Already the refugee family has arrived in the village that they start settling into one of the outer houses of the village, with direct access to the fallow land that surrounds it, and four bovines to care for.

However, since the refugees lost everything in a bandit attack, except for apple cores, Seloniel asks them what instruments they need to function as farmers. Buckets, a tight, cylindrical container to make cheese wheels, a knife, a shovel, a trowel and a trough for the bovines being the most pressing. After these tools are complete:

"I might be wondering about whether having three cows will yield enough cheese for us to reduce the cost of food. I spent nearly two thousand gold to get the bovines here" Janick tells Seloniel in a whiny voice, upon realizing that the main expenses incurred thus far were on food or farming, and payday is approaching for the villagers working on the road project from Laverton to the next village.

Speaking of payroll, Janick prepares the salary for each of these villagers for the week, knowing that there is no trade from or to the village until the road is completed, which will take a few more weeks at this rate, maybe two months at most. Especially when the path taken to get to the village from the next one over on the existing, poorly marked trail is about five leagues and, on average, the villagers can build five-eighths of a mile per day of dirt road, especially since, on average, trees are spaced about twelve to fifteen feet apart in this forest.

"I think we're going to need a wagon large enough for hauling trees to the sawmill; these hand carts aren't going to cut it. However, the villagers will use hand carts for other purposes" Seloniel realizes that she will need to make a yoke and a tongue, to which the yoke is to be affixed, for two bovines to pull the resulting wagon.

"We want the wagon to be able to put two eight-foot logs one after the other, but not take the whole sixteen feet. And being able to withstand the weight of such" Janick ponders what kind of frame and axles are necessary to build the wagon.

Especially since the easy part of building one such wagon is, well, the box which, because of its use for timber, is 8 foot long. And then one needs to affix a 1.5-foot-wide jockey box for someone to drive the wagon. As night falls, however, they have barely finished building the box and tacking on the jockey box to it.

Meanwhile, the refugees draw sawdust from the sawmill and then put the sawdust in their own trough for the four animals to eat from. But not without Madritza casting a spell on the trough full of sawdust, making the sawdust not only edible to the four bovines, but also more nutritious to the bovines than would normally be the case.

And she then proceeds to cast a spell on the apple cores that both Samka and her proceed to plant at night using their brand-new trowel, to form some improvised orchard which, hopefully, will result in a tree able to bear fruit a few months from now.

But little do the villagers know is that the side effects of casting life magic are not at all like the consequences of casting alcohol or fire magic, in that they aren't incurred by the caster.

The following day, the villagers awaken to a village with the unmistakable stench of manure that's a lot stronger than they'd normally expect out of a single dairy farm with only four cows. Or at least the two witches.

One of Janick's neighbors knocks on her door to ask for answers regarding this stench. Then follows the other villagers lined up in front of the village's manor.

"Do you have any explanation for the sudden stench in this village?" an angry villager asks, while Janick has yet to know what's really going on with these refugees. "A farming accident?"

"Are these refugees cursed?" another angry villager asks, pinching his nose.

"Can alcohol magic actually do anything against that stench?" a third angry villager, who seemed to love Janick's magical wine, wonders whether a cloud of alcohol would make the putrid smell of cow manure more bearable.

"I will inquire about the source of this fetid smell. Until then, however, here's your pay" Janick then distributes the pay to all the villagers as they go out and chop trees in the forest.

Perhaps, if there really is nothing that can be done to alleviate the issue of smell, I can use the stench of the village to my advantage and open a bank! A smelly bank can deter some would-be thieves! However, I will need capital; 6000 gold in assets isn't enough to make banking a viable venture. I can take care of making the metallic teller safety bars, Janick has an idea emerge about banking; however, all that she knew about banking was that banks lent money and did so with interest. And, by digging a vault underneath the manor, I might be able to get some material to fill some holes left behind by stump removal! Or maybe iron ore...

And the same apparently works in reverse, too: depositors open bank accounts not only to keep money safe, but also to get interest on their savings, obviously at a much lower interest rate than what was lent out.

