When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 604 What on earth does he want to do?
He splashed a handful of clean water onto his face, and when the waves calmed down, Bryson forced a smile at his blurry reflection in the water.

But soon the eyebrows of this smiling face drooped, and the corners of the mouth also drooped bitterly.

Bryson doesn't know whether it is good or bad to have a second career boom at the age of 40.

Compared to the previous job of teaching the naughty children of armed farmers and knights in a church school, this job is much busier and more difficult.

There is a reason why the knights' manors in the mountains have become like this. The mountain people live in a closed small circle and are born xenophobic.

You know, although the armed peasants have great power after taking office on the manor, it does not mean that even the knights cannot touch them.

As long as the knights join forces with the lower-level public book farmers and catch one or two small handles of the armed farmers, they can easily eliminate these "relatives" who are traitors.

With evidence, even if the knight expelled his relatives, it would be reasonable and he would not be labeled a parricide.

The fact that Adrian couldn't do anything to Henderson meant that either he had no leverage over him, or he had extremely high control over Gongbunong.

Even the Knight himself, the highest person in law, could not defeat Henderson, let alone Ansel, an outsider.

It’s not that he doesn’t admire people who have dreams, but he just hopes that the dream won’t affect his life.

He needed the job of a priest, but didn't want to offend the local bosses.

After closing a large number of church organizations and reducing taxes, although overall income decreased, the amount distributed to each individual increased.

Both Horn's Holy Word sect and the Juano sect have one advantage, which is that priests are allowed to marry.

Although he didn't like the fat woman that much, it was his only choice, and their illegitimate child was already five years old.

After hearing that he was allowed to marry, the fat widow was very sweet to him during the few days when he passed the assessment and went home for vacation. Not only did she completely draw a line between herself and her lover Tong Jian, but she also tried many new tricks on him.

I don’t have to live in a gloomy monastery, my salary is enough to provide for my daily needs, I have a son and a wife, and I can even buy some new clothes at the end of the year. What else could I ask for?

Ansel will leave eventually. After all, he can't beat Henderson. Why should I meddle in his business?

Walking out of his room, he forced a smile and walked towards Ansel in the courtyard: "Good morning, Brother Ansel."

"Let's go somewhere."

"Oh, okay." Bryson was guessing at Ansel's mysterious method, but as they walked closer and closer to the ridge along the bushes, he inexplicably felt something was wrong.

Ten minutes later, at the edge of the manor field, under the scorching yet slightly cool morning sun.

Holding a sickle and wearing a straw hat, Bryson stood on the ridge with a numb face: "You said you had a way, I thought you had a good way, why did you use such a crude method?"

"Why is it vulgar?"

"Even if you help the poorest farmers harvest wheat, they won't rebel against Henderson for you."

"Although the mountain folks are xenophobic, they are also simple and honest." Ansel adjusted his straw hat while carrying the fork on his shoulder. "The biggest characteristic of them is that they will repay kindness and grudges."

It is a common consensus among mountain people that kindness must be repaid with vengeance, or it can be said that it is precisely because of the harsh living environment that such a consensus or even an unspoken rule is created.

Because mountainous counties are poor places with scarce resources and fierce fighting, people will always bully you if they think you are easy to bully. Therefore, if relatives and friends do not help each other, it will be difficult to survive.

Especially in hunting and disaster relief, if others take the initiative to help you and you don’t help them, then they may not be able to survive. Who else would be willing to help?
The same applies to revenge. If you don’t take revenge, you will be bullied until your family is destroyed.

Once someone is considered to be ungrateful or ungrateful, he or she will be socially killed in the mountain society.

In modern society, social death is social death, but in a closed small circle like the grassroots level of the empire, social death is only a matter of time before real death.

The armed peasants in the mountainous counties are powerful, partly because of their unremitting revenge and resistance against their lords.

This behavior is considered treason in the eyes of ordinary imperial peasants, but it is absolutely just and reasonable in the eyes of mountain people.

Bryson awkwardly held the scythe that he hadn't touched for a long time. "Excuse me, but I don't see how helping others to plow the land can be a favor. It would be better to just give them some dinars."

"Giving you dinars is wrong. Helping you with labor is helping you, while giving you money for free is charity." Ansel looked at the oat fields swaying in the wind. "In the former case, he treats you as his own, while in the latter, he treats you as an outsider."

"Honestly, even if we help a little, it won't dispel their prejudice. How can our voice be compared with Henderson's?" Bryson persuaded earnestly, "This little favor is not enough for them to support the perpetual lease."

"Why are you in such a hurry? I have three steps to go." Ansel smiled and raised three fingers. "This is just the first step. Let's go and harvest the wheat."

When a farmer named Lalor saw Ansel and Bryson harvesting oats, he stood in a daze for a long time on the ridge of the field.

But then he neither asked nor drove them away. Instead, he silently picked up the sickle and continued to harvest the oat field on the other side of the wheat field.

