Location: Outer Farmlands, South of Armathane
Time: Day 338 After Alec's Arrival
The land was awake.
Not just growing — functioning.
Rows of wheat, barley, oats, and rotational clover stretched across the hills like structured waves. Between every third row ran a narrow trench — not haphazard, but carved with precision. The water flowed through each segment at a calibrated trickle.
No floods. No drought.
Just irrigation designed by intent, not tradition.
Alec walked slowly alongside the surveyor assigned to the southern holdings. His boots were dusty. His coat hung open. The wind tugged at the hem, but he barely noticed.
He was listening.
And counting.
"The new sluice gates on the western channel — are they holding under pressure?" Alec asked.
"Yes, my lord," the surveyor said. "The counterweight design you installed allows for release without needing full crew. One farmer, two turns. Done."
"And the northern silos?"
"Reinforced with stone ring foundations. Rats can't get in. And the grain stays dry even with the storms."
Alec nodded.
The man wasn't lying. He didn't have to.
Alec had already visited the northern silo two hours before dawn.
🌾 Agricultural Revolution, Layer by Layer
Under the Midgard Company's oversight, the agricultural division had expanded into a multi-tiered system, coordinated like a war effort. Alec had seen to every part:
Irrigation Grids – Replacing rudimentary trenches with leveled canals and sluice-controlled water flow. Gravity-fed systems designed to waste nothing.
Crop Rotation System – A four-season matrix:
Year 1: wheat
Year 2: legumes (nitrogen replenishment)
Year 3: root crops
Year 4: pasture or restFarmers were trained via on-site instructors in rotation theory and soil balancing.
Seed Selection & Sorting – Grains were now pre-tested for yield potential. Alec had created a seed archive, storing top-performing stock. The farmers called it The Golden Room.
Food Preservation & Storage – Dry stone silos, insulated grain houses, ventilated root cellars. No more rot. No more weevil infestations.
Wind & Water Mills – Optimized for both grain crushing and oil pressing. Blades now carved to better catch rotational wind shifts — Alec had redesigned the gearing system entirely.
The Breathing Farms – Animal Husbandry Systems
The pastures beyond the second irrigation ring hummed with a different rhythm.
Not crop rows. Not furrowed grids.
But life — loud, moving, eating, breeding.
The Midgard Company had transformed the western land tract into what Serina had half-jokingly called a "creature district," though the phrase stuck.
And it was working.
🐄 Cattle & Large Livestock
Alec had introduced rotational grazing grids — split-field systems that allowed herds to feed in one zone while another regenerated. This not only preserved pasture, it increased milk production by 18% and reduced parasite cases by over half.
Cattle were categorized by yield, age, and breed line. Detailed branding sigils were used — not for ownership alone, but for data tracking. A red double-line indicated high-yield mothers. A blue-marked flank meant disease-resistant stock.
Veterinary techniques were simple, but standardized. Daily checks. Clean hoofing stations. Controlled crossbreeding with select bulls.
Alec refused to call it husbandry.
He called it biological logistics.
🐐 Goats & Hogs
Goats roamed the hill pens further east — their milk thinner but valuable for cheese and soap production. A rotating team of handlers logged feed rates and offspring cycles.
Pigs, meanwhile, were bred in two types:
Black-soil rooters, used for waste consumption and soil turnover
Fat-backed greys, designed for meat and oil rendering
Alec had instituted a three-tier pen system: feeding, fattening, and final-hold. No waste runoff was allowed. Every byproduct — bone, blood, hide — was accounted for in secondary processing reports.
"You're breeding too fast," Alec told one handler during inspection.
The man blinked. "Isn't that good?"
"Not if we can't feed them. Everything is a balance. Even life."
🐓 Poultry Systems
The poultry fields were segmented with tiered wooden coups — layers of raised enclosures allowing for vertical flock space. Chickens were categorized by breed and layer cycle, and Alec had introduced salt-dust coops to reduce parasite infestations.
Eggs were stored in cool-burrow cellars insulated with straw and ceramic layering — an Alec adaptation using low-cost ventilation tunnels from the abandoned fish markets in northern Armathane.
"Every egg is a ledger item," he'd told the poultry lead.
And it was true.
