Chapter 41: Invulnerable
After the ceremony in the church, the Baroness said she was not feeling well and returned to the mansion with Doris, leaving Catherine to deal with everyone.
Like everyone else, Olivia went to Catherine and briefly reported on her work progress.
Catherine reminded everyone again that the workers had to be assembled at the end of January, construction had to begin at the beginning of February, and the project had to be completed before Nirvana Festival in early May, which was the end of April.
Everyone nodded enthusiastically, ensuring that every environment they knew would be correct.
The knights on the side were going to the Baron's meeting room to listen to the Baron's instructions and report the border situation.
All the ladies stayed in the church waiting for the Baron to finish his meeting with the knights and go home together.
Olivia could feel that a place like a church was like a tool that could be used to decorate the room. Ladies let down their guard here and were willing to talk about anything in such a place.
Theresa was like this. She was old, her children were grown up, and she didn't want to flatter the younger baroness. She had no ambition and gathered in groups of two or three to discuss her children's marriage.
The wives of the Knights of the Royal Guard formed another circle. They surrounded the Baroness and followed the instructions of Doris and Catherine and had already left.
The wives of middle-aged princely knights are the most willing to work hard and the most fond of gathering together to exchange information.
As a young person who had just started a family, Olivia was barely classified into the third circle.
She was drawn by Madame de Bordeaux into the circle of ladies, into which she had with great difficulty regained her place.
Olivia silently observed everyone in the crowd.
Without exception, these ladies were there to help the Baroness with the construction of the monastery.
There are Mrs. Real who is responsible for providing stone raw materials, and Mrs. Stewart who is responsible for purchasing other building materials.
Mrs. Toxon was responsible for transporting the materials, and Mrs. Baskin was responsible for providing the bricklayers and masons.
Mrs. Real and Mrs. Stewart, one is powerful and the other has a daughter who works as a maid to the Baroness.
Obviously, they are the two people with the biggest jobs.
Mrs. Baskin and Mrs. Torkson are currently both secretly collecting evidence and looking for helpers, and they don't appear to be at odds with each other.
Olivia saw through their thoughts and wondered if the Baron and his wife really couldn't see it.
Madame de Bordeaux was still immersed in the joy of being seen by the Baroness again.
Olivia put a period on her observation and began to join in the conversation.
A knight usually does not know how much food, manpower and material resources his territory can produce in a year, but the knight's wife usually knows all of these like the back of her hand.
After chatting with them, Olivia soon understood what kind of goods would be flooding the trading market in the second half of this year.
Mrs. Bordall plans to plant 500 acres of grain this year, which accounts for almost 95% of her family's arable land and a quarter of her fiefdom.
Olivia deeply envied her family's fertile flat land.
Mrs. Baskin is not going to plant rye this year and wants to sow a patch of alfalfa to feed her sheep instead.
Mrs. Stuart's family sold ten more sheep yesterday.
Mrs. Tokson regretted not buying leather sooner because the price remained high.
When Mrs. Real mentioned that the price of wheat seeds had increased this year, many other ladies began to discuss the topic enthusiastically.
As landowners, most people hope that the price of wheat can also stabilize at such a high price, and they can't help but plant more wheat, which causes the price in the seed market to continue to rise.
The market was booming. Olivia made a calculation and found that the wheat planted on the estates of these ladies alone exceeded one thousand acres.
The heavy snow this winter has moistened the soil for sowing in spring and summer, so this autumn's harvest will definitely be better than last year's.
If you calculate it, at least 100,000 pounds of wheat will grow on their farms.
Once these crops grow, the food prices in the entire Lavosen will return to normal levels, or even be a little cheaper than usual.
Olivia's territory was exempted from taxes for four years, which made her jealous. When asked how she planned to cultivate the land, she just waved her hand modestly:
"You know, there's very little arable land on my estate, so I simply don't specialize in any one thing. I just buy some seeds from all sorts and be self-sufficient."
Everyone knows that this is indeed the case. Her place is not very good. It is all forests and is on the river bank. The river is not very wide, so it is easy to attract bandits.
Otherwise, Caesar's father would not have raised nothing, grown nothing, and saved any wealth when he was alive.
The bell rang once more, and the Baron concluded his routine. The knights left the Baron's mansion, and the ladies returned to their homes.
