As soon as the Schooner arrived in Sidimi, the first thing we did was unload the horses and isolate them.
The horses I brought from Joseon—horses I had taken after killing the Ma-jeok—cried out, demanding to be allowed to fight to establish a hierarchy despite being isolated on both sides of the Schooner.
– It’s not that we won’t listen to our master, but we need to fight to determine the rank.
The Western Horse I bought from the horse market was a mare, and the others were generally calm.
However, seeing the constant provocation, one large mare eventually couldn’t stand it.
She started to huff and show her temper.
– These little runts think I’m a helpless fool just because I’m staying quiet.
I can handle them all by myself, so let me loose.
This became a headache once I gained the Animal Communication skill, which allowed me to roughly understand what the livestock were thinking.
No matter how fierce the horses from Joseon were, they stood no chance against a Western Horse that weighed more than three times as much.
If a fight broke out, it was certain that someone would get hurt.
In the end, we decided that isolation was the only answer.
We took the Western Horse off the Schooner first and put her in Fridolf Gek’s stable, then put the Manchurian Horse group in the new stable we had built for the horses coming from Joseon.
Everyone from our village, including Uncle An Tae-seok who came to see me after spotting the Schooner’s return, was shocked.
It was only natural, as the boy who had left wearing a shabby cotton hanbok with a pigtail had returned wearing a suit and a hunting cap, with his pigtail cut off.
Before Uncle Tae-seok could say anything, Sister Seon-hui spoke up.
“Myeong-jin, what is with those Western clothes?”
I took off my hunting cap, shaking my newly groomed hair, and said, “How do I look, Sister? Do I look a bit more like a Russian now?”
From the side, Sister Jeong-sun spoke.
“What were you thinking, cutting your hair like a vulgar ruffian?”
“I’ve left Joseon to live here, so I’m dressing the part. Besides, it’s better to cut hair because it’s a hassle when it grows long. Back in Joseon, cutting your hair might make you a ruffian, but here in Russia, you get much better treatment with this look.”
Whether it was the people who followed Uncle Tae-seok from our village or the Koryo-saram who already lived here, they all seemed indifferent to the fact that I had cut my hair and changed my clothes.
It wasn’t that they were determined to maintain their Joseon identity; they were simply unfamiliar with the change.
“Seeing as you even bought clothes, did you get a fair price for the furs?”
In truth, that was much more important to these people.
I nodded.
“I got a more generous price than expected. The quality of this batch of fur was good, and the fur merchant gave me a favorable price after hearing the news of Father’s passing.”
Actually, these people had been preparing to move to Russia for several years.
I had told them that bringing furs to sell would be the most profitable, so most of them had collected as many furs as possible.
The ones who had collected the most were the siblings Gwi-hwan and Seon-hui.
Since they had been collecting furs since they lost their parents, they had gathered over fifty fox pelts.
I took them aside where others couldn’t see, gave 250 Rubles to Gwi-hwan and Seon-hui, and then distributed the shares to the others.
Everyone’s mood brightened at the sight of an amount far larger than they expected.
They thought they would get only slightly more than what they would get in Joseon, but since I had secured nearly three to four times that price, their mouths hung open in surprise.
Honestly, this was enough money for everyone to live comfortably for several years or even to pay for a wedding.
Gwi-hwan was planning to marry Jeong-sun, and Seon-hui was planning to marry Hong-i.
Only Jae-ho didn’t have a partner yet.
Unlike the others who were orphans, Jae-ho’s parents lived in Joseon and were quite well-off.
Even if he were to marry, he intended to return to Joseon to do so.
Nevertheless, the reason Jae-ho crossed the border with us was that he thought he might find an opportunity in Russia.
Jae-ho was planning to return to Joseon in about two years to get married and then return with his wife.
Various items bought in Vladivostok were unloaded from the Schooner.
People were fascinated by the agricultural machinery we brought, but the thing that fascinated them most was the Sewing Machine.
The women, in particular, couldn’t take their eyes off it, looking as though they wanted to try it right then and there.
We first moved the Sewing Machine to an empty warehouse, and I taught the women how to use it.
Of course, I had learned this at Kunst and Albers.
Fridolf Gek’s wife Oksana, Mikhail Yankovsky’s wife Olga, and all the women from Joseon gathered around the Sewing Machine, watching in wonder as it operated.
I taught them how to thread the needle and even how to take the oil can from the drawer attached to the Sewing Machine to oil it.
After teaching them that the machine would run if they stepped on the pedal at the bottom, and demonstrating the sewing a few times with scraps of cloth, I said, “I brought a lot of scrap fabric here, so everyone should try practicing with this.”
Since Kunst and Albers also sold fabric, they had a separate tailor shop and a dressmaker’s shop for those getting custom clothes, and quite a lot of scrap fabric was produced there.
They usually gathered such scraps and sold them to the Chinese at a very low price.
I had planned to buy some for practicing with the Sewing Machine, but since I was a VIP customer who had purchased a lot of goods, they gave me quite a large amount for free.