Lalor had already seen through Ansel's purpose, but he could not refuse. As the poorest family in the village, he had nearly 20 acres of land to harvest.

The period from July to the end of August is the busiest time of the year for the mountain people because it is the harvest season.

The temperature in the mountains drops faster than in the plains. The temperature starts to drop as soon as September arrives, and sooner or later, cold rains will begin to fall. This means that from mid-July when wheat, oats, and barley gradually mature to mid-to-late August, each household of two or three laborers will have to harvest about 9 mu of land.

A month may seem like a long time, but it is actually not, because they still have other farm work to do - mid-to-late July is the time to loosen the soil for the fallow land for the second time.

Although I don’t understand why the date cannot be moved forward or backward, if it is moved, the harvest from the fallow land will be poor next year.

So they can only choose to loosen the soil at this time, and the actual harvesting starts at the end of July, which is actually only 7-15 days away.

The problem was that in addition to harvesting their own crops, they had to spend one or two days a week harvesting crops on the lord's private land.

What's more, the whole family needs to be mobilized. Except for the housewife who takes care of the housework, all laborers, big and small, have to help the lord with farm work and housework.

Not only the harvest, not only the lords, but they also had to arm the farmers with sedge, ferns and firewood to keep them warm in winter, repair the houses, feed the livestock, help thresh the grain and bind the straw.

But they had to do it, because the work varied in weight and was assigned by the village head. If they annoyed him, he would assign heavy work to them for several days in a row, and even the strongest men would be exhausted.

Then the subsequent harvest will be over.

Lalor didn't want to offend Henderson, but he was the only laborer in the family, he was in debt, and he even had to go to the lord's private plot to harvest tomorrow.

If Ansel were expelled, the harvest might not be completed this year, and the farmers with adjacent fields would forcibly cut away the wheat on the pretext of "not wanting to waste it."

There is a reason why the poorest farmers in the manor are poor. After a natural disaster or man-made disaster, they have used up all their favors and have not been able to get back on their feet, which will eventually lead to a vicious cycle.

So while Ansel was doing the work for him, he could only pretend not to see it.

Although Ansel was sweating profusely from exhaustion, he smiled, which was why he asked who the poorest families in the manor were.

Lalor had no reason to refuse.

After harvesting for a whole morning, at lunchtime, Ansel took the initiative to find Lalor.

He did not mention the issue of perpetual lease and 100-household districts, but instead suggested: "It would be too inefficient and tiring for the three of us to harvest and bundle the crops individually.

How about two people harvesting and one person bundling? The person bundling can take a break. We take turns. This is what farmers in Pingyuan County do. It's very particular. What do you think?"

Since he had already accepted Ansel's help, Lalor wouldn't have to worry about having too many lice, so he agreed after weighing the pros and cons.

Harvesting starts in the morning and ends in the evening, until the sun sets, when their farm work gradually stops.

Ansel still didn't mention the perpetual lease. He just agreed with Lalor to continue in two days and left. Standing at the edge of the field, Lalor watched the two leave with a complicated expression.

In the old days, he had to work very hard to harvest about one acre a day, and when he got home he was so tired that he couldn't even eat.

But today he was not too tired, and he still managed to harvest a full 4 acres. If he continued like this, three or four days would be enough to harvest all his fields.

But what exactly does Brother Ansel want?

The next day, Ansel and Bryson continued to carry their sickles and went out, and found the second poorest person in the village.

This time the farmer was not at home, but had gone to the lord's private plot to harvest. Only his wife and a twelve-year-old child were working in the field.

Compared to men, the mother and daughter would be less likely to refuse Ansel's help. It was still the same. Ansel and Bryson harvested, while the mother and daughter were responsible for bundling.

I have to say that there is a difference whether there are strong laborers or not. From morning to night, they only helped to harvest less than 4 acres of land.

In the next few days, Ansel either helped the poor farmers in the manor to harvest, or helped the farmers whose strong laborers were away to do labor service to harvest.

The strange behavior of this strange monk quickly spread throughout the manor.

I don’t know what others think, but Henderson is smiling.

When he heard the news, he couldn't believe it at first, then he followed his idle men to the site and checked it several times before he dared to confirm it.

A dignified monk from a cathedral was actually helping farmers harvest wheat with his butt sticking out and covered in grass debris?
The most important thing is that he actually believed that he could win people's hearts just by helping them harvest wheat!

What a little brat! He is indeed a little brat. Every move he makes is a move that Henderson could never think of no matter how hard he tried.

"Boss Henderson, should we put pressure on those who accept help?"

"No need!" Henderson waved his hand generously and shook his head with a smile, "Let him help. How many people can he help? If we punish them now, it will only give them an excuse."

Standing under the shade of the tree, Henderson smiled contemptuously as he looked at Ansel, who was sweating profusely, had a grim face, and stood up to rub his waist.

Go ahead, I have plenty of time to waste with you.

(End of this chapter)