…
It was already noon when Olivia returned home. She first changed into comfortable and soft old clothes, and then made a large cup of linden flower tea in a monk's style.
She sat by the fireplace with the cat in her arms and opened her to-do list.
Main task: build a 20 cubic meter ice cellar and store ice.
Copy mission, trade five lambs.
To be honest, neither of these two tasks can be accomplished overnight.
To build an ice cellar to store ice, one must first dig a cave, then chisel out the ice, and transport it back to the manor to store it.
Twenty cubic meters, even if it is only one meter deep, is as big as the bedroom in front of me. It may not be easy to dig it out quickly in this icy and snowy place, not to mention that the ice needs to be dug deeper to be stored.
Olivia thought about it and decided to have someone chisel the ice back and seal it with snow to prevent it from melting.
Then someone slowly dug a deep hole horizontally on the hillside behind the manor, as the geological conditions there were also suitable for horizontal excavation.
If you can finish it before February and take your time, there won't be any problem.
Olivia wondered why the system asked her to dig an ice cellar that seemed insignificant?
As for trading the five lambs, she thought about it and decided to buy them from the manor.
She was not sure if her sheep could produce so many lambs. Although the system had increased her production, she still had to wait more than two months before the due date.
Then, she also has to pay attention to Adam's condition. Will there be any obvious changes in him from an ordinary person to a talented person?
I think the item "The Exploitation of the Works of Nature" only serves to increase his talent buff in this area, rather than actually stuffing the book into his brain to make him remember it. He himself will not feel any physical discomfort.
When they got home, Adam ran out to get the horse. He looked quite lively and seemed like an excellent guinea pig.
Olivia was lost in thought.
"lady?"
Lucy knocked on the door outside, and Olivia looked up and answered, asking her to come in and answer.
Then, Lucy came in and told Olivia that the butler had selected several servant candidates for her. He had visited them in the past two days and they were all willing to work in the manor.
"Tell me, who are they?"
Lucy cleared her throat and said, "There are six people in total: two in the ranch, two in the kitchen, one in the orchard, and one to do the laundry and cleaning."
She then briefed Olivia on their specific situation.
Needless to say, Ethan's sister Alice.
The other person who was assigned to work on the ranch was called Vanna, the carpenter's daughter. She also raised chickens at home, which barely met Olivia's requirement of having experience.
"Wana is only fifteen, and every year she goes fishing in the river to supplement her family income. She's even more diligent than the other fishermen in the village."
As for the two helpers in the kitchen, one is Ethan's sister-in-law Ada.
She and Tani had been married for just over a year. She was smart and hardworking, and often helped the miller with his accounts.
One is the blacksmith's daughter-in-law, named Rose. It is said that she makes delicious pickled radishes and dried fish. She is also very hardworking and has a certain reputation in the village.
Olivia was quite satisfied with this. It seemed that the housekeeper had put a lot of thought into recruiting all the women in the village who could be considered capable.
"The one who does the laundry and cleaning is a girl named Fanxi. Her parents are no longer alive, and she lives with her uncle's family. She's been doing these chores at home."
"As for the orchard, we're looking for that Jagbo Wisenmo that the adults picked up."
Olivia curiously asked Lucy why she chose him.
"Is his injury healed?"
Lucy said, "It's grown well. My father asked around. He was very good at tending to plants and trees when he was on the other side of the river. He'd been growing beets and making beet sugar to support his family since he was little."
Olivia pretended to understand and said, "Well, I hope he can take good care of the fruit trees."
For these servants, they would go back to their homes to sleep at night and come to the manor to work during the day. The manor would provide them with a few meals in lieu of their wages.
During the Chinese New Year and other festivals, she would give out some supplies as rewards.
"That's a good arrangement. Let them come to work tomorrow."
After a while, Olivia went downstairs to the restaurant for lunch and called the butler again.
The butler thought it was about selecting servants, and Olivia shook her head.
"Mrs. Baudelaire has accepted the job of purchasing trees for the monastery from the Baroness. She plans to buy trees on our estate. In two days, she will send servants to select the trees."
Upon hearing this, the housekeeper nodded and said, "Yes, I will definitely take care of this matter."
There weren't many things in the manor that could be turned into money, including wood. The old knight had sold trees and wood before.
He was about to leave, but Olivia stopped him.
"I have two more things for you to do."
