Chương 205: 202. Winter Competition

It was the early afternoon of a new day, and Kivamus had already finished explaining the design of the wood press to Darora, which he had finished earlier in the morning. The carpenter had been skeptical at first, especially about making the threads of the screw which was usually a very intricate work, before he realised that with the screw being so thick and made from a whole branch, it wouldn't be that difficult to craft it.

Eventually, after asking a lot of questions about the rest of the design, he had agreed that it wasn't that complicated and had assured Kivamus that it should only take him a single day to finish it. They had planned to install it in a temporary shed outside the village walls in the South, since that's where most of the trees were being cut these days.

Back in the present, Kivamus walked back towards one of the armchairs near the fireplace, and looked at Duvas who had just returned from the outside after allotting the workers for the day. Gorsazo had finished today's tutoring of Syryne, who had now returned back to her laboratory in the inner room for now. Snow had started falling once again, and the weather remained just as cold as expected. He looked at the majordomo.

"If Darora is able to build the wood press machine today, we can start making sawdust briquettes from tomorrow. There isn't going to be any shortage of raw material for the wood press, since anywhere a tree is cut or a log is being shaped to better fit a wall or a building, there will always be some wood shavings and sawdust."

He continued, "I think only two labourers should be enough to work the machine - one of them to load the sawdust and wood shavings into the mold for the briquettes, and the other to turn the screw. They can even alternate their tasks when one of them gets tired after working with the screw. That should start giving us a regular amount of sawdust briquettes from tomorrow, which we can use as a fuel in any closed places like inside the buildings for heating.

It's also helpful that it's a much cleaner source of heat compared to coal - being just a processed version of wood." He added, "Since we certainly aren't going to get enough briquettes to completely replace coal, we can keep burning coal in any open places like in the braziers outside, which should prevent their fumes from gathering inside a building, despite all the care we have taken for ensuring proper ventilation in the longhouse blocks."

"I had never even thought of using sawdust like that," Gorsazo commented.

"It wasn't really an option for us in the past," Duvas said with a shrug, "since we never even had that much sawdust, because we never worked with wood on such a large scale in the past." He added, "I agree that any coal which we don't burn can be used to sell to merchants after the winter, which would be a welcome relief to our dwindling treasury. However, just two workers wouldn't be enough for this.

We will also need to allocate a few people to gather up all the sawdust and wood shavings from all around the village and to bring it to that wood press."

"That's true enough..." Kivamus muttered, "but we can hardly afford to spare any workers for that. We need all of them to continue logging in the South." Gorsazo looked at both of them.

"Why don't we use children for this? We can also use this as an opportunity to keep the attendance high in my classes." Kivamus frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"In my classes in the longhouse blocks," Gorsazo explained, "I've seen that there are at least a few dozen children, or kids in the village who are too young to do manual labour, but are still old enough that they are allowed to roam around the village unsupervised, unlike the toddlers which are kept inside the blocks so an elderly can watch over them.

With the weather being so cold for now, none of those kids mind sitting in my classes, but I have no doubt that once it turns into spring, I would barely get half the current attendance, if that. So I was thinking that we could put these children to work by sending them to gather any sawdust and wood shavings in small baskets - which is safe for them and easy enough that they will do it enthusiastically in return for some treats which we can make in our kitchens."

"I get what you mean by incentivising them with treats since they are certainly not going to do it without any reward," Duvas said, "but what does that have to do with their attendance in your classes?"

"It's simple enough," Gorsazo said with a smile.

"The reason they aren't interested in the classes - apart from some exceptions like Maisy and Clarisa - is that they see no tangible benefit by sitting in these classes. Despite all my efforts to keep the classes interesting, most of them simply get bored there, just like Lucem. So I was thinking that we could turn it into a competition."

He continued, "Every evening, whoever has gathered the most number of baskets of sawdust, or maybe even the top three or five kids, would be the ones to get more treats than the others. Of course, the total count will need to be confirmed by the laborers working at the wood press, but the children will be told to keep track of their basket counts themselves.

As you can guess - kids being kids - they will become competitive very fast, and they all will be keeping track of not just their own baskets, but also of their friends and competitors. As it stands now, most of them have to start once again once they reach above a count of ten, since they can't use their fingers for counting anymore, but this will give them a reason to learn counting better in the classes." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Kivamus slowly nodded his head. That was something he might not have thought of by himself, but as a long time teacher Gorsazo had immediately thought of a way to use this competition to incentivise kids to learn more.

