The Farmer's Harvest and the Noble's Secret
The year is 1627. Traces of the great flood that struck Valladolid last year still linger across the city. Yet, the city was sublimating last year’s suffering into memory, sowing wheat seeds into the vibrant, fertile soil brought by the great deluge.
November 1st. All Saints' Day is the deadline for farmers to finish their sowing.
Back in March, when the city was suffering from famine, I had distributed seed potatoes to the citizens through monks and the church—not to be boiled, but to be planted. It was a gesture meant to plant a small seed of hope for the future in their hearts.
At the time, I had promised through the church that if they cultivated them well and brought back the harvest, I would exchange up to one fanega of potatoes for one fanega of wheat.
Since March was the height of the famine, most citizens had eaten the seed potatoes, but some had gritted their teeth and grown them in their small patches of land to bring them back.
On this All Saints' Day, those people brought potatoes that were "fit only for pigs" and exchanged them for plump wheat grains fit for human consumption.
The citizens who watched them were divided into those who were envious, those who were eyeing the next opportunity, and those who simply wanted free wheat.
"Haha, Marquis. I know you are deeply enamored with the discipline of the Benedictine Order... but if you were to show just a little more of the virtue of charity, wouldn't all the citizens pray for you?"
The Bishop of Valladolid, in our meeting, gave me a look that seemed to say, "Do you really have to be like that even in your position?" In truth, having survived the last five years without paying a single cent of tithes, I was covered in "stains of suspicion" from the local religious community, so I played the part of a pious Benedictine with even greater confidence.
"He who will not work, neither shall he eat."
"2 Thessalonians 3:10, I see..."
I continued, reciting the rules of the Benedictine Order.
"Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Although I am not a monk, I am greatly inspired by the Rule of Saint Benedict."
At my words, the Bishop made the sign of the cross and replied.
"Amen."
"The fundamental principle that one must work to eat. As a farmer before I am a Marquis, I consider the desire to obtain without working a grave 'defect' that breaks the rules of our community."
Prioritizing my identity as a farmer over my title as a Marquis, I spoke, and the Bishop opened his mouth to try and persuade me once more.
"But did you not provide a great deal of bread to the city for free after the flood, Marquis?"
I didn't give away wheat for free, only rye... but I wasn't so lacking in social graces as to say that out loud.
"That was merely relief in an emergency and the duty of a Catholic brother."
"Amen."
"Then I shall ask for your cooperation again next year."
With that, I concluded my meeting with the Bishop, commissioning the slightly peculiar charity event that would repeat starting next March.
I left the cathedral and mounted my horse. Beside me, an accountant who had joined the company on Olivares' recommendation approached on horseback.
A letrado. These were the so-called "nobles of the robe," university-educated hidalgos primarily from the universities of Valladolid, Salamanca, and Alcalá.
"My Lord. The Count-Duke is asking once again how this helps with tax collection."
The name of the noble of the robe dispatched by Olivares was 'Leonel Gaspar de Guzmán y Silva'. He was an ambitious thirty-year-old who claimed to be a distant relative of Olivares.
"Tell the Count-Duke once more: a starving army cannot fight, and a starving farmer abandons his field. If you want them to pay taxes, you must first feed them until they are full."
"I trust your wisdom, my Lord. But as the chief accountant, I have no choice but to maintain a critical perspective."
The accountant shrugged and said to me seriously.
"The company's main source of revenue is market dominance through the 'Don Quixote' variety of wheat harvested at the end of May. If the supply of potatoes increases the market's food self-sufficiency, it is self-evident that it will have a massive negative impact on the company's profit generation. Although the company's operating profit has already exceeded its target by double this year, if market profitability worsens, it will be difficult to guarantee the same explosive growth next year. Therefore, I advise you to cancel or scale back this event next year."
"Whoa... truly, smart people are different."
I muttered in a small, exhausted voice, taken aback by how he immediately used 21st-century business terminology that even I barely understood.
"What did you say, my Lord?"
"Nothing. For now, we will proceed with the event. And please tell His Majesty the King and the Count-Duke that I will visit them on the 'Feast of the Immaculate Conception'."
December 8th, the 'Feast of the Immaculate Conception', is when the most heated debates take place in Spain, the center of the Counter-Reformation.
Since everyone is too busy with terrifying religious debates to pay attention to anyone else, I had designated this day as the day for my "Shareholders' Meeting and Settlement of Accounts."