Each egg was weighed, dated, and stamped. Fowl production increased so steadily that nobles had begun requesting chicken quotas as part of tax relief negotiations.
🐝 Bees & Apiary Yards
To the far west, flanked by clover and mint plots, stood rows of cylindrical hives made from carved wood and ash-smeared clay. The apiary sector had been Alec's personal experiment — and it had paid off.
Beeswax now served in salves, candles, parchment sealants, and even light industrial lubrication.
Honey became a luxury export item, but more importantly — a preservative.
The bees were watched by two full-time keepers, their faces wrapped in thin-veiled linen. Their hives were rotated every quarter-season based on bloom forecasts drafted by Alec's botanical analysts.
"You're managing insects," Serina had once said.
"I'm managing civilization," Alec had answered.
🐛 Silk and Thread — Experimental Breeding
In a controlled barn — humid, warm, closed to outside air — silkworms were being bred in shallow drawers of woven reed. They were fed mulberry leaves Alec had introduced from a trade route sample acquired months earlier.
It was slow, delicate work.
But already, a soft experimental weave had been spun from raw cocoon strands — stronger and finer than anything in Midgard's textile sector.
"Silk will be the future of noble wear," Alec said during a demonstration to Company weavers.
"It's expensive," someone argued.
"So was steel," Alec said. "Until we made it common."
🐎 Livestock Notes: Draft Animals & Genetics
The stables housed more than milk cows and poultry.
Selective breeding of draft horses and mules had begun under Alec's direction. Taller stallions were paired only with sure-footed mares. Hoof trimming and gait testing became standard, and Alec had even developed early traction harness models that reduced joint strain in carts by 27%.
His goal wasn't just food or power.
It was endurance. In animals. In systems. In structure.
🧾 Company Ledger Annotation — Internal (Filed under: Animal Husbandry)
All meat, milk, hide, bone, fat, and byproduct outputs now recorded under Sector C3.Projected capacity for local food independence: 92% by next frost.First-class bee colonies producing wax at surplus.Silk draft sample successfully presented. Scaling requested.
Recommendation: secure outer borders with fence-trap irrigation against potential wildlife or sabotage.
— Signed: Alec Alenia, Chief Overseer
📦 The People of the Fields
He passed a group of workers hauling full sacks into a rolling cart. They weren't nobility. Not craftsmen. Just farmers. But they stood straighter than when he first arrived.
One of the older men, hair sun-bleached white, stepped forward and bowed.
"We… we talk about you, sir," he said. "Hope you don't mind. We say the fields listen better now. Because of your plans."
Alec didn't smile, but he inclined his head.
"They listen because you learned how to speak to them."
🗂 Logistics, Discipline, Scale
Every harvest zone had its own inventory master. Every cart was tagged and tracked. Alec had designed a system of color-coded route markers that even an illiterate worker could follow — red for grain, green for produce, blue for livestock feed.
Weekly reports arrived at the central administrative block in Armathane.
Not estimates.
Counts.
Numbers weren't negotiable anymore.
And with those numbers came stability.
Which meant power.
🧭 Dialogue: Alec and Serina
Serina arrived near sundown, boots dusted, eyes sharper than usual.
She fell in beside him without needing to be told where they were walking.
"Grain output?"
"Up 61% from last year," Alec said.
"Even with the late spring frost?"
"Frost doesn't kill crops when you design for runoff insulation and mid-soil heat sinks."
She glanced at him sideways. "You make it sound so easy."
"It isn't," Alec said. "But it's simple when you know how systems breathe."
They paused near the edge of the irrigation grid.
Serina squatted and ran her hand through the running water, watching it swirl between her fingers.
"The priests say this is unnatural."
Alec didn't reply at first.
Then: "What's unnatural is letting people starve because you're too proud to evolve."
She smiled. "Good answer."
"It wasn't meant to be clever," he replied. "It's simply true."
🕯 Final Reflections: Alec's Internal Notes (Later That Night)
Day 338. Food security is no longer a theory. Midgard can now store grain at a surplus level for three months.Most nobles do not yet realize what that means.But they will.
Control of food is control of morale, economy, and motion. Armies don't move without flour. Nobles don't rule without bread. And merchants do not barter without hunger at their back.
Let the Church pray over fields. We will feed them.
Next: livestock optimization and cold preservation.