Chapter 325: The Harvest Test

While Mercer worked out his numbers, another idea was taking root in Thomas Bell’s district.

The village cooperative had managed to stop arguing long enough to run their shared tractor through the late summer season. With clear rules and a written schedule, the machine had kept their fields ahead of the weather.

One morning, Ernest received a letter from Bell.

Lord Teucher,

The machine has finished our late harrowing without a single breakdown. None of us can afford sixty thousand riels alone. But twelve of our families are asking: could we buy one together? We can put our names to a shared note if you can tell us how to write it without ending up at each other’s throats.

Ernest took the letter to Arthur’s desk.

Arthur stared at the paper as if it were a venomous snake. "Twelve owners? On one single engine? That is twelve people to fight over grease, twelve people to blame each other for broken teeth on the gears, and twelve people to default on the loan."

"They’re already doing it with their livestock," Ernest pointed out. "They just need an ironclad agreement."

Arthur spent three days drafting a twenty-seven-page legal contract.

Ernest read the first two pages, walked back into Arthur’s office, and dropped it on his desk. "Arthur, they’re honest farmers sharing a tractor, not merchants founding a joint-stock bank. Cut it down."

Arthur grumbled, groaned about legal malpractice, and trimmed the contract down to eight readable pages. It spelled out who maintained the machine, set fixed fees per operating hour into a repair fund, and laid down clear rules for what happened if a member moved away or failed to pay.

When Bell and his neighbors signed it, the cooperative didn’t just become a business arrangement—it became a model that the Ministry of Agriculture in Helmarte began studying closely.

By late autumn, the harvest was in full swing, and Ernest traveled out to Mercer’s farm to see the Fieldmaster tackle stationary work.

Behind the main barn, a heavy wooden threshing machine shook and rumbled. Instead of the usual team of sweating horses walking in a continuous circle or an expensive steam engine puffing thick black smoke, the green Fieldmaster stood ten yards away, anchored with wooden wheel chocks. A wide leather belt ran from its side pulley to the thresher’s flywheel, humming as it spun.

Mercer stood near the grain chute, covered in dust and grinning broadly. "Look at her, Lord Teucher! She’s been running steady since eight this morning and hasn’t dropped a beat!"

Ernest walked around the machine, inspecting the belts and cooling screens. The engine note was low, steady, and unbothered by the load.

Yet as he stepped back, Ernest noticed a different problem.

A dozen hired laborers were rushing back and forth between the thresher and the barn. Sacks of grain were piling up on the ground faster than men could haul them. Loose straw was choking the tail end of the chute, requiring two boys with pitchforks to constantly shovel it aside.

Ernest tapped Mercer on the shoulder. "What’s holding you up?"

Mercer wiped sweat and chaff from his face. "What do you mean? The engine’s running like a clock!"

"The engine is," Ernest agreed, pointing toward the growing mountain of burlap bags. "Your men aren’t. You can thresh the wheat twice as fast now, but you’re still moving the sacks by hand."

Mercer looked at the backlog, scratched his chin, and sighed. "Well... blast it. You’re right. We’re choking on our own grain."

Hollen, standing beside them, shook his head with a grin. "Don’t look at him like that, Mercer. He’s already designing a belt elevator in his head."

"A simple wooden lift powered by a secondary pulley would clear those bags into the loft in seconds," Ernest said, watching the workers struggle.

"And how much will that cost me?" Mercer asked quickly.

Arthur, who had just stepped up from the wagon path, smiled. "A fair question, Mr. Mercer. We’ll make sure the tractor pays for itself before we start selling you elevators."

On the train ride back to Oriel that evening, Arthur stared out at the rolling hills.

"A tractor isn’t just a tractor, is it?" Arthur said quietly. "It’s plows, wagons, threshers, fuel depots, and repair shops. Once a farmer buys the power, he has to modernize everything around it."

"Mobile mechanical power changes the entire rhythm of the farm," Ernest replied, looking out into the dusk. "It makes every hour of good weather count for three."

The following week, an official envelope arrived from the Ministry of Agriculture in Helmarte.

The Kingdom’s Grand Agricultural Fair was scheduled for late autumn. The ministry invited Teucher Machinery to give a full public field demonstration of the production-model Fieldmaster before farmers, estate managers, and government officials from across Belfast.

In the experimental bay at Plant One, the demonstration tractor was receiving its final coat of dark-green paint. The nameplate on the brass radiator header gleamed under the electric lanterns: TEUCHER FIELDMASTER.

Hollen stood beside it, hands jammed into his pockets. "It’s still not what anyone would call handsome," he muttered. "Looks like a little yard locomotive that wandered off the rails."

Ernest laughed. "Has it grown on you yet?"

"A little," Hollen admitted, tapping the heavy steel fender. "At least it doesn’t leak oil on my boots anymore."

Late that night, Ernest sat in his quiet study at Oriel. On his desk lay the three papers that would shape the company’s winter: the trimmed cost report, the cooperative contract from Bell’s village, and the invitation to Helmarte.

For years, his engines had reshaped the cities, the mines, and the railways. But the countryside was different. You couldn’t force a field to grow faster by running a night shift, and you couldn’t tell the rain to wait for an engine to cool down.

A machine couldn’t replace the season. But it could give the people working the land a fighting chance against it.

Ernest opened his ledger, dipped his pen in ink, and wrote on the first blank page:

The value of a farm engine is not measured in horsepower.

It is measured in the hours of sunlight it saves when the weather turns.

He set the pen down and looked out into the dark. In a few weeks, the Fieldmaster would stand in front of thousands of skeptical eyes in Helmarte. It was time to prove that steel and gasoline could earn an honest living in the dirt.