how the maharaja used the wheat in the past few years. Everyone seems to be harvesting wheat for the maharaja, which is indeed the case, but it is the general public who ultimately benefit. The maharaja still owns an astonishing area of ​​acres, and now the wheat here has reached the point where it can be harvested. The maharaja’s promise remains unchanged. Every month, a batch of wheat will be publicly sold. Everyone can buy a batch of wheat every month, and then they can make delicious soft waxy scones at home, which is not possible with oatmeal.

The Duchy of Rus implements a grain-based policy. The prince forbids running on money. He also stipulates the amount and price of wheat to be sold each month in the form of a law. The purchasing power of each silver coin is fixed, that is, ten pounds of oats and rye. Or nine pounds of wheat, on which the price of salt is also anchored.

To ensure the economic stability of the Rus Principality, it is necessary to ensure that a large amount of wheat is stuffed into the prince's "grand granary" in Novgorod, Novgorod, and the homeland of Rosburg.

The people's ideological awareness is not that high, and their vision is not very long-term.

They are more aware of the fact that when the prince calls the army to fight, each soldier does not need to bring his own dry food in theory, and the army's food and grain are all paid for by the state's granary.

Now the wheat is also mature, completely different from the drooping ears of oats. The ears of wheat as a whole are straight up like a spearhead, and the density of the grains is also significantly higher than that of oats. Of course, the wheat ears here are not so dense that they can’t be planted. Without chemical fertilizers or even farm manure, the yield of wheat fields will not be high. Even so, they are stronger than oats visible to the naked eye. The most notable feature is naturally the wheat ears. There can be as many as twenty grains on the ear, and everyone has to admire a British cold-resistant wheat that is naturally high-yielding!

The men lined up like a battle formation, the scythes swung and swept across, and the wheat stalks were cut down in pieces. This was the first large-scale planting of wheat on the land of Novgorod. The experimental planting had a huge size visible to the naked eye. As a result, Rurik made a firm decision-to plant wheat in the spring next year, and let Novgorod, Mstisk and Youth City grow wheat for the industry.