Since it's only today that the villagers started complaining about the nauseating levels of putrid smell, in Janick's mind, the most obvious lead had to do with the refugees' actions. To this end, she then knocks on Madritza's door. But Madritza is busy milking the magical sawdust-fed cows, which makes her go back to the baker's home, and continue helping Seloniel build the wagon for the wood millers' use to carry felled trees to the lumber mill.

After the two witches are done making the wheels for the wagon, they realize Seloniel can't hold the wagon's box by herself. That, even though Seloniel is clearly the stronger (and more muscular) of the two physically. Not that Janick was particularly weak, but perhaps the help of the lumber millers would be well-appreciated now that the wagon is close to completion.

Speaking of lumber millers, Janick goes to the lumber mill to ask for help getting the wagon finished, especially since they are the ones going to use the wagon once the wagon is complete.

"Your wagon is almost ready; can you help us hold the wagon box in place while I put the wheels on the axle? Once that is done, the wagon will be ready for you to use!" Janick asks the lumber millers before the ends.

"Finally, you realize that a hand cart is not going to cut it to fetch logs!" the lumber miller sighs in relief, but is covering its nose on his way to the baker's shop.

Life on the frontier is already hard enough as it is, even tax-exempt, even with magic. But the sooner I can go back to being an alcohol merchant, and, from there, being a banker, the better. There just isn't much banking out here on the frontier, Janick starts thinking about what she expects in the long run, while she puts the forward wheels on the wagon's axle.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Once the forward wheels are in place, the wood millers, as well as Seloniel, hold the wagon box by the rear, when Janick is busy installing the rear wheels on the wagon. Whereas hand carts could barely carry a single tree's worth of lumber-grade logs, here the wagon could carry four times as much. But even then she realizes the villagers are cutting down trees faster on this construction site than the lumber millers could haul them.

And, upon completion of the wagon, Janick goes to the refugees' dairy farm to ask for explanations regarding the stench covering the village, since it was her most obvious lead. Once she arrives at the refugees' dairy farm, she sits down with Madritza:

"The villagers are wondering what makes the village much smellier than it used to since you arrived. I don't think, personally, the bovines I bought for you did this on their own; they didn't seem to be abnormally smelly, or at least not enough to make an entire village smell fetid like cow manure!" Janick asks the refugee farmers.

"It's common to spread manure across one's grazing ground, or an apple orchard if you operate both an apple orchard and a dairy farm, surely you are familiar with that aspect of farming" Madritza retorts.

"The stench is not consistent with the herd size. For an area that size to smell that much, normally, you would need a much larger herd. However, there has been no regular feed in the village since the uprising, so what have you been feeding these animals?" Janick asks, suspecting that perhaps a questionable choice of feed, or digestion thereof, would be the reason behind the stench.

"As you said, there was no good feed for the bovines in this village, so we had to make do with sawdust that no one seemed to have any use for. However, I enchanted the sawdust so that it could be more nutritious for the cow" Madritza explains to her.

I knew it was common practice to spread manure on soil used for cultivation or pasture, but I am not well-versed enough in the use of life magic in farming to know the risks or effects; the bulk of my magic knowledge is about elemental magic. Hopefully, as the bovines eat the sawdust, the manure from the enchanted sawdust will fertilize the ground it's laid on, much like manure resulting from eating non-magical feed, but I don't expect it to be instant, Janick starts to think of the usage of life magic the refugees are making.

"I guess magical sawdust is the next best thing but how am I to explain to the villagers that it's not a farming accident, as they would like to say, but instead about the use of new farming methods? New fertilizers, or magical ones?" Janick is confused as to how to tell the villagers about life magic. "I really hope it will result in better grazing ground soon"

"Mom made me plant enchanted apple cores in another area last night" Samka adds to this conversation.

"I guess, in a few months' time, we can have apples to eat in this village, provided we keep the bovines alive for that long" Kix comments on their youngest daughter being made to plant enchanted apple cores at the village's edge, before going out, pick out two bovines to pull the lumber millers' wagon and attach the yoke to them.

