Chapter 114 - Threshing
"General, I need to talk to you about something, okay?"
"What's the matter, Vargas?"
"The wheat in the field is growing, and I'm a little concerned about it."
"What's wrong with the wheat? I don't see anything wrong with it."
" No, general. It's too good a crop, you know. It's great to have so much wheat, but it's hard to harvest."
"I know it's hard work, but it's better than a bad harvest. I don't like it when people complain about that......"
"Well, I don't wanna complain about it, but let me at least bitch about it. I hate the threshing of the harvested wheat, just the thought of it is enough to put me over the edge."
"Oh, I see. You are referring to the threshing."
The wheat seeds had been sown before winter and were finally beginning to bear fruit.
Vargas was talking to me about the wheat harvest.
Apparently, the threshing of the harvested wheat was weighing on his mind right now.
Well, I can understand that.
After all, we are going to be able to harvest a much larger amount of wheat than we have so far, and the amount of work involved will increase by an order of magnitude.
This area was not well developed in terms of agricultural technology.
Originally, the farming method was really simple, just scattering wheat on the land that they managed to cultivate and harvesting the wheat that grew.
The reason lies in the long war.
Since men's manpower is often taken to war, people often disappear when there is no farming to be done.
Rather than carefully weeding the fields, it was better to somehow expand the farmland and maintain the land for sowing seeds, which would lead to a better harvest.
However, this situation has suddenly changed.
The reason was that I had given them the Barca surname, which made it much easier than before to improve the condition of the fields with only the spells of "[Leveling] and [Soil Improvement ] without spending much time and effort.
Naturally, the amount of wheat that grows there has also greatly improved.
As a result, it became possible to harvest as much as the amount of wheat that Vargas could pull in.
However, just because magic made farming more efficient, it did not change the farming technology itself.
In fact, the method of threshing the harvested wheat was very simple in this area, using hands and sticks to remove the berries from the dried wheat.
It is possible to get wheat berries this way, but the larger the quantity, the more work it takes.
It was understandable why Vargas didn't like it.
"It's no use. I'll make a thresher."
This is how I decided to make the threshing process more efficient.
When you hear "threshing" you might think that it's a very complicated process.
Also, when you hear the word "threshing", something else can come to your mind.
The first thing that might come to mind when you hear the word "threshing" is a tool called a Senbakoki1
.
It looks like a large comb, and when you insert the wheat between the metal bars and pull, the fruit falls out.
It can be used for both wheat and rice, and it is a very simple tool.
In fact, I've already made one of these Senbakoki.
Originally, my family in Barca Village, where I was born, had been poor farmers, and there were times when my father was away at battle.
You are reading story I Was Reincarnated as a Poor Farmer in a Different World, so I Decided to Make Bricks to Build a Castle at novel35.com
So, my mother and the children who stayed at home did the threshing work.
At first, like Vargas, I was disgusted by the tediousness of the threshing work.
Threshing by hand takes a lot of time and is a real hassle.
I had been experimenting with growing my own vegetables in the field since I was a child, and to reduce the time wasted, I created a Senbakoki.
However, since I didn't have any metal, I used a piece of wood that looked like it.
This reduced the amount of time spent on the work, but I was still dissatisfied.
The wooden handle was not very durable.
I had always wished for a better one.
I thought, "Why don't I just make this thresher out of hardened bricks?"
It would have been natural for me to think that way.
However, I had to put the brakes on that idea.
The reason was that, although a Senbakoki was certainly convenient, I felt that it was not the best choice.
Compared to the primitive threshing methods of the past, the Senbakoki is certainly a much more advanced invention.
However, there is something even more advanced than that.
It reminds me of a tool I saw in a museum somewhere in my previous life.
There was a rotary thresher, I believe.
It was a further invention that made the Senbakoki a thing of the past.
Moreover, it had been in use for a long time but was so good that some people still used it.
I decided to make one of those.
From a corner of my memory, I picked up some information about rotary threshers.
I believe it had an inverted V-shaped projection on the outside of the rotating cylinder.
You rotate the cylinder while holding the wheat against the prongs.
Then the protrusions would drop the wheat.
You could do it by hand if you just wanted to rotate it, but I think the actual machine was operated by foot.
When you step on the pedal attached to the thresher with your foot, it turns the cylinder.
The problem is that I don't really remember how to press the pedal to turn the cylinder.
"So, Gran, you're up. It should be possible to make it spin with something like this, do you know how?"
"Hmm, a mechanism that rotates when you step on it, that is ......."
"I think it would use gears, though."
"Gears, degozaru, ....... I see. How about something like this?"
"Oh, that sounds good. Okay, let's make a prototype."
In this way, the rotary thresher, which converts the vertical movement of the pedal into the horizontal movement of rotating the cylinder using the gears, was completed.
The threshing process was so fast that it was ridiculous that we were doing it by hand.
Thanks to this, we were able to process a large harvest of wheat in a shorter time than ever before.
CadmarLegend I'll come clean, all I know about what's happening in this chapter is that Vargas is complaining about the large amount of work he's gonna get, having to pull the grain up and out, then Ars giving a solution in the form of a Senbakoki. However, after that, I don't really understand. I tried to search up threshing machines in Japan, to get a better idea, but none are shaped the way that the author put it. So, for now, all I know is that that machine might be a unique one, or I'm an idiot. The second statement is more likely. If you know what that machine that the author described is, please tell me! I don't know if the name got lost in the translating or something, but...