I'm not a lord

Chapter 51 What is Freedom?
If the goal is to build a simple, bumpy dirt road in the countryside that only people can walk on, it is actually not difficult for the current White Bear Territory.

More than a thousand strong laborers can complete the 60 kilometers in just a month.

But Lynn has very high requirements for roads.

In his opinion, the road must be able to withstand the repeated crushing of horse-drawn trucks, as well as the heavy rains in the northern rainy season and the blizzards in winter.

The difficulty of its construction is exponentially greater than that of an ordinary dirt road.

First of all, in order to shorten the distance and facilitate transportation, the road must be straight.

This meant that the serfs had to cut down all the trees along the way, fill in the swamps, move mountains, and build bridges over rivers.

Fortunately, Lynn had already done road exploration and route planning in advance, avoiding all large swamps.

There is only a low hill, two small streams one or two meters wide, and five small swamps along the way.

Secondly, in order to accommodate two carriages, the road must be at least three meters wide.

At the same time, in order to ensure that passing vehicles have a wide field of vision, the area within five meters on both sides of the road must be completely cleared, and even the bushes must be uprooted.

Finally, in order to effectively drain the accumulated water, drainage ditches must be dug on both sides of the road, and the middle of the road must be slightly higher than the two sides.

Before the work officially started, in order to facilitate management and rewards and punishments, Lin En divided the serfs into 200 groups according to their villages, with each group having 5 male serfs.

Every ten groups were organized into a large group, and each large group consisted of fifty serfs.

Each small group has a small group leader, and each large group has a large group leader to manage it.

When building a road, he would divide it into several sections and contract them out to various large groups.

Performance appraisal will be conducted in groups, and the best group within the best group will receive a super award from Lynn.

That is, sixty acres of land and exemption from the obligation to cultivate the land for the lord.

Under the temptation of "freedom" and free salt, these one thousand serfs worked with all their might.

Old Albert was an expert in road construction and was responsible for maintaining the roads in the territory every year.

At his request, the serfs first cut down the trees and then dug up the black soil that had accumulated in the forest for who knows how many years.

The soils are too loose and contain a large number of tree species and grass seeds, making them not suitable for road construction. However, they are rich in humus and are high-quality fertilizer materials.

Lin En divided the team into two groups, responsible for transporting the fertile soil back to the village using wheelbarrows and mixing it with livestock manure.

Once the compost is completed, it can be used as topdressing during the growth period of wheat seedlings.

The felled trees would naturally not be wasted. The slender and soft branches would be made into temporary huts for the serfs to rest on the spot, or used as fuel.

The relatively hard branches and trunks will be pulled back to White Bear Town by horse-drawn carts and stored in warehouses to become reserve wood for carpenters.

When the serfs dug about twenty centimeters down, they found a relatively solid layer of hard soil.

The hardest tree trunks are made into rammers, which are used to compact and level hard soil.

The compacted earth road is the roadbed.

Because the serfs were all working so hard, their shovels were almost shadowy.

In less than a week, they built a ten-kilometer hard dirt road connecting White Bear Territory with the stone mine and asphalt mine.

Lin En was naturally not satisfied with just a dirt road.

During these years as a horse bandit, he had suffered a lot on the dirt road.

There are huge disparities in development and management levels among the various territories in the North, resulting in uneven road quality in different locations.

Those poor quality dirt roads become muddy in the rainy season and dusty in the dry season, seriously affecting the work efficiency of the bandits.

What Lin En wanted to build was a strong and durable gravel road. A gravel road is not just a layer of gravel on a dirt road.

First, a layer of large stones must be filled on the hard soil road, and then gravel can be laid on the large stones.

A sticky filler is also needed between the gravel.

Lynn originally wanted to do it in one go and use asphalt as the filler directly.

But after on-site experiments, he found that the current level of technology was not enough to support asphalt roads.

Unprocessed asphalt ore contains a large amount of impurities and is not suitable for road construction even if it is burned to melt.

Moreover, collecting and burning asphalt will take up a lot of labor, seriously slowing down the progress of the project.

He had no choice but to use fine clay and yellow mud as fillers.

Fortunately, the forests in the northern part of White Bear Territory are full of swamps, so there is no shortage of these raw materials.

However, in order to mine and transport the stones, Lin En could only divide up three large groups to permanently station at the stone mine.

A week later, the speed of the road extending north slowed rapidly due to increased work and a reduced workforce.

But the serfs' enthusiasm for work remained high.

The main reason is that Lynn fulfilled all his promises.

He is not only good at drawing cakes, but also good at making them.

In order to ensure that the serfs had three hot meals a day, he organized a professional logistics team of more than seventy people.

The main members of this team are adult female serfs who are skilled in cooking.

Since Lin En provided three free meals, female serfs from all over the White Bear Territory rushed to sign up. He selected the best and strongest cooks and had them follow the engineering team at all times.

Lynn was also generous with the ingredients. Not only was there enough rye and peas, but there was also meat for every lunch.

He led his bandits on hunting trips, and all the wild animals they shot were chopped into pieces and stewed in a pot.

Although the sources of these meats are varied, including common prey such as bears, wolves, foxes, deer, as well as beavers, squirrels, groundhogs and various unknown birds.

But you just tell me, is it meat?
In addition to ensuring logistics, Lynn also never drags his feet when distributing prizes.

Just after a week, he and Old Albert selected the most active group.

At dinner time, he awarded prizes to five serfs in the group in front of hundreds of serfs.

The spiritual rewards must be maximized, and the material rewards will not be reduced at all. It is a brand new title deed with Lin En's signature and seal.

According to the contents of the land deeds, these five serfs will be freed from their serf status and upgraded to "contract farmers."

They would receive their full allotment of 120 acres and would no longer have to work the land four days a week for the lord.

Of course, taxes and corvee labor were inevitable, and Lin En would set different levels of tax standards based on the actual fertility of the granted land.

The overall tax rate generally remains at around 50%.

But even so, the five serfs were still extremely excited and burst into tears.

Because they experienced the "freedom" that they had never experienced in their lives.

Even if this freedom is still bound by layers of chains.

But the chains eventually loosened a little.

The entire group to which this small group belonged also received a reward, which included two days of vacation.

(End of this chapter)