In Spain, the eight days from Christmas to January 1st are considered one big festival, with special feast days every day, so I was also thinking of spending Christmas with Teresa.
Christmas with family. That was a "common sense" that held true even in the 17th century, not just the 21st.
In the 17th century, pregnant women in Spain were forced to listen to music or gaze at holy paintings and think only "pious thoughts." This was because the "theory of imagination" was dominant at the time, which held that what a pregnant woman saw influenced the appearance of her child.
The theory of imagination was "common sense" widely accepted in the medical and religious circles of the time, believing that what a mother saw determined the fetus's appearance.
Believing that seeing something ugly or grotesque would result in a deformed child, they were allowed to look only at holy paintings or statues of the Virgin Mary. Secular songs were considered the devil's temptation, and only Gregorian chants or pious polyphonic music were permitted.
However, since the Marquis of Meseta, a new noble, had no personal artists or musicians, the Marquis himself was playing the vihuela for his wife. He played secular and folk melodies with such skill that one would wonder why a former coachman had become a farmer.
"Oh my! I didn't know my man had such a talent!"
Watching the fingers of Juan, who was playing the vihuela—a stringed instrument resembling a guitar—she swallowed hard. When the performance ended, she, who was his exclusive musician and wife, handed him a feast.
"How was it? Is it worth listening to?"
"Of course! It makes me wonder what would have happened if you had become a musician instead of the King's coachman!"
If other nobles had seen this, they would have been horrified! A Marquis who plays an instrument himself and offers a private concert to his wife! It was the kind of thing that would appear in a third-rate romance novel.
"Then I wouldn't have met you, would I? I might have met some blonde girl from the Low Countries up north."
At my words, she openly frowned and said.
"Hmph... I know you're joking, but to talk about another woman in front of me. I feel terrible."
I tried my best to lift her spirits. After much effort, when she signaled her forgiveness by gesturing toward the vihuela, I quickly stood up and took the instrument in my hands.
"Is there a song you want to hear again?"
"Everything. I want all of you."
The performance began again and lasted for a long time before it ended.
"Juan, promise me that your vihuela will be played only in front of me."
"Even after the children are born?"
"Hmm... that's a dilemma. Very well, I will allow it for the 'children' I have borne."
She approached me and kissed me, saying.
"It's only the first child, and you're already talking about 'children.' How much do you intend to fill me up, you lecherous man?"
I tried to answer, but I was pinned down by her, who kept kissing me, and after being toyed with for a long time, I barely managed to escape.
Spanish noblewomen, even when pregnant, wore corsets that radically reshaped their bodies and frames for their skirts. Because they compressed their abdomens to maintain dignity even in the early stages of pregnancy, their morning sickness and indigestion must have been even more severe.
For better or worse, since she and I had been voluntarily or involuntarily ousted from high society, she was able to live in comfortable clothes from the beginning of her pregnancy.
I was sitting in my office, reading and signing documents by candlelight. She came to me with a look different from usual.
"Juan, I've been thinking, and I think the day this child came to us was that day."
She blew out the candle in the office, hiding her face in the darkness, and spoke to me in a slightly timid voice.
"That day?"
Since it was exactly when we had finished our business, I stretched leisurely and answered her.
"You know... the day I adjusted your reins."
At her hesitant words, I answered without much thought.
"Oh, really?"
Then she leaned her face close to mine, her usual arrogance replaced by an anxious expression. A beam of moonlight coming through the office window illuminated her face.
"Doesn't it bother you? That... that day, wasn't I lewd and disrespectful enough to climb on top of a man with a woman's body?"
I didn't understand why she was anxious. What was the problem?
"No, actually, I liked it..."
At my words, she opened her eyes wide, paused for a moment, and then said.
"You liked it?"
"Yes."
To be honest, it was right up my alley. Relationships with her usually ended up in a standard form.
She was very active when it came to using her mouth or fingers, but she had never allowed any other form of union.
"Can you tell me why you're saying that?"
"I heard that if the union of a husband and wife is not in the form ordained by God, a wrong child is born. I am afraid..."
I found it so funny that the arrogant woman believed such nonsense superstition that I couldn't hold back.
"Pwahahaha!"
"Grr! What are you laughing at!"
Even though she was angry, I couldn't stop laughing for a long time, and then I barely managed to suppress my laughter and said.
"That... pfft. Who told you that?"
At my question, she said with a face as serious as the world.
