75 Learning to Bake

When Jayde returned a couple of hours later she walked directly to Master Whitestone's smithy. Many of the villagers called out greeting, which Jayde returned politely — she was still unaccustomed to how enthusiastic the villagers were.

When Jayde arrived at Master Whitestone's smithy both the blacksmith and Elder Ryunzo were waiting for her at the door, Master Whitestone hurried to help Jayde with her heavy burden. Opening the basket that Jayde had dragged over, Master Whitestone was blown away, the basket didn't contain iron ore which he had been expecting but was filled with iron bars, that had already been purified.

Lifting one of the iron bars, Master Whitestone inspected the iron bar carefully he was even more impressed seeing the high quality of the iron bar. Lifting up the heavy basket in one hand, and grabbing Jayde in the other he ordered Elder Ryunzo to bring the diagrams and with that, he rushed off to his smithy.

Rather than being annoyed at how both Master Whitestone and Elder Ryunzo were treating her like a rag doll, Jayde was highly amused at their childlike behavior.

Leading them through the back door, Master Whiteston led Jayde outside to the back of the smithy. Jayde was astounded that sitting outside was a Bessemer converter, the earliest know Bessemer converter in old earth dated back to the eleventh century [1], again the pure contradictions of Telia confused Jayde.

As Master Whitestone fired up the Bessemer converter, he explained in detail to Jayde how the process worked to convert iron into steel. Jayde was a bit surprised that Master Whitestone was sharing his knowledge with her.

For the next five days, Jayde spent every day with Master Whitestone and Elder Ryunzo only returning to the cave just before sunset, creating two plows. On the sixth day, Elder Ryunzo led two Bildeson to the plowed field, where Jayde and Master Whitestone were waiting with the two plows.

Most of the villagers had turned up to see just what the three of them had been up too. Seeing the strange contraptions they were bewildered. The villagers were even more confused when they saw Jayde and Master Whitestone attaching those contraptions to the Bildeson.

Then watching Jayde and Elder Ryunzon led the Bildeson onto the field, their confusion turned to absolute amazement as they watched how quickly the Bildeson with the mechanical plow attached quickly walked dragging the strange tool behind them and the earth was overturned.

What took four days to plow by hand with most of the villagers working, only took half a day for the two Bildeson to accomplish. Cheers and jubilation filled the air as the villagers finally comprehended just what a miracle they were seeing.

With this new way of plowing, they could open up more fields, and plant many different crops and herbs, this would ensure that the village would be able to generate a healthy income.

Elder Ryunzo quickly organized for some of the young men to start mining, they needed more iron urgently to create more plows. The women were tasked with planting the seeds. Jayde and Elder Ryunzo discussed clearing more land.

Jayde suggested that Elder Ryunzo create fire breakers around the land that he wanted to clear, and she would use her fire magic to burn everything clean.

Without wasting a moment, Elder Ryunzo ordered the young men not working in the mines to start with the fire breaks.

For the next week, Jayde cleared the land weaving her potent fire magic. Once a field was cleared and everything was burned to ash, the Bildeson with the new plows were put to work. After a week of hard work, more than 80 hectares had been cleared — this was more than twenty times than what the villagers had been able to use before.

Luckily due to Elder Ryunzo's long term planning, the village had hundred of kilograms of seeds stored, including many rare and expensive herbs. All of the women and children were put to work planting seeds. Over twenty hectares were used just to plant Afeaso.

Afeaso was a quick growing medicinal herb, it could be harvested in two months. Jayde also helped the villagers set up a basic irrigation system. Elder Ryunzo and the rest of the villagers were in awe of Jayde and her creative ideas.

In just over three weeks, Jayde had changed the lives of everyone in the village, and most believed that she was a godsend, sent to save them in their darkest hour.

***

With the fields filled with sprouting seedlings, Jayde was finally able to get one of the old woman to teach her how to bake, Yinxin and Reiko had been nagging her for the past week for cakes and tarts. They both seemed to have developed a sweet tooth.

While sitting in the kitchen of Mrs. Tunson, Jayde was listening intently to her instructions on how to make fruit tarts.

"So you have the recipes written down Jayde?" Mrs. Tunson asked.

"Hmm" Jayde replied nodding her head.

"Alrighty then, before we start it is best to get the fire in the oven started, that way by the time we have finished preparing the tarts, the oven will be ready to bake them" Mrs. Tunson instructed.

Mrs. Tunson then walked outside with Jayde following her to a pile of firewood, collecting an armful of the firewood Mrs. Tunson then returned to her kitchen and walked over to her iron stove, open up a slat at the bottom of the stove she placed the firewood inside, then fetching her flint she quickly had a fire going.

"Mrs. Tunson if I may ask you a question, why are you using firewood instead of charcoal?" Jayde asked — she wondered if using firewood made a difference.

"Charcoal ... what is that?" Mrs. Tunson asked Jayde curiously.

Jayde was surprised, then thinking about it, she figured that they called charcoal something different on Telia.

"It ready made coals that you use instead of firewood, it burns at a higher temperature than firewood and for much longer and has no smoke" Jayde explained.

"Huh, I never heard of anything like that" Mrs. Tunson said with a strange look on her face.

"Really, I have some in my bag, let me go and fetch it," Jayde said she thought that maybe she wasn't explaining herself properly.

Hurrying outside she pretended to scrounge around in her bag, while she accessed her spatial ring and removed a couple of pieces of charcoal. Returning to the kitchen she showed Mrs. Tunson her charcoal.

Picking up a piece of charcoal Mrs. Tunson had a good look at it.

"Never seen anything like this" she stated.

"And you say this burns better and longer than firewood and has no smoke?"

Jayde was astonished, she couldn't believe that the people of Telia didn't know about charcoal, this planet was just to damn weird she thought.

-

Notes:

[1] The Bessemer process was officially patented in 1856, but the process was actually said to have existed in Eastern Asia as early as the 11th century, where the scholar Shen Kuo of that era described its use in the Chinese iron and steel industry

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