The people of Fontdmer Town picked out the biggest rye seeds they could find.
But honestly, the biggest seeds aren't always the best for planting.
Seeds that are way bigger than normal rye are probably freaks of nature—their genetics are all over the place and won't pass down to the next generation reliably.
Thane started with the guaranteed thousand acres of prime real estate.
Good seeds should be uniform in size, plump and round, with even coloring. No shriveled or damaged ones, and definitely nothing moldy or bug-eaten.
The most common old-school method for picking seeds is salt water screening.
You add the right amount of salt to clean water, then drop the seeds in. The bad seeds float to the top, while the good ones sink to the bottom.
But the Northern Borderlands are way too far from the east coast—salt is genuinely scarce as gold out here.
A thousand acres needs at least 44,000 pounds of seed, maybe even 66,000 pounds. Thane couldn't afford to blow salt on all of that.
There are other methods like mud screening and diluted urine screening, but Thane went with wood ash water screening.
You mix wood ash with water to make a slightly cloudy solution. The screening effect is pretty close to salt water—you just watch which seeds sink and which ones float.
After screening the seeds, you fish out the good ones, wash them clean, and let them dry.
Thane added one final step of hand-picking to make sure he had the absolute cream of the crop.
This thousand acres was Fontdmer Town's guaranteed food supply—he couldn't afford to screw around with the seeds!
Once all the seeds were screened, Thane's chosen fields had already been plowed and fertilized.
Worth mentioning—after spreading fertilizer in the furrows, you have to plow the ridges a second time. That way the fertilizer gets buried in the actual ridges where it belongs, and then you can plant.
Good thing it stays cold up north and planting doesn't happen until early May. That gave Thane enough time to get everything dialed in.
There are three ways to plant seeds: spot planting, row planting, and broadcasting.
Broadcasting wastes seeds like crazy.
Spot planting doesn't work for large areas.
So Thane chose row planting.
Row planting basically means using a wooden rake to make straight, shallow trenches about 1.5 inches deep in the ridges.
You usually use rope as a guide to keep the rows straight, then spread seeds evenly in the trenches without letting them pile up.
After planting, you use the rake again to cover the seeds with a layer of fine soil mixed with wood ash, then smooth it out. Finally, you roll over the ridges with a ground roller—that's a wooden rod with ropes on both ends—to pack down the soil and make sure the seeds are making good contact with the dirt.
The farmers couldn't wrap their heads around this whole planting process just from hearing about it, so Thane had to show them the ropes himself again.
Planting isn't like plowing—if something goes sideways, you can't just fix it later.
Once the seeds are covered with soil, nobody knows what's happening underneath.
So Thane picked eight sharp farmers to train intensively, spending a full day personally babysitting their planting process.
He made sure they spread the rye seeds evenly and in the right amounts. In the end, Thane set the standard at 50 to 62 pounds of seed per acre.
Then Thane had these eight farmers teach the others. Only after spot-checking and giving their work the thumbs up did he give the green light for large-scale planting.
"Finally got the seeds in the ground."
Watching the people moving around like ants across the vast fields, Thane finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course, this wasn't the end of it.
After the seeds went in, they still needed to put up fences around the field edges and stick scarecrows in the ground to keep rabbits and sparrows from trashing the crops.
At the same time, Thane had already told Ryan to set up some traps near the fences to deal with wild animals—and hey, score the territory some extra meat while they were at it.
These jobs didn't need Thane's personal touch.
If they couldn't even put up a decent fence, they'd really deserve a good ass-kicking.
Of course, Thane wasn't going to plant just these thousand acres.
If something went south, the whole town would go hungry.
Food is everything in any era—you can't take any chances with it.
Once you lose your food supply, Fontdmer Town would crumble like a house of cards.
Actually, Thane didn't expect one spring planting to magically boost all the yields—especially since seed improvement and breeding don't happen overnight.
What Thane really wanted was to shake up the farming habits around here, and that was the most doable goal.
Now that he'd pulled that off, once these thousand acres were fully planted, Thane planned to have Otto mainly handle the remaining land.
Thane would focus on spot-checking and keeping an eye on things.
He'd taught them the tricks they needed to know. As the lord, Thane couldn't spend all his time fussing around the fields.
Thane had plenty of other fish to fry.
The next day at noon.
In front of the manor with its newly built wooden house.
"You two get ready. Tomorrow we're going to survey the territory."
After getting everything squared away, Thane ordered.
Pamin and Eliric looked completely lost, not understanding why their lord, who'd just wrapped up three days of planting work, suddenly wanted to survey the territory.
"Baron, where are we headed?"
"Anywhere that's not extremely dangerous."
Thane gazed into the distance with a weathered expression and sighed, "I haven't had a chance to really take in Shadowpine Ridge's scenery, and I don't know if the ice at Blue River Bay has melted yet."
"My lord, if you want to see whether the ice has melted, we could go check for you," Eliric chuckled. "You'd be better off staying in town working the forge—it's safer, and you could get our axes hammered out faster too."
"And who's going to plan the irrigation channels for the fields—you'll handle that too?" Thane shot back with a sideways glance.
"Nah, that's way over my head."
Eliric shook his head firmly.
"Haha!"
Thane and Pamin looked at each other and cracked up, then started figuring out who would come along tomorrow.
Actually, the scenery and irrigation planning were just cover stories.
Most importantly, Thane had gotten a system notification a week ago that [Ore Vein Detection (Green)] had been unlocked.
This trait let Thane sense valuable mineral veins within about 1,000 feet of himself.
Not just metal ores, but salt deposits, stone quarries, and more—even clay and quality timber counted as mineral veins.
It came with tons of knowledge too, including how to smelt and use various materials.
Like how to fire red bricks from clay, how to make peat, and all sorts of detailed info like that.
But he had to get close to receive the notifications, then use those hints and the knowledge in his head to pinpoint exactly where the veins were.
As for the next trait, he needed to personally survey five mineral veins in his territory, mine 500 tons of metal ore, and smelt 100 tons of metal to unlock [Mine Lord].
After the laughter died down, Pamin suggested, "There are tons of wild beasts on the plains. Ryan has the most experience dealing with them—I hope you'll bring him along, my lord."
"Yeah, have him bring another hunter too. That'll solve our food situation." Thane nodded in agreement.
"Should we bring a maid along? To take care of your clothes and meals?"
"This is a survey, not a vacation. What do we need a maid for?"
Thane chuckled and said without hesitation, "They don't know how to do squat, and they'd probably just be dead weight if we run into trouble."
Nobody dislikes comfort, but this wasn't the time for it.
"Yes, my lord, I get it."
Pamin nodded slightly in response, also showing his respect.
He knew Thane hadn't been a traditionally spoiled noble before—when they'd traveled together, he'd roughed it outdoors and eaten and slept alongside his guards.
He'd just been worried that having maids to wait on him in Fontdmer Town might have changed Thane's habits.
But apparently, their lord hadn't changed a bit.
"Alright, I'll pick six more guards to escort us. How does that sound?"
"Two will be plenty."
Thane decided.
The trip was mainly about finding mineral veins, so they needed to keep things on the down-low.
It wasn't that he didn't trust the other guards—too many people meant too many big mouths.
With Pamin and Eliric both coming along, there was no need for a parade. It would make moving around easier too.
"Yes, Baron."
Pamin acknowledged and immediately got word to Ryan.