Chapter 138 (1/2)

Chapter 138 Establishment of the Ministry of Agriculture

The Forest south of the Shishui River had been nearly been fully cleared out, and the day to start with its cultivation was getting ever closer.

In order to facilitate the people who were crossing over the Shishui River, Roland had commissioned for a nearly one-hundred-meter-long pontoon to be used. The pontoon was created from tens of wooden rafts, which were connected together with thick hemp ropes. He had also specially ordered for the carpenters to build the rafts both of the ends being pointed, in this way minimizing this the amount of water resistance as far as possible. The hemp rope had been tied around four wooden pillars on both sides of the river, fixing the rafts position together as far as possible. Between each raft laid four long planks with one end of it on each deck, they were two meters long and together they were four-meter wide from side to side.

A pontoon built out of rafts was very simple to set up, yet its service time wasn’t as short as would be expected. As long as the water level didn’t rise or fall by too much, which could lead to the wearing out of the hemp rope. The pontoon could easily be used for two or three years – the trees of the forest was an excellent material. For example, the Border Town’s pier was a good indicator and built out of the giant trees of the forest, it was nearly as old as the town itself by now. Despite the fact that walking on top of would give off a creaking sound, it still didn’t show any sign that it would collapse.

On the western side of the pontoon, the first part of the reclaimed land of the forest became Leaves’ testing area. Now that they were no longer surrounded by the forest, it had now been tidily enclosed by the members of the First Army. During these past few days with the exception of eating, going to school and sleeping, Leaves spent all of her time here inside of her garden. Out of the window in his third story office, Roland could faintly overlook the scene in this wooden enclosure – where the wheat was growing at a crazy rate, while in the morning there would only be green seedlings, and in the afternoon the whole area has turned into a golden wheat sea.

When relying on magic, her Golden Ones would only need one day after being planted to become ready to be harvest, if this was to be seen by an outsiders, they would surely fall to their knees in disbelief and cry out “Miracle, truly this must be a miracle”.

Seeing that the land, the population, and the seeds had all been set, Roland decided that it was time to decide on the last element— the custodian.

He called his constantly busy assistant minister Barov.

And when he entered his office, Roland asked him: “Your chief apprentice should be able to take over by now, right? I need to set up two new departments at the Town Hall.”

“Your Royal Highness, this is… our manpower is not enough for this.” Barov insisted.

Previously you would always first agree with me and only later would we slowly work out the details. But now it seems you always directly start with complaining. Roland secretly criticized his assistant minister, but on his face, nothing could be seen of his thoughts, “How can it not be enough, didn’t I recently allocated a group of knights to you?”

During his preliminary round of screening, Roland had discovered that more than 50 knights met his requirements of reading and writing. Naturally, that would be too many teachers, so after once more screening for the best ones, he finally selected nine knights as junior teachers, and assigned all the others as apprentices in the Town Hall.

“Your Royal Highness, those people are totally lazy and dragging their feet on every job, their response time is also very slow and by the time they finally manage to copy over some information, they even end up making a lot of mistakes, in the end they are simply unqualified to become apprentices.”

“How to discipline them is up to you,” Roland slammed the table, “If they bluntly disobey the arrangement, send them directly to the North Slope Mine! But these two departments must be set up!”

“Well, Your Highness, you will always have the final say.” Barov gave up helplessly.

Roland said: “The first is the Ministry of Agriculture, which will be responsible for supervising the agricultural territory and the planting process.”

Barov was immediately stunned, it was the first time that he heard that the Town’s Hall was even responsible for managing food production, “Your Highness, shouldn’t this matter be directly decided by the serfs themselves? We have nothing to do with how much and what they decide to plant, we are only responsible for making sure that all their taxes are paid in full.”

“That’s exactly the reason why you… no, I mean why the crop’s we harvest in the past was so low.” Roland quickly took his cup and drank some water, trying to cover up his slip of the tongue, “The Town Hall should be responsible for taking care that everyone has enough to eat and drink.”

“Let everyone have enough to eat and drink… certainly you must be joking, right?”

“Of course not, how important it is that everyone should have something to eat and drink doesn’t even need to be said, if the town’s hall is unable to ensure that everyone has enough to eat, then they aren’t doing their job, but by then I will also be guilty of neglecting my duty. As for the latter part, wasn’t the public toilet project started for exactly this purpose?” Roland no longer spoke in a relaxed voice, and instead seriously said, “I don’t know how the Capital’s City Hall used to handle this, perhaps the life and death of the civilians do not matter so much to them, but here in Border Town, I want to implement a holistic political organization. It is absolutely necessary that the people in my territory know about it so that they will wholeheartedly support us, and we can easily keep on governing them. At present, it is important that we create this ministry and have them undertake this mission.”