The Shining Wyrm

4.i

Fallow Turn, also known as the Spring Ploughing, marks the time when work begins in earnest after the hardships of winter.

Plough teams begin the first day with the turning of the fallow field when the soil is soft enough to break easily. Each team should use a heavy plough pulled by eight oxen, guided by a plowman and an ox-goader. Motivated and loyal peasants with healthy oxen will plough an acre a day. If one’s subjects are slower they should be reprimanded and if they continue to fail to meet their obligated labor a discerning lord should grant portions of their land to another household.

While the plows are busy on the fallow field, expect the peasantry to also tend the sowing of other spring crops.

If your peasants are planting barley or wheat they will cast the seeds seemingly without care all among the dirt around them. If you have not observed your peasants before acting in this manner do not be alarmed; it is the expected way.

Peas and bean crops are planted with the poking of holes via dibbling sticks and then dropping of seeds into their place before covering.

If the crops of the fields worked by one household grows to a poor harvest while their neighbors are bountiful, take from them these fields and give it to their neighbors to command them in the proper manner of tending your lands.

In Bird’s Bane, it is custom and good for peasant children to guard the newly-sown seed from marauding birds with slings or the shaking of sticks. If they should harm a messenger bird, however, mercy should not be given: penalize their families harshly. If trouble persists and the child is male break no more than one hand lest you risk the quality of future work by your subject. If female both hands may be broken without worry.

After the planting is finished, the peasantry will perform harrowing to cover it with soil. This is done by as many means as deemed fit by peasantry from the absurd (tying branches to the tail of horse) to the clever. Ensure your peasants have access to skilled carpenters and cart makers for best effect.

If they complete their labors, expect your Peasantry and their love of toil to send them to seek further work in their gardens. This indulgence to their baser natures is to be nurtured as they can earn you more Pfennig, madder, woad, dyer's greenweed and weld are popular and useful in keeping clothing dyed presentably to match one’s house.

Other herbs may also be found and a savvy lord can arrange a tithe or exchange of obligation if a household has auspicious skill in the craft of medicines.

Cows are to be expected to be grazing the pasture and to produce cheese and milk through the end of Birdbane. If a cow has failed to go to milk and pregnancy for a season it is best to mark them for butcher in Blood Season.

First Summer is marked by haymaking and all subjects should be expected to participate.

Of those meadows outside your demesne, expect them to be held by one’s subjects in common.

Haymakers make use of the formidable-seeming long-handled scythes to cut the grass close to the ground. Teams of men move down the meadow in lines.

For each man, whether local subject or paid transient, expect an acre felled a day.

Women and children should be seen to turn the hay behind the men to ensure proper drying.

It is a custom which can pacify the peasantry if you allow them to carry home whatever hay can be balanced upon their scythes.

This is the practice as it hones skill and acts as punishment and reward in one with minimal supervision.

The number of animals that can be wintered is pegged to the hay harvest of First Summer.

If the haying is poor there will be fewer kept over winter. Always take careful note of the hay stores as it will in the dueness of time become meat and sustenance come winter.

Lambs shall be weaned as soon as they take their first bite of grass.

The shearing and final haying closes the first summer.

Take note of one’s wethers (castrated males), for they will be the finest wool and the earliest shorn sheep of the season will be the finest and expected to fetch the highest price.

Lambswool is extremely fine, but it is better to wait to harvest wool in a sheep’s third or fourth year.

The plowing of the first summer is done in the pastures, where much manure is already spread on the field.

Each acre of grazing supports two sheep. Cattle require no less than two acres each. For best quality of your direct demesnes demand all beasts overnight on your pastures to ensure the most this valuable manure is left to your benefit.

Beasts are not to be permitted to graze meadows until halfway from first summer’s haymaking.

The Hungry Summer.

It is so called as it is now when the stores laid out in the former year begin to grow sparse and if famine is to claim lives, it will be now.

In this season, expect the peasantry to mostly laze about before the harvest with only a fraction making busywork among the fields.

Your peasants may also be found to fashion rope and be willing to offer them for sale.

Expect thieves and poaching from even your most loyal of subjects for the Hungry summer reveals the true nature of one’s lessers.

The season closes with The Summer’s Wheat Harvest or simply the Harvest Festival.

Winter planted wheat and rye ripens for harvesting first, followed by the spring planted barley and oats.

The harvest should follow over twenty sun-blessed days but if it turns poorly unripe or rain-dampened grain can be harvested and baked if you have the peasantry with the talent from the uplands.

Wheat is harvested with a sickle, used to cut a couple of hands-breadths below the ear of corn, leaving the long stubble standing in the field. Rye barley and oats are cut closer to the ground with haycutting scythe.

A team of five (four reapers and a binder) should harvest two acres of wheat or other grain a day. Expect a waste of some to fall to the ground during harvest as gleaning. If you have the favor of a temple for a manor it is good to bequeath them tithes as one sheaf in every ten from the field after your own right but before peasants cart their portion of crop to their barns and houses.

It is customary to hold a festival or spas on the conclusion of this harvest after gleaning has been claimed to your preference.

But look out for the greed of one’s subjects after an entire season to layabout before the necessary labors to close the hungry summer.

Count your harvest and grain stores closely at the Closing of the Hungry Summer.

-Coinage and Lordly Stewardship by Sir Broghuilidad Silvertongue of Cortaza