Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Barter
It is known that there are five rooms on the second floor of the main house. The three rooms on the south side, the middle one is Olivia and Caesar's bedroom, and the one on the left is a bathroom.
There is another room on the right, which was originally where Caesar's father lived. It is now filled with some old furniture and other things.
Since people have lived here before, the rooms are in good condition and there is no need to replace the floors and windows for the time being.
Olivia put the kitten's nest here so that it wouldn't be disturbed when there was construction work in the next room tomorrow.
She also gave Lucy instructions, allowing it to roam freely in the manor and have immunity from all trouble so that it could catch mice, and gave it a very formal name, Nicole.
After feeding the new livestock some goat milk and minced meat, it was time to wash up and rest after the long night.
Caesar once told her that there were several public baths open to residents in the Count's city of Anko.
Before going to the cathedral to pray, the servants in the castle would all go to the city to find a place to bathe and cleanse themselves. Some nobles would also burn spices produced in the island chain south of the continent and brush their teeth with mustard seeds.
When he returned to his hometown to inherit the fiefdom, his colleagues prepared farewell gifts for him and gave him a lot of soap bars made of oil. The price of this thing was not as expensive as Olivia had imagined. In the city of Anko, it could only be sold for seven or eight kori coins, but if spices were added, it could be sold at a high price starting from one silver coin.
Now that he was back at the manor, taking a bath had become an difficult task. Each bucket of water had to be carried upstairs by the servants and slowly boiled in an iron kettle in the fireplace. It took two hours to boil enough water for a bathtub. But if he didn't take a bath, he wouldn't be able to withstand the severe cold outside. The climatic conditions did not allow for pretentiousness.
At first, on the wedding day, Olivia and Caesar avoided each other and treated each other with respect.
In the last two days, we did everything and were no longer polite. We shared a basin of hot water every day. In addition to some unspeakable exercises, we even rubbed each other's backs.
Olivia studied the soap bars of this era. They looked like steamed bread, were yellowish in color, and were mostly made of sheep fat. Some vanilla and oil extracted from plants and flowers were added to make the soap bars less animal-smelling.
But she could still wash out the uncleaned pieces of meat from the soap.
Although this soap bar was child's play compared to the brands she had used in her previous life, Olivia didn't have the ability to make soap yet.
First of all, she was a useless liberal arts student who had a limited understanding of geography, but she couldn't even see a complete map of the kingdom, so her geographical knowledge was useless.
Secondly, for her now, any animal is an important economic asset and cannot be slaughtered, let alone used to extract oil to make soap bars.
So she turned to other readily available items, like cypress branches and sea salt, along with the dried herbs stored in her kitchen.
Olivia had someone pick cypress branches from the snow and boil them in water to wash her hair, and used sea salt and crushed vanilla to make bath salt. As for brushing her teeth, people in that era usually used rough boar bristles to clean their teeth, but Olivia still used sea salt and ground vanilla powder as tooth powder.
However, she thought that one day, she would be able to develop the manor so that there would be herds of cattle and sheep, chickens and ducks everywhere, and unlock more plant seeds. By that time, she should be able to have whatever she wanted.
The next morning, heavy snow fell, and the coldest days were approaching.
Olivia was woken up by the crowing of chickens and the mooing of cows and sheep. No need to ask, it must be Lucy feeding them in the backyard.
Living in this place, even people with irregular schedules will gradually be influenced by the environment and become normal, following everyone's rhythm of life.
She rubbed her eyes and woke up, took a breath of the cold air mixed with the smell of firewood, and subconsciously glanced at the pillow. Caesar had already left, and all the bedding on his side was tucked in next to her.
He was quite considerate in this regard. He always got up quietly and never woke her up. No matter how cold it was outside, how heavy the snow was, or how biting the wind was, he seemed to not know how to retreat. When he woke up, he would get out of bed and go out to patrol to protect the safety of the fiefdom. This was truly awe-inspiring.
She couldn't do it anyway. Even if she woke up, she would have to lie down and think for a long time. After the fireplace heated up the room, she would open the system to sign in, and then get up reluctantly.
It's a new day again. Yesterday, the housekeeper contacted the stonemason and carpenter to come to the house to check the areas that needed repairs, and went back in the afternoon to prepare the materials.
The tiles ordered yesterday were all delivered this morning in the snow, and were now placed in the front yard one by one. Listening to the sound of sawing wood gradually rising downstairs, it must be that the housekeeper knew she was awake and had already started the carpenter to work.
Thinking of this, Olivia couldn't help but speed up the process of washing her face and combing her hair. She had already put on a petticoat with inlaid trousers today. Looking at the heavy snow outside the window, she put on two layers of robes over the skirt.
When Lucy came to add firewood about fifteen minutes ago, she asked Olivia what she wanted to eat in the morning. Without hesitation, she ordered a bowl of noodle soup for breakfast.
Today's noodles were cooked with the cook's own creativity, adding purple carrots and rabbit meat paste. The taste was normal. Rabbit meat was one of the few wild meats that Olivia could accept.
It can be seen that this cook loves to cook porridge.
