I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 136 Naked Salt
As a knight of Burgundy, the master of the Knight's Castle, and the lord of a manor with more than forty people, Luc woke up in a particularly good mood this morning. He gently moved his white arm away from his chest, took the ochre and pastel-colored pottery cup from the pine bedside table, drank a sip of warm water, then put on a soft and loose linen shirt and walked down the stairs to the bathroom on the second floor.

Ignoring the maid's greeting, he walked to the basin that had been prepared long ago, carefully cleansed his face with pig pancreas soap decorated with fresh flower petals, and then used a willow branch dipped in some coarse salt to rub his teeth in the slightly turbid water.

Luc closed his eyes, feeling the slightly bitter salt water rolling in his mouth, and began to think about today's itinerary:

"Farm cultivation is now back on track. With Father Hugo's endorsement, fertilizer processing no longer needs to be hidden, which is a good thing."

Brother Hugo was "tricked" by Luc back to the manor, but after witnessing the thriving mountains and forests, he decided to stay for a while before going to Cluny. He never gave up on going to this holy place in his mind.

During the time Luc learned to read, he used subtle means, whether through deception or persuasion, to get Hugo to give an "official" guarantee regarding the accumulation of feces. Although Hugo was only a wandering monk, not serving in any monastery, his poverty and justice convinced the people of the forest that he was a true apostle of God, not the church borer they had seen before.

"Ryan's house is halfway built. With this guy personally directing it, we don't have to worry about subsequent problems. However, we need to send more people to the lumberyard. The daily demand for wood is a big deal."

Luc spat out the salt water and threw away the branch, and the maid who did the rough work would clean it up later.

The division of labor in the Knight's Castle is roughly that Lisa is Du Si's personal maid, who is closely responsible for everything about Du Si, another maid does the rough work of mopping the floor and washing clothes, and the cook is responsible for everyone's three meals a day and washing dishes. Occasionally, she will go to the mill to grind flour. The white flour is basically ground and eaten immediately, and the quantity is always kept at half a sack.

Nowadays, the manor is undergoing large-scale construction, coupled with charcoal mining, every day Jill would lead a few serfs to chop and saw trees, and then drive a mule cart to transport the chopped wood back to the fence yard. At Luc's request, Ryan built another pulley, and the creaking sound of the turning axle lingered in everyone's ears all day long.

Luc plans to leave the expansion of the fenced yard to the last step.

After washing up, he went downstairs to train for a while as usual, then rode his horse straight to the salt field.

Yes, Eugene really chiseled out salt!
Since being captured for nearly ten days, Luc would go to the salt field to inspect it every day. Although it was called a salt field, there were actually no buildings at all. The tree trunks cut down by Hans formed a basic enclosure to prevent other animals from coming to lick it.

The herd of deer that led Luc to the salt mine was finally isolated.

Eugene would be taken back to the manor by Hans at night and locked up in the warehouse to sleep, just like George was treated before.

In addition to supervising, Hans also did not forget to cut down trees. The location of the salt mine and the logging site formed a horn-shaped situation. Jill basically understood Hans's temperament and often sent people to collect wood and check on Eugene's situation.

From the beginning, Luc didn't care about Eugene's life or death. The reason why he called him a salt slave was that he treated him as a real slave. Mining salt was hard work, so it naturally required hard labor. Perhaps it was Hans's pressure. Anyway, after struggling for so many days, they finally found some buried salt mines about three meters below the rocks near the root of the mountain.
The closer to the north, the denser the forest, and the muddy road was covered with tire tracks. Luke headed north all the way. Early in the morning, he heard the sound of stones being knocked from a long distance away. At the end of his sight, a shirtless man was working hard to hammer stones at the foot of the mountain. His thin but powerful hands were digging around along the gap. His sweat was reflected by the fine sunlight. Several people standing next to him gathered in a group, as if thinking about something.

Hearing the sound of horse hooves, several people turned around. Ryan, standing in the middle, ran over first to lead the slowing warhorse, saying with a smile, "Master, you're here? It's just right. Eugene just broke out another piece of salt stone, and we were just about to crush it and steam it!"

"Oh? Take me to see it." Luc's eyes lit up and he quickly dismounted.