She slowly put the soup into her mouth, avoiding the housekeeper's blank gaze with a guilty conscience.
The housekeeper felt something was wrong.
Whenever his wife said something like this, there would be a difficult task waiting for him!
"Madam, give your orders."
The old butler sighed inwardly and asked.
Olivia continued to drink her soup.
"First, I want to buy five lambs to raise. There's no rush. I'll buy them within this month when the price is right."
The housekeeper nodded and said that it was normal to raise a few more sheep.
"And...I want to build an ice cellar."
Olivia felt like she had transformed into the unreasonable and imaginative idea-maker in the reality show she watched in her previous life.
And the unfortunate butler in front of him was somewhat similar to the ill-fated consultant.
However, for the sake of that 20% wheat yield, she would rather bear the reputation of being an unreasonable idea king.
If an acre of land can produce ten or twenty more pounds of grain, then more than ninety acres of land can produce more than a thousand pounds of grain!
If she mobilized the tenant farmers to reclaim more wasteland during the spring plowing season this year, there would be more wheat production.
"icehouse?"
The butler continued to feel bewildered.
To be honest, he had never heard of anyone suddenly starting to build an icehouse in winter.
Olivia nodded and explained her specific idea to the butler, such as the location of the excavation, the size of the excavation, and how much ice to store...
"Of course, we're not in a hurry about this matter. Let's store the ice first and have someone dig the hole slowly.
It's not easy to dig ice cellars in this cold winter, so we gave each person more than ten pounds of millet, two meals, and a felt coat.
Olivia explained, "When summer comes, the town will definitely need ice. Then we can sell this ice."
The butler listened for a while, was silent for a while, and finally nodded in agreement.
In fact, there are some local families that have ice cellars, but there are not many of them. They are all like vertical shafts and are not as big as the lady requested.
"Okay, then I'll calculate how many people are needed and arrange for them to go to the river to cut ice."
The butler left the restaurant in confusion. He went to the kitchen and sat by the fire for a long time, thinking about how to do this job.
He always felt that things were not as simple as he thought, so he decided to just do it first.
After warming himself by the fire for a while, he got up and walked towards the village to find a stonemason and asked him to help him calculate how many people would be needed to dig the ice cellar.
Before dinner, the housekeeper and the stonemason went from house to house, consulted with a dozen tenant farmers, and sent someone to the Renault estate to borrow a few shovels, pickaxes and other things.
They planned to start work the next day, slowly chiseling away at the ice and planning the transportation route.
Jock's mind was busy thinking about solutions to the problem.
…
In the evening, before dinner, Olivia planned to subtly check on Adam's condition.
As usual, she casually cut some meat, threw it into the brine together with the dried tofu that had been drying in the smokehouse for two days, and cooked it for a while.
The pot was bubbling, and the child Adam was helping the housekeeper repair shoes by the fire.
He first took apart the torn shoe upper, cut out a new piece of shoe upper, poke holes in it with an awl, and then sewed it to the sole.
Olivia watched quietly while waiting for the braised food.
Very good, now the butler's feet will be invulnerable to blades?
Adam was concentrating on mending the shoes and didn't notice the lady's inquiring gaze next to him.
At this moment, he was looking at the shoes he was making with great satisfaction.
It feels strange, huh? It seems to be better-looking, smoother, and faster than before, as if I was born to mend shoes with a light and graceful manner.
In the past, he was a bit clumsy at mending shoes and it always took him half a day to make them just right.
Adam was very happy and felt that he had made great progress recently.
As Olivia watched, she could also see that Adam was indeed like those characters with talent buffs. He seemed to stand out from the background and have his own narrative.
"Adam, you make really nice shoes."
Olivia praised him. She planned to let Adam make various leather products step by step, so she suggested that Adam make a pair of leather boots for Caesar.
"Me? Me?"
Adam was a little flattered. Although he knew how to work with leather, he usually only repaired shoes for people in the manor and did some work tanning pig and rabbit skins.
The leather boots this gentleman wears are all made by skilled craftsmen in the city...
"Me? Can I do it?"
"Go ahead, give it a try, maybe you have the talent."
Olivia spoke calmly, turning her head to look outside the door. It was almost pitch black, and the wind and snow were a little lighter than yesterday.
The aroma of braised food wafted into her nose, so she turned around and went to pick up all the braised dried meat.
…
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