My conversations with the serfs do not reveal much beyond what I had already speculated, they are indeed using a system of two-field rotation, with wheat as the main crop while leaving half of the field fallow.

They plant spring wheat both in spring and in autumn, as the winter temperatures here are very mild and allow it to be grown all year round.

As I suspected we do not have much livestock, our small wheat crop can only support so much. I would prefer to have more animals, horse and oxen can be used to help with tilling, and all the animals can graze upon the fallow fields and fertilize the land with their droppings, increasing overall efficiency.

I wonder if livestock can be transported in merchant ships? I’m not even sure how they do it in modern times, it’s probably expensive. If I can increase fodder crop production we can probably just intensively breed the ones we already have, though that will take a long time.

I do make a good discovery, among the many vegetables the serfs plant for their own food supply, a few had grown beets last season, and they have more seeds than they can plant in their garden. It isn't a huge amount but in the future, it might be wise to farm them in large quantities to produce sugar.

We go talk to the hunters, Kavanagh rounds up a few of them from their homes before me, and I ask them to take us inland so they can direct me in the forest.

On our way, I ask one of them about the animals they usually encounter. They mostly hunt rabbits and sometimes deer, there are boars in the island too but the hunters leave them alone for fear of injury. There are foxes and wolves, which are the main predator, though Kavanagh overhears and quips that they are smaller and weaker than the mainland variety.

Finally arriving at the forest, I ask them to show me any plants that bear fruit, they immediately shuffle off the beaten path, and following them we quickly come across a wild chestnut tree. Apparently, the ones near Algatolla are scavenged regularly as one way the serfs use to boost their own meager nutrition, but they grow wild over the whole island.

If I were to plant a chestnut farm, it would be years before they bore fruit, but it is a good investment for the future: the more complex and diversified I make the island's economy, the more resistant to market fluctuation and natural disasters it will be.

As it stands now, I fear that if a drought destroys our next crop of wheat, a lot of the population will starve. For now, I can easily send people to pick chestnuts, which will certainly sell better than wheat, while also storing a few to build an orchard outside of town.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

We search for anything else notable, the hunters point out to a few eye-catching plants, most of which I do not recognize and the hunters do not think have any value. Most amusingly a species of berry brush that produces very tasty berries that also regrettably give anyone who eats them terrible diarrhea. They tell me the story of the scavenger to first find and try the berries, who regrettably died from them, but praised their taste on his deathbed, nonetheless.

One of them points out a plant with bright blue flowers, finally something I recognize, alkanets! No one but me seems to understand their importance beyond being pretty. Thankfully, that class I had taken on the history of dyes and textiles is finally paying off, maybe I should search the coast for sea snails to make Byzantine purple, too.

Unlike the chestnuts, they grow much faster and once processed the red dye they produce should claim a very good price in the market, I want to uproot a few exemplars and start a garden as soon as possible.

We don’t find anything else of note, so we get back from the forest, bid the hunters goodbye and set out to walk along the coast. One of the geographical documents I read pointed out a small, natural inlet a small ways away from Algatolla, protected from the sea waves by a peninsula.

Coming closer, I quickly notice the small white crystals resting in the calm shore, this sort of place naturally builds up sea salt.

Salt in medieval times was hard to come by, and very expensive, if I could grab some of the serfs and create drying beds to further refine the briny water here, this would vastly increase the value of our current trade.

Furthermore, salt is not only a great commodity to sell, but it is one that has various uses in the creation of value-added products. In economic theory, if you improve a product and the cost of labor is smaller than that of the increased trade value, then that is a product to which value is added.

An example using salt, if you take cow meat and salt to make jerky, if the resulting jerky sells for more than the cow meat plus salt separately, plus accounting for the hours of work a person needs to make the jerky, then by making jerky you increase the overall value and your profits.

Of course, sometimes doing this is unprofitable, but in that case, you can simply sell the raw materials, and salt has so many uses you can create tons of different products without flooding any of the markets enough to lower the price, dried meats, cured leather, cheese…

My pathway for the next few months has become clear, right now we are preparing for harvest, there isn't much I can do about crops that already in the soil, so I must use the time in the next couple of months well to be prepared by next sowing season.

I'm not sure which of the many resources I have found I should pursue first, but given my power over the serfs, it should be easy enough to pursue any of them, sad as it might be that I have this much power in the first place.

If I collect enough resources and couple them with whatever useless valuables I can find around the palace, plus the savings of the realm, I will definitely have enough to buy sufficient livestock and seeds to implement reforms in all the corners of the island.