"I think that's a very good idea. In fact, let's fix a wooden board on the ground next to the wood press, where those children will have to write their own names as well as their daily tally of basket counts, for which they will also need to focus on learning the alphabet." Gorsazo grinned.

"That will be helpful as well! I will make the announcement about this competition in today's classes in the evening. I'm sure that we will get a good participation in this."

"Certainly," Kivamus continued, "but those kids can easily get fiercely competitive, and they might start going to places which would be too risky for them, just to do better than their friends. For example, when they see that a branch of a tree is going to fall soon, or maybe a tree itself is going to crash to the ground in a few moments, they might try to get as close to it as possible to be the ones to get any small pieces of wood before their friends could, but that can easily lead to accidents.

Also, it is not a good idea for kids that young to be running around in the snow for that long. They can easily forget in their excitement that they are feeling too cold, which can lead to hypothermia... that is, they can get a bad cold or worse."

He added while trying to imagine that scenario, "I am already not comfortable with the idea of making children work - although it might be fine if it's done only for a short while without risking their safety in any way, otherwise it can easily be claimed that we are exploiting them for our own gains. In fact, I don't want to use child labour if at all possible. Ideally, children should be learning in schools at that age, not doing any work..." He shook his head.

"Of course, our situation is not good enough to afford that yet, but the point stands."

"Then why not limit this competition just to the lunch hour?" Duvas suggested.

"The temple bells are audible everywhere in the village, including the nearby areas where any work is going on, so every day when the clock strikes twelve in the noon, all the workers take a break for nearly an hour. That can be a safe time for the children to gather what they need to."

"Hmm..." Kivamus nodded.

"That can work, but that will only give enough material for the wood press workers to use in the afternoon." He thought about it for a moment, and suggested, "Let's do this then. The workers gather for work at around eight bells, right?" Once Duvas gave a nod, he continued, "In that case, the children can leave the longhouses at the same time as their parents and other adults.

It takes a while for the labourers to gather up their tools and sharpen them, or to do whatever other preparation they need to do for that day's task, and that is a safe enough time for the children to gather up the sawdust from the previous day. On the days when it has already snowed over it, it's better for them to not go out at all anyway, and the wood press workers can just use any leftover wood shavings from the previous day.

Otherwise, the children can take their full baskets to the wood press machine after the labourers are ready to start their day's work, which will give the wood press workers enough material to work with until it's lunchtime." He continued, "The children can do the gathering again during the lunch hour break of labourers, which will give more raw material to the wood press workers and will keep them busy until the evening. Of course, in the evenings, the children will be learning in their classes with Gorsazo.

That will give them a regular schedule of doing some work, then a few hours to rest and play, then repeating the same in the afternoon, and then finally classes in the evening."

For a moment, he wondered if he was already training the children to become corporate drones in the future, before he remembered that this poor medieval village could hardly be compared to 21st century London, and any cost savings by using the sawdust briquettes in place of coal would already be used for the betterment and safety of the village, while also allowing them to breathe in cleaner air inside the longhouse blocks. That had to be a good enough reason to basically allow child labour...

or at least he hoped it was. He looked at his former teacher.

"You can tell the children to publicly speak about how many baskets they gathered in your classes, so that the best performers can be cheered by the rest of the class. That is when you can give them the treats which can be made by Madam Helga here."

"That's a good suggestion," Gorsazo agreed.

"I'll talk with Madam Helga about what she can make which is cheap and yet tasty for the kids." Kivamus suddenly got an inspiration.

"That sawdust is also going to act as a good insulator, isn't it? Of course it will be!" He gave the answer himself without waiting for any reply.

"If we can just find some old cloth or fabric to fill that sawdust in, we can easily make some blankets for the villagers!" Duvas shook his head.

"We just don't have any spare clothes for that. We have already been reusing what the previous baron had allowed us to buy a few years ago. As for the villagers, they already know that sawdust can keep them warm, which is why many of them have already gathered some of it to use as a poor man's mattress above the bunks they sleep on."

"Oh... I should have expected that..." Kivamus sighed.

"We'll have to see if we can do anything about this after the winter." After a while, he asked, "When will it turn into a new year? There was a calendar in the Ulriga palace, but I haven't seen such a thing here."