Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest-Chapter 238 - 7: Exploration and Gold Panning
Chapter 238: Chapter 7: Exploration and Gold Panning
Edible oil contains high energy.
After the oil is pressed, the leftover soybean meal can also feed livestock, as it is considered premium fodder.
And tofu goes without saying.
It can occasionally be used as a staple food, possessing extremely high nutritional value.
Moreover, it can adjust the dietary structure of Origin City, enhancing the overall risk resistance.
Roman then established several oil pressing workshops and tofu workshops.
Every day, they produce about a hundred jin of edible oil and a thousand jin of tofu.
At first, because the craftsmanship was not very skilled and the workers were in an exploratory stage, both the production and quality couldn’t be raised, and one could only describe the situation as a complete mess.
It would gradually improve over time.
Half a month later, producing a thousand jin of oil and ten thousand jin of tofu daily became very easy.
However, these two workshops now shared about five hundred workers.
Since winter had come, a large number of farmers had become unemployed.
So Roman expanded the construction crew to two thousand people, continuing to make bricks, build houses, and pave roads.
Wherever land was cleared, roads were built, houses were constructed, all in preparation for the next year.
The one thousand workers at the quarry had not yet been moved.
Roman needed them to continue extracting stone for future use, striving to turn them all into qualified stonemasons.
Some infrastructure projects could not do without stone.
The more crushed stones and slate materials, the better, as they would inevitably be useful in the future.
However, there were still about three thousand idle workers.
Because during winter in an agrarian society, there was little work to do, and production came to a great halt.
In previous years at this time, they would rely on counting the grains stored at home to get by and spend the entire winter starving and freezing.
Without clothes to wear and not enough to eat, what else could it be but starving and freezing?
Roman felt a darkness before his eyes at the sight.
Now, the population of Origin City was nearly thirty thousand, with approximately three thousand people in the military units.
So he gritted his teeth and decided to put together another thousand troops, to draft every last young person.
The troops led by Dick and Dota had also returned and joined in the training.
They were Roman’s seasoned elite soldiers, with a huge influence, capable of playing an excellent leading role.
The military training became increasingly sophisticated.
It started to look like the real deal.
The rest of the farmers, now well fed, clothed, and with tools in their hands—immediately, without delay—go and mine gold for me!
He had found the gold mine during his first expedition.
The gold mine was tucked away in the mountains, a hundred kilometers away.
Hurry and dig!
It had been over a year!
Roman had not forgotten the allure of the gold mine for a single moment.
But as the saying goes, one must eat one’s meal one bite at a time.
Otherwise, it could lead to indigestion.
That concern was gone now.
The foundation had been firmly laid!
"We must see the gold!!"
Roman was resolute in this!
He was not greedy, nor was he driven mad by poverty.
It was simply because gold could be converted into extraordinary resources, into Fine Gold!
And Fine Gold was the key material for cultivating Angel Envoys!
Each time he opened the Apostle Realm interface, most of the Angel Envoys had an Attribute of E.
Roman had exhausted his resources, and only managed to raise Aaron, Green, Dick, Jet, Nathan, and others to the Third Rank or Fourth Rank Knights.
Kao had only just touched the threshold of Second Rank Knight.
And for those Angel Envoys serving as Squadron Leaders, Roman selectively picked around a dozen and raised one of their Attributes.
Even this had used up all his extraordinary resources, leaving him penniless.
With Fine Gold as an extraordinary resource, Roman would be able to scale and collectively upgrade the Angel Envoy panels!
Especially in terms of Attack!
It had to be drastically improved!
To avoid a shortage of labor, Roman had once again brought over three thousand villagers from Kant Territory during early winter, causing the population to completely break through the thirty thousand mark.
It was still a full-package mode.
The Kant Territory was said to have nine out of ten houses empty, and that wouldn’t be an overstatement.
The villagers there were like the toys in a claw machine, snatched away by an unforeseen claw from the skies at unpredictable times, leading to their numbers dwindling.
But where could they possibly flee to?
Ha-ha-ha, no one would save them, even if they screamed their throats hoarse!
Besides, their lord, Earl Kant, had long been fed up with the humiliation and left the land during the autumn season.
Whether he went to seek help from distant relatives or to complain to the Black Iron King wasn’t within Roman’s scope of concern.
After all, it was not the season for military campaigns during winter, so he need not worry about warfare.
Not to mention here, even the war between the pirates and Gael had to pause—the battlefield out there was bitterly cold.
Next year... Heh heh.
...
The location of the gold mine was not great.
To be precise, Origin City was situated on a plain, at a higher elevation.
But compared to the entire basin, the plain was just a small patch.
Heading north, things weren’t right.
The Black Barbarian Land was desolate and uninhabited.
With its towering mountains, swampy forests, treacherous terrain, it was a complete mess.
The difficulty of development was high. But they still had to build roads and mine.
How could they enrich the country and strengthen the army without mining?
The mountain roads were rugged and difficult to navigate, with steep passes or abyssal cliffs, forcing detours.
But the initial requirements were not high; they just needed to carve out a path, even if manpower was required to transport supplies across.
He planned the route for this purpose.
Roman began his third exploration of this basin.
And this exploration was the longest one.
It lasted nearly twenty days.
Roman finally determined that the mineral resources of this land were incredibly rich, perhaps due to a special geological structure.
Aside from resources that couldn’t be utilized for the time being, there was an abundance of stone quarries, plenty of iron mines, and veins of gold, silver, and copper, along with saltpeter and rock salt.
But the difficulty of development was high because it was too far from the plains.
The farthest ore veins were hundreds of kilometers away.
This gave Roman a bit of a headache.
Take it slow...
Take it slow...
He told himself over and over again.
Clearing new land and development always took time.
Roman ended his exploration, returned to Origin Manor exhausted, and after a day of rest and rejuvenating sleep, burst forth vigorously toward the gold mine.
During this time, it had snowed, but the amount was not significant and did not affect production.
The previously purchased cotton, flax, wool, and sheepskin had also been largely spun into cold-resistant clothing.
With the thick clothing, the laborers suddenly felt much more comfortable.
By the end of the first month of winter, they finally managed to build the road to the gold mine.
Then Roman began to frown. freeweɓnovel.cøm
The rocks were hard, the gullies perilous, with substantial vertical drop-offs—most likely the result of intense geological movements, forming fragmented zones.
Generally speaking, gold mines are related to fault structures.
So, the gold was there, but the mining difficulty was too high.
Roman found it troublesome on the scene too.
Moments later, he turned his head and stared at the valleys and streams; water levels were low in winter, and with his excellent vision, he could faintly make out glimmers of gold.
Forget about mining for now.
Let’s settle for gold panning!
Placer gold comes from rock gold, which is washed away by underground water, dark rivers, streams, and other currents, forming placer gold deposits in the river sands.
In the face of high mining difficulties, gold panning was the best option.
After a while, once the infrastructure is improved, they can commence large-scale mining of gold ore.
Roman knew this was a long-term project.
Many people would have to spend the entire winter here.
The road leading here was rough and bumpy, unsuitable for ox-carts or horse-drawn carriages, so Roman had to build various sturdy and flat bridges.
There was no rush with this either, the initial required dry food and supplies would first have to be carried over by manual labor.
Various tools for gold panning also had to be made, like winnowing baskets and sieves.
They would turn this river upside down!