The saddle and stirrups of the warhorse are already very worn out. Although there is leather, it still requires professionals to make a good set of horse harness, so now we can only make do with what we have.

Luc walked quickly over to them. Ever since he'd discovered salt, all the other things he'd planned, like cutting down trees and building houses, had been put on the back burner. Luc knew this was a salt mountain, but actually mining it and knowing it were possible were two different things. While the amount wasn't large, it confirmed his suspicions. In other words, the fact that one person could produce a small amount of salt in ten days simply proved the salt reserves here were definitely substantial.
Luc was not interested in how the rock salt was formed here after so many changes in the world. He just made salt production the largest project in the estate.

Luke stopped and squatted to pick up the salt stone that had been smashed into several small pieces. The muddy brown stone felt a little rough in his hand. He turned his head to look to the side. There was a slightly larger ceramic pot with boiling water, ready to dissolve the salt stone.

Today, Luc is no longer the novice who racked his brains to figure out how to extract crude salt. After subsequent extractions, he has probably developed a set of standard methods. Although he still cannot extract fine salt, better coarse salt is not a problem.

"How are the preparations going?" "Master, they are almost done!"

Eugene was the only one digging the salt, but there were quite a few people boiling it. Besides Ryan, the lame Paul and Hans were all there. Luc looked around and nodded, saying, "Without further delay, Paul, go get the burnt wood ash, and Hans, throw all the salt rocks into the clay pot."

"Okay sir!"

Paul limped over and poured a bowl of wood ash from burnt straw into the clay pot, then poured in the crushed salt stone. He then stirred it constantly with a wooden stick, trying to dissolve it all.

Ryan, on the other hand, pulled over another pottery and placed a thin linen cloth on it, preparing to filter it later.

Including the final boiling, these are the three most basic steps in salt production for Professor Luke, Ryan and others. They don't need to know the reasons, they just need to strictly follow their instructions.

While the liquid was dissolving, Luc looked at the faces of the three people and fell into deep thought.

Salt is not only a necessity nowadays, but also a real hard currency, and its profit is far greater than that of charcoal.

Of course, the current mining efforts are still small, even on the edge of exploration, but I just don't want to expand the scale.
Luc unconsciously looked towards Cooper Castle.

If Hoffman really did replace more than half of the caravan's resources with charcoal, it would undoubtedly attract Baron Berry's attention. Of course, this wasn't a big deal; a caravan suddenly switching supplies wasn't unusual, especially since it was just ordinary charcoal.
But what if the goods are replaced with salt?

Luc shook his head, thinking that it was enough to eat for the time being.

It’s just that we will need to invest more salt workers in the future.

Eugene's hard work was rewarded. Luc gave Eugene a meat meal that day and planned to let Jill supervise Eugene. He would let old Eck take charge of the lumberyard first. However, there were too few of Luc's men who could take charge independently, so he had to use only these few people to go around in circles.

The dissolution took a long time. During the process, Luc returned to the Knight Castle and had a simple yet complex meal that he had neglected after the birth of white flour.

--dumpling.

The meat filling was specially mixed with eggs, wild leeks and some fresh meat, and the cook cut it into small pieces. Luc personally stirred it with rapeseed oil and salt for the first time in a long time, then kneaded the dough and rolled out the dough, wrapped the stuffing and put it into the pot. At noon, he asked someone to send a plate to Hugo, and then he and Du Si sat at the main table. In this era when it is easy to despise lunch, they ate the juicy dumplings with an inexplicable pious attitude.

Du Si stared with doubtful eyes, tasted it carefully, and then her eyes lit up and she couldn't stop.

From the moment the wooden fork was put into his mouth, he never closed it.

There were fifty dumplings in total, and they were eaten up by the two men without leaving a single one, without even giving Lisa a chance to taste them - after all, many times, whether servants could eat delicious food depended on whether their masters could leave some for them. Many medieval lords would use bread as a container for their meals, and the remaining bread would be rewarded to serfs.

Touching his round belly, Luc rode his warhorse to the salt field again and saw Ryan had wrapped linen with charcoal and was filtering the brine over and over again.

(End of this chapter)