Chương 51: 5.i

Debt Season is the time when the peasantry harvest peas, beans and vetches. While not as valuable as the wheat harvest it is useful to sustain the subjects of the land amidst that harvested in their own portion of wheat. Ongoing while they harvest these crops is the further processing of the tithed and counted bushels of grain both your own (first of course) as well as their share of the harvest. For all grains, first it is threshed with a flail to separate the grains from the ear.

The grainflail may be used, a stick of two long dowels: handstaff and beater, joined by a leather thong. A subject can be expected to thresh about seven bushels of wheat in a day, or eight bushels of rye, fifteen of barley or eighteen bushels of oats. After threshing the grain is winnowed to remove the chaff and straw. This is best done upon a windward hill where the breeze can bring the chaff and straw loose of the heavier seed.

Proper and attentive peasants will carefully collect this waste to use as animal fodder. It is not recommended to tax and a gracious lord can bequeath the chaff and straw from his own grains to the laborers if rewards are earned. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Finally the grain is sieved to remove the smaller fouling seeds. From here it is now the most precious.

If properly tended and stored wheat will keep for as much as a year if one is on well terms with local gods. Beans and peasecods are to be dried as they will not keep without this special attention unlike the good grains. These serve well as feed for peasants and livestock alike to fodder over winter. By the end of the season all debts are to be paid in full both by subjects and lieges both.

Ideally it is best practice to have portioned off all the owed grains for the subject and yourself far in advance in the previous season but as is tradition it is not final until the storing and measuring of the grain. So is it known as the Debt Season. - Coinage and Lordly Stewardship by Sir Broghuilidad Silvertongue of Cortaza