"Everyone told me! The maids! The priests! My relatives!"
I hugged her in my arms and told her seriously.
"That's all lies and superstition. I guarantee it."
As I gave her my word, her face turned bright red, and she soon returned to her uniquely beautiful and arrogant self.
"Hmph. My worries have been washed away. Juan. My maid told me of a secret remedy to reduce morning sickness, and I need your help. Can you help me tonight?"
Did she want a massage? Certainly, in that respect, she might need a man's hands rather than a maid's.
"Yes. Shall we go now?"
"Ah, give me a moment. I need time to get ready."
I had wine and quinces prepared and headed to the 'annex'. Normally, it would be normal for a noble house to be filled with servants. But since I wasn't shameless enough to expose my married life to others, I had separated the annex.
The servants cleaned and maintained it when we weren't there, but since there were no servants to attend to us afterward, I had to prepare in advance.
"To think I've already gotten used to being served. This is a big problem."
I had become accustomed to calling people like I was saying "Hey Bixby."
Central Europe gets frequent rain during the period when the fields are empty between harvesting crops and sowing again. Thanks to that, potatoes grow rapidly during that short three-month period. Combined with the characteristic of growing without being picky about soil fertility, it was literally a food-duplication glitch.
Potatoes grow well even in barren land, but they cannot grow in desolate, dry land. This is why the crop, which was a cheat code for multiplying the population in Central Europe, did not receive a great response in Southern Europe.
It was a natural choice that Spain, which first brought potatoes from the New World, classified them as poisonous plants with toxic fruits and categorized them for the purpose of viewing their pretty flowers.
Although Marquis Juan implemented a policy of exchanging potatoes for wheat to distribute them, it brought results different from the mass production he had expected.
The potatoes of Valladolid, which began to develop in the realm of 'gardening', took on the character of seed improvement through seeds rather than 'cultivation' through tubers.
Centered on the Benedictine Order, the creation of the "best potato" began for the "Marquis who is very interested in the Benedictine Order," and the parish side, which could not be pushed out of the local community's religious hegemony, also jumped into it fully. Since mass production was difficult in the environment anyway, their efforts resulted not in quantity, but in the "most delicious potato."
That effort eventually converged into a unique breed that spends spring and summer on the cold, desolate Paramo plateau and is harvested when the winter frost falls. Originally, such breeds only produce tubers the size of acorns, close to pig feed. But perhaps there was a blessing from God, as their potatoes began to produce solid tubers the size of two or three adult fists.
They fight over whose seeds, divided into 'Cathedral' and 'Abbey', are more delicious and solid, but in the end, the fact that they were survivors of the cold and dry Paramo plateau was the same.
"If it's not a Valladolid potato, I don't cook potatoes."
"Those who only eat the bland potatoes sold at the mart are pitiful livestock."
"Chicken stock. Olive oil. 'Catedral' or 'Abadia' Valladolid. There are only three things to prepare for the best potato dish."
In the 21st century, this local specialty, which became famous through the remarks of an Italian chef who is the teacher of many famous chefs, eventually became the 'Valladolid Potato Festival'.
No one could have imagined that the potato, which started with the charity of a noble after the great flood, would become an event that boasts the region's unique rich and creamy potatoes to the world 400 years later.
Author's Note
Thank you to talkingter, DevilKim, Alshinder, yanwenry, ohms1012 for the donations. T_T I didn't even know such a thing existed!
I'm sorry for the late greeting. It might sound like a lie, but I really didn't know...
Cheat #2 is a potato that grows slowly and for a very long time on that desolate plateau. If Cheat Seed #1, Don Quixote, is a crazy knight faster than anyone else, this potato is the definition of "holding on."
The potatoes sold in modern marts are breeds that "grow fast, look pretty, and are easy to store." That's because the goal of plant breeders was fast harvesting in a 3-month cut. However, among primitive ancient potatoes, there are breeds that endure and grow for 6 to 8 months. I haven't tried them, but I saw on YouTube that they are chewy, dense, and nutty.
This novel actually has an original version. In this episode, there was a little bit of a story about the protagonist before the remake, 'Juan Manuel the Wandering Bard'.
It's not that I ignore the potential of music, but the bard's carrying power was too low to save this screwed-up empire, so the protagonist was eventually replaced.
Whoa, I didn't know how to respond to receiving such a gift, so I put in a generous amount for now. Thank you for always reading.