"Janick, from a witch to another, I think it would be well-advised that you learn about the impact of using life magic. It's very delicate to wield" Madritza then asks Janick for some time separate from the rest of the family, because Samka already knew about these aspects of life magic as relevant to non-practitioners.

The two witches go outside, while Samka remains inside, and Madritza points at where her daughter planted enchanted apple cores.

"I might understand better now why you kept the apple cores: you wanted to grow new apple trees for the village! But what are the main dangers of using life magic, beyond making manure stink more?" Janick asks the life witch, knowing very little about life magic beyond it being used for healing.

"For example, if you want to use magic on a plant seed to make some plant grow faster, the plant's life cycle will be accelerated, and its lifespan will be reduced accordingly. And, of course, the soil gets exhausted faster, too, at least not without the use of manure or emptying a cesspit and then spreading its content into a field where crops are grown" Madritza explains to the alcohol witch.

"So you're saying that we might be getting multiple crops of apples per year, but, in turn, the apple tree could die out faster?" Janick asks about the implications of using magic on the apple cores.

"You see, with life magic, the consequences are mostly borne out in the long run, it's not like elemental magic where consequences tend to be incurred by the caster, and almost immediately"

"There's another question I have. If you feed enchanted sawdust to cows, would it make the cows eating it age faster?"

"I believe not. However, it's more nutritious for them, and so will its manure for the soil"

"I guess it will make the ox fatter, and it will also make the cows produce more milk, which will then be turned into butter and cheese; however, if one grows unenchanted crops on soil on which manure from animals eating enchanted feed, would these crops grow and age faster as well?"

"Janick, you sound as if you want to farm using life magic! You already had your hands full making alcohol with magic, and working wood and metal when you aren't!"

"No? I just don't want to mislead the villagers about the stench, I want to understand what the use of life magic is going to mean for this town's food supply!"

"But no, animals eating enchanted feed won't make them age faster, unlike enchanting seeds for rapid growth"

Looks like we've been doing anything but what the Supreme Council sent us here to do! Sometimes, it seems like the Supreme Council wants to get rid of us! Janick's mood seems to be a little down, before flying to the villagers chopping down fir trees to build a forest road to announce them the cold, hard truth about the stench in the village.

"Attention all villagers: the refugees are feeding the cows and oxen with enchanted sawdust. It appears that enchanted sawdust, while more nutritious to the cows, is also more nutritious to the soil, when the cows eat it and turn it into manure. However, it appears that the price to pay for our food security, for more cheese and fertile land, both for grazing and, a few months from now, apple trees, is fetid odors in the village, because all of this is borne out of manure. The bonus is that there won't be predators coming for the village so long as the odor remains fetid" Janick announces to the villagers, who start realizing that perhaps the source of the fetid smell is put to good use.

"Finally, we have the answers to our questions!" the villager who asked her about farming accidents earlier today sighs in relief.

"I guess we have no choice but to endure the stench in the village since what causes it is our source of food!" another resident of Laverton realizes that, if they are going to live, they need to eat.

"Better a local source of food than nothing, I guess... the uprising cut us off from our source of food, and these refugees have the right idea" another villager comments before Janick returns to the baker's shop.

Upon returning to the baker's shop, Janick commissions Seloniel for additional work, which she deems to be done in a matter of hours:

"Now that the refugees have begun milking the cows, the time has come for them to start producing butter with the cream. For this reason I think it's a good idea to start making a butter churn for them" Janick suggests to her.

"It seems like the pile of unprocessed iron ore is steadily shrinking as we make more metallic implements; until the forest road is finished, I might have to mine the ore myself" Seloniel realizes that, while the uprising made the iron production screech to a halt, there wasn't that much being mined under the previous lord of the village.

Making a pickaxe for herself doesn't seem to take Seloniel that long, but after that, there remains the butter churn to make. Which, for the purpose of the refugees' dairy farming, is going to be a plunger-style butter churn.

I really hope that everything will go back to normal when the road will be finished, and we can then hold our inaugural marketplace! Janick seems to despair at the pace the project seems to take, and what she needs to buy for the town. And, of course, accumulating money for her plan to open a bank to come to fruition.