Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 264: Bumper Harvest

Border Town welcomed its first harvest day.

Under the full summer sun, the serfs moved through the fields with sickles, cutting the wheat stalks and binding them into bundles to be moved across the river. The mechanical thresher did not exist in this world. Neither did the combine harvester, the grain auger, or any other labor-saving device from Roland’s memory. For now, the work was hands and blades and the slow accumulation of effort: separate, clean, dry, screen.

After the stalks came back to the camp, the serfs spread them across the ground to bake in the sun, then gathered whatever tools they could find — wooden sticks, stones, rakes, anything they could lay hands on. They struck the wheat ears repeatedly, driving the caryopsis loose from their hulls. The process took three to four days.

In Roland’s memory, rural villages used cows or donkeys to pull stone rollers across the spread grain — more even, less labor, and the animals did the heavy work. Border Town had no such equipment. He watched the serfs improvise, and accepted it.

After the first threshing pass, the serfs turned the straw over with whatever they had — pitchforks when available, bare hands when not — gripping the stalks and throwing them skyward, just as one might toss stir-fry in a wok. The motion separated the loosened grain from the broken ear, fruit falling from hull.

The wheat straw itself was not useless. Crushed and returned to the fields, it would improve the soil; it could serve as bedding or fodder or even raw material for papermaking. Roland did not have the time or staff to implement any of this. He watched the serfs carry armload after armload to the riverbank and burn it. For the days that followed, a grey-brown smoke settled over Border Town, not unlike the old cement-powder haze.

During this same period, the two spindle-shaped islands in the Redwater River were completed. The concrete walls had gone in according to plan — the same prefabricated method used for the main bridge spans: steel and concrete cast into trenches to form the columns, then Hummingbird reduced the weight so Lightning could carry each section into position, then Lotus sank each wall one meter deeper into the earth until only the steel connection plates remained above the surface. The bridge would fasten to those plates.

Roland spent the whole week moving between the Redwater Bridge construction and the harvest fields. By the end of it, he had a considerably deeper tan.

When the straw was finally cleared away, only layers of grain and husk remained in the grain-yard — low drifts of it, covering the ground like a golden residue. The serfs swept it into small mounds, climbed on top, and shoveled the grain into the air. Because the husks were so much lighter than the fruit, the wind carried them sideways; the grain dropped straight down. Empty shells and chaff landed at a distance. By this method, patiently repeated, all the grain was collected.

Not perfectly clean. The process mixed grain with mud and fine gravel, and no amount of winnowing removed every impurity. By next year’s harvest, Roland resolved, I’ll have a proper threshing machine ready. Not a harvester — the engineering gap was too large — but a sheller with a millstone, a sieve underneath, and a blower to separate the grain from the chaff. Simple enough to be worth attempting.

When the plump wheat grains were spread across the full length of the northern shore, the valley appeared to be covered in gold. Standing at the edge of it, Roland felt something he didn’t often let himself feel — simple satisfaction. Whether or not the harvest was sufficient to feed ten thousand people, for Border Town it was a day worth marking.

From today, the town’s food supply would no longer depend entirely on imports.

Three days of drying. Then the grain was bagged and weighed.

“Your Highness, it is a magnificent harvest!” Barov rushed into the office that afternoon, face flushed with something approaching excitement. “According to the preliminary statistics from City Hall, each field’s output is at least four times the normal yield. The highest fields reached six times. This year’s harvest will fill every belly in Border Town.”

“Is that so?” Roland couldn’t help but laugh. “Then the new granary in the castle district won’t be quite so empty.”

“Do you understand what this means?” Barov’s expression had outpaced even Roland’s. “Border Town needs only to increase its farming population by two thousand to sustain fifty or sixty thousand people. This is simply inconceivable — Border Town could become Graycastle’s largest city. No…” He paused, weighing the words. “The greatest city on the entire mainland.”

The underlying arithmetic was correct. The fundamental constraint on city populations in this era was food production capacity. A large city of twenty thousand people required a dozen surrounding villages — each village running a thousand or two thousand people, half of them farming — to stay fed. In effect, one farmer could support roughly one additional city resident. That invisible ceiling on agricultural output was the invisible ceiling on civilization.

Barov could not yet imagine what mechanization would eventually produce: a single farmer sustaining thousands. But even now, without machines, Border Town had broken the usual ratio — and the credit belonged almost entirely to Leaves and her magically transformed “Golden Ones,” the witch-improved seed stock that had made this harvest possible.

Roland had planned from the beginning to use as few farmers as possible to feed as many people as possible — to liberate human labor from subsistence farming and redirect it toward industry. With the Ministry of Agriculture now recording the best planting practices, and iron farming tools and threshing machines arriving next year, per-capita output would only climb higher.

That evening, Roland held a bonfire speech on the shore of the Redwater River.

It felt like a return to four months ago — the same evening hour, the same roaring fire behind him, the same crowd dense enough that the edges were invisible. The last light of dusk fell across every face. But the faces themselves were different. Where there had been fear and unease at the beginning, there was now open joy, and a poorly concealed hope that would not sit still.

Roland raised his hand. The crowd quieted at once — hundreds of people holding their breath.

“I know what you want to hear.” He did not follow his usual practice of announcing his name first. “I can tell you without doubt: the rules of promotion I announced before are still in effect and will be honored.”

The atmosphere broke. No one could hold back the shouting. People fell to their knees and praised the Prince’s kindness; voices rose in waves over the river. Long live the Lord! Long live His Royal Highness!

He waited for the first surge to subside. “After the final grain weighing, the promotion list will be announced. City Hall will manage the process. At that time you may choose to continue farming or find new work in Border Town.”

Another brief pause. “Starting from next year: if your harvest matches what was needed to earn promotion this year, you will be freed — even if your output is not at the top of the list. In other words, as long as you work, you will rid yourself of serf status. As I have said: labor creates wealth. Labor changes destiny.” He looked out across the firelit faces. “I hope that in the days ahead, there will be no more serfs in Border Town. Everyone will be my true subjects.”

The cheers rose again and did not stop for a long time, echoing out across the Redwater River until the sky swallowed them.

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