After breakfast, she went downstairs and saw that the loose floor tiles in the hall that she had specifically asked to be repaired yesterday had been lifted up. When the stonemason saw her, he immediately stood up and greeted her, introducing himself as Charlie and calling her "Dear Madam". Then Olivia asked him to continue working.
Charlie used quicklime and slaked lime bought from town, along with a muddy mixture of fine sand and water to fill the gaps between the bricks and act as an adhesive.
Once he finished filling the first floor tiles, he had to continue working, going up to the roof from the tower, replacing the broken tiles and filling the leaking gaps with lime paste.
Olivia came to the gate, where the sound of sawing wood came from. The housekeeper had built a simple shed next to the orchard using wooden boards and as much burlap as was needed in the manor.
The shed has a pointed roof and cannot hold snow. The carpenter is planing the boards needed to replace the wooden floors of the second floor and attic.
The panels replaced in the attic are different from those used in the rooms on the second floor.
The attic was made of new trees that the housekeeper had cut down in the woods yesterday and sawed into sections and brought back.
The wood used in the room is the carpenter's own home stored in the previous year's sun-dried wood. After installation, this wood can be waxed to become very smooth. The window panels are also made of this wood.
The housekeeper followed Olivia and told her how much money was left in the renovation fund and the completion time of each of these small projects.
All these things can be done in about two or three days.
Since Gaodi was also a small lord, Olivia was not worried about their efficiency and intentions.
"Has the cellar been cleaned out? Are the rat holes blocked?"
The housekeeper told her that Lucy and Adam were doing the work.
Taking this opportunity, the butler also mentioned other things in the manor to her.
For example, linen and ramie cloth were only roughly processed by the tenant farmers, and the quality did not reach that of making clothes, but there were large quantities, and most of the time they were cut into pieces to wipe the masters' butts.
But the harvest this year is too much, and the storage room in the longhouse can't hold it all. We can choose to sell it in the small town, or we can take it to several surrounding villages to see if there are any neighboring estates that need it. We can choose one or both.
This was the first thing Olivia had to decide.
Then there were the three jars of butter I had mentioned yesterday, which Lucy had brought out when she was cleaning out the cellar.
The housekeeper knew that Knight Dennis's manor in the south only had many horses and no cows, and that their manor did not produce butter, so he asked someone to send the butter over. Knight Dennis had a lot of arable land in his fiefdom and he was quite wealthy, so Mrs. Dennis was generous and gave him nearly two kingdoms' worth of gold coins.
This is also because butter is made from precious milk. It takes more than ten pounds of milk to make one pound of butter. It is relatively valuable and is an indispensable hard currency for every meal in winter.
The housekeeper said that with the money left from buying tiles, he had exactly two gold coins. He was wondering whether he should keep the money for expenses or put it into the treasury.
This is the second question.
Olivia remained calm. Although she was unfamiliar with this world, these questions were not difficult for her. So she asked the housekeeper again:
"How much can a piece of ramie and linen fetch in town? Is there anyone in the nearby manor who is short of these? Can we barter?"
The steward thought for a while and replied, "As far as I know, the price of flax and ramie is relatively stable in the town, and each piece can be exchanged for about two silver coins.
The only nearby knights are likely to be in the direction of Knight Dennis. Knight Stuart's manor, which is a little further away, doesn't produce any."
Knight Stuart's fiefdom was in a strange location. There was no arable land at all, only steep hillsides and jungles. Even his small manor was built on the cliff, and his family raised a flock of sheep.
"Then take two bolts of flax and two bolts of ramie and trade them for the woolen yarn, and take whatever you can get."
"By the way, butler, do you know what the current price of a female calf is?"
The housekeeper's purpose is to help the owner understand these things at any time. He is of course very clear about this and told Olivia that the price of a female calf is different in each purchasing channel.
In the town, the calves bred by merchants, regardless of gender, are all priced at three gold coins each. Among the nearby families, only the Knight Tokson's family in the west has just given birth to a cow, so he may have a calf.
The butler heard from the cook that the lady did not like the two pickled wild boars in the kitchen, so he suggested taking two gold coins and a pickled wild boar to exchange with Knight Toxon. This way, no one would suffer a loss. He could send someone to ask the other party whether he agreed.
After hearing this, Olivia thought about the political stance of Knight Toxon. Before going to bed last night, she heard Caesar say that Knight Toxon was close to the dishonest knights under Baron Forres and also liked to take advantage of the neighboring country on the other side of the river.
She thought for a moment and decided not to get in touch with this person.
"Let's go to town and buy it." She would rather take money out of the small treasury.
For the landowner, saving money is actually of no use. A pile of metal is piled there, which cannot create any value and makes people worry about it. It is better to exchange it for cattle and sheep to increase economic growth.
As far as Olivia knew, the amount of grass they stored this year was so large that even two cows and two sheep could not eat it all in one winter.
She pondered for a moment and decided to ask the housekeeper to go to the town to personally select two calves, so that by next year they would have four milk-producing cows.
In fact, if the cows on the farm had not been successfully bred with ducks this year, they should have been able to get pregnant and give birth.
Olivia realized that this could be the system's fault again.
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