Chapter 40 (1/2)

Chapter 40

About forestry.

Awkward. I have no particular plan.

Since wood is everywhere, there is no need to bother selling it to another town. Because it’s good enough to cut it nearby.

It’s the same for woodworking products. Other villages can make anything that can be made in our villages.

We decided to plant trees for the future for the time being, but that won’t lead to an increase in revenue at the moment. The mountain village chiefs who thought that there would be a groundbreaking idea like with the farming group seems disappointed.

After that, I wonder if there’s anything else ……

Oh, what about Shiitake cultivation?

When I asked, they didn’t know about Shiitake mushrooms. If it doesn’t exist, the fungus might not be growing in the first place…….

If we make a large amount of smoked meat and jerky by capturing enough animals, the populations of animals will soon decline and the rest won’t be able to survive……

For the time being, I promise to investigate the possibility of making charcoal and Tatara f.u.ki to smooth things over(お茶を濁す).

Also, in order to discover metal ore, I gave stern instructions to be quickly informed if there’s anything that looks like it and handed out printouts of ore photographs to a few villagers.

By the way, I tend to confuse “Tatara f.u.ki” and “Tatara Seitetsu”, but they are different things. “Tatara” means bellows, and many of the early iron processing techniques use bellows, that is to say, the primitive iron making methods that are conducted in various parts of the world are called “Tatara Seitetsu”.

“Tatara f.u.ki” on the other hand is a special iron processing technique conducted in j.a.pan, which creates high-quality “Tamahagane(ball steel)” from iron sand. Tamahagane is the high-quality steel that becomes the blade of a j.a.panese sword, and it can take less than one-third of the iron made with Tatara f.u.ki. The remaining two-thirds or more is low quality and used for parts other than the blade portion, daily necessities, and other applications.

If you make products with the Tamahagane brand power.

Mitsuha was putting her hopes on the discovery of valuable metal ores and this steelmaking technique.

(tl note: I think I translated “Tatara Seitetsu” as Tatara furnace in chapter 37. I’m not sure if I want to change it to primitive steelmaking or leave it)

And about the marine.

The chief who was representing the fishing village had expectations.

Until now, the fishing village was treated roughly by the lord because the number of inhabitants was small and seafood can’t be stockpiled nor sold outdoors or outside the territory.

However, the new lord Mitsuha has visited the fishing village much more frequently than

she did the farm villages and mountain villages, asked various questions, and gladly ate the seafood dishes prepared by the fisherman’s wives.

And she showed extraordinary interest in the boats and fishing gear.

In addition, the Viscount’s house that had until now only hire servants from the residents of the town has hired Ninette, someone from the fishing village for the first time.

It wasn’t unreasonable to have expectations.