Chapter 11 Surrounding Villages
It is true that information exchange was relatively slow in the Middle Ages, but there was not no exchange between villages.
After all, some villages can produce pottery and others can produce wood. In addition, neighbors and villagers communicate with each other, so although the circulation of news is slow, it will still exist.
In the past few days, outrageous rumors that were either true or false had spread around the river valley.
The farmers talked about these novel things after tea and dinner. They don't care whether the news is true or false, they just use these interesting stories to fill their gray and monotonous boring lives, just like the group of fun-loving people in the 21st century.
First, the village of Skar was attacked by the Saracens, but some people say that the entire village of Skar was killed, leaving no one alive.
Others say that the village was actually attacked by a slave capture team, so the entire village was captured as slaves and taken to the slave market in Damascus.
Then there was news that the village of Skar was actually not dead. A group of pilgrim knights passed by the village and chopped up all the Muslim pagans like melons and vegetables.
And the knights didn't plan to leave yet, saying they wanted to recuperate.
As a result, as we continued to recover, an extra mill appeared inexplicably, and it was rumored that the fee for grinding grain here was only twenty-one! It’s at least half as good as Lord Leonard’s mill!
Even if you are willing to help Skaar Village harvest wheat, you can use the village's mill for free!
For a while, people in several nearby villages couldn't sit still. Of course, they might be worried that in a few days, the mill in Skar Village would be discovered by nearby tax collectors and then directly demolished.
It was precisely because of this worry that they considered it more realistically: of course, they had to quickly grind the newly harvested wheat at home into flour before the lord sent people to demolish it!
Not to mention grinding it all, at least if you can take advantage of it, take advantage of it.
For a time, almost all villages within a ten-mile radius sent out guys with good footwork to find out whether the news was true or false.
And when these good-footed guys returned to their own villages, the first thing they did was to find their mother-in-law and ask her to quickly take out some of the wheat they harvested from the fields and prepare to send it to Skar Village to grind it into wheat. flour.
The second thing is to announce to the villagers that there is a blacksmith in Skar Village, and any broken ironware at home can be repaired there.
And you don’t have to pay, just help the people over there to work for one more day!
You can even help collect wheat there and work as a wheat customer, and you can earn a lot in a day!
Anyway, the harvest season has begun for a few days. Everyone’s own wheat harvest has been about 70%. On the contrary, due to the small number of people in Skar Village, if they don’t harvest quickly, it will be difficult to find the wheat ears when they fall into the soil. Yes, we are in urgent need of manpower.
……
"Grinding scissors, repairing kitchen knives! Forging an axe!"
The shouts that made Garris feel nostalgic continued to spread in the square of Skaar Village in the form of Old French.
Garris did not expect that among his group, John and Simon were actually proficient in some blacksmith skills, although they were definitely not as good as the master craftsmen in the castle, nor as good as the masters in the city guild.
Compared with the country blacksmiths in the countryside, they are still somewhat competitive. In addition, Garris found a way to spend time repairing some stone mills and building several mills to provide services at low prices.
Residents of the five nearby villages rushed to this valley together this weekend, as if they had already agreed. For a time, Skar Village became as cheerful a place as a market. Needless to say, it was just like going to a market. Many people even brought hens, eggs, and lambs, obviously intending to set up stalls on the spot and barter.
Then out of the need for confidentiality and to avoid being discovered by Leonard in advance due to some accidents, Garris prohibited everyone from revealing their true identities to the outside world.
After hiding their respective flags and coats of arms, they only told the surrounding farmers that they were knights who came from afar for pilgrimage. They were robbed by the Bedouin a few days ago and ended up here.
This statement is of course problematic. People with real geographical knowledge can tell that Garris is lying in just two sentences.
After all, their valley is on the east coast of the Dead Sea. Any Christian who wants to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem will not pass through here. Instead, there is an endless stream of Muslim pilgrims.
But the farmers have very little geographical knowledge, and they don't really care about the authenticity of Garris's origins. What they really care about is the word "free" and the money they can earn every day as a Mai Ke here in Skar Village. wages.
Even Garris himself had to act as a broker, bargaining with farmers who wanted to come and work as maikes for two days.
"How about two and a half pounds a day?"
"You are treating people like cattle and horses, right?!"
"How about three pounds a day?"
"Four pounds! At least four pounds!"
To be honest, Garris really didn't know the market price here, and there were only a few wheat collectors around here, so it was very troublesome to have no one to refer to.
But fortunately, Garris doesn't need to be so detailed, it just needs to be relatively fair.
Building relationships with people in the surrounding villages, understanding the distribution of nearby villages, and knowing the specific details of those villages is what Garris needs to do most.
For example, Garris learned that there were about 6 villages within 10 miles of Skaar Village. He knew the general distribution of those villages, their religious beliefs, their relationships with each other, and their population size.
These gains have given Garris a clearer understanding of the next development direction.
Of course, this alone is not enough, Garris thinks, because it obviously does not go far enough into the countryside and is not close enough to the farmers.
Garris needs to conduct a real rural survey before he can be confident that he understands this era and the needs of the people.
Only then can we determine who are our friends and who are our enemies in the countryside of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Perhaps because of time travel, Garris found that he had particularly profound memories of many books he had read in his previous life.
This is what is written in one of them: "Without investigation, there is no right to speak. All conclusions are generated at the end of the investigation, not at the beginning. Only a fool, alone or by inviting a group of people, can He does not do any investigation, but just thinks hard and thinks hard. He must not come up with any good ideas. In other words, he must come up with wrong ideas and solutions. ”
(End of chapter)