Women of this era, regardless of whether they were from the East or the West, unconditionally learned to sew.
In an age where ready-made clothes were not sold, making clothes was strictly a woman’s job.
Oksana, Olga, Seon-hui, Jeong-sun, and the other Joseon women were all the same in this regard, and they all stared at the miraculous tool that was the Sewing Machine with ecstatic eyes.
While the women were preoccupied with the Sewing Machine, I went to Yuli Briner’s house and proposed a farm investment to Mikhail Yankovsky.
“So, that’s why I want to invest in the farm. What do you think, Mikhail?”
“I’m all for it, of course. I was actually just about to go deer hunting like you mentioned, since I’m short on capital.”
“By deer hunting, do you mean the method of following them for days until they’re exhausted?”
“Yes, that. That way, I can catch them alive, and I figured if I raised them for about a year, I could cut the velvet antlers and sell them to the Chinese. I thought I’d be able to buy horses after doing that for a few years, but if you’re going to invest, that will save a lot of time.”
“But don’t we also need to think about purchasing land? Like the Skipper said a few days ago, even if we are granted up to 20 Dessiatines, we have to pay 3 Rubles per Dessiatine for anything more.”
“You can get land for free if you show the local officials a reasonable amount of progress. The rule about 20 Dessiatines for foreigners or 100 Dessiatines for Russians is for those who will reclaim wasteland into farmland. If you’ve already reclaimed it, you don’t need to pay that money. To run a ranch like I want to, I’d have to seek proper understanding from the officials, but for farmland that’s already been reclaimed, there’s no need. If you’re worried, plant some hay for the horses on part of the farmland. They’ll be very pleased and recognize your rights.”
“Oho, then if I reclaim much larger areas of land with the agricultural machinery I brought, it can become my property.”
“That’s right. Right now, this entire Russian Far East is struggling because there are no people. If you work hard to reclaim the land, it’s naturally yours.”
Mikhail Yankovsky spoke while pointing to a simple map.
“The Sidimi River flows through this flatland in the middle, so it’s good land for you Koryo-saram to reclaim and farm. There’s no reason to waste it on a ranch. However, this side over here is all hilly and has no river, so it’s perfectly suited for a ranch.”
The reason this area was called Sidimi was that the small river the natives called the Sizimi River flowed into the sea here.
Even if it wasn’t a large river, it didn’t dry up all year round, so there were no worries about agricultural water.
The hilly area where Mikhail Yankovsky intended to build a ranch was low mountainous terrain, so while it was inconvenient for farming, it was suitable for raising horses or cattle.
Furthermore, perhaps because of the weather in this region or some other reason, there weren’t many trees and most of it was grassland, which was even better.
It seemed like it would make a fine ranch if we just put up some fences.
There were horses originally raised by the natives in this area, but whether they were native horses or those from Joseon or Manchuria, they were all small and weak.
That was why the Russians brought strong Western horses all the way here, but there weren’t many of them yet.
Therefore, Mikhail Yankovsky intended to create a ranch for Western horses to supply the Russian Army.
Since Russia intended to gradually grow its army in Primorsky Krai, a lot of money was sure to be made if we could properly supply warhorses.
“For now, I’ve bought four mares, but don’t we also need a stallion for breeding?”
“You have to pay 100 Rubles for a decent teaser horse, but a good breeding stallion is much more expensive than that. Sometimes you even have to pay 10 Rubles just for a single mating fee for a guy like that.”
“Is it worth that much?”
“Of course. People pay that price because it’s worth it.”
“Then we don’t necessarily have to buy a stallion; we can just raise mares. If a good one comes on the market, we can buy it then.”
Everyone nodded at my words.
The next day, I was puzzled when the ship Kunst and Albers was supposed to send didn’t arrive, but Fridolf Gek shook his head.
“The weather today is not good at all, so they couldn’t set sail. The sky is cloudy and the wind is strong, so you can’t sail on a day like today. Looking at the weather, it seems we’ll have to wait a few more days before sailing is possible.”
If the house construction had to wait a few more days, I thought it would be a good time to show the people how to use the agricultural machinery.
We chose the new land to be reclaimed a short distance away from the existing Koryo-saram farms.
With such vast land spread out everywhere, there was no reason to cause a dispute with the existing Koryo-saram by reclaiming land too close to them.
Usually, the biggest problem when reclaiming wasteland is the trees.
Cutting down trees is difficult, and removing the stumps left behind is even harder.
If such things existed, you would have to grind the stumps with special tools and dig them out, or dig around them and pull them out with horses and ropes.
Fortunately, the area we intended to reclaim was grassland without trees, so this work wasn’t necessary.
Moreover, it was even better because there were no boulders or large stones.
We first roughly marked out the land to be reclaimed, then tied the Reclamation Plow to the horses we had newly purchased and began pulling.
The people from Joseon had seen iron tips attached to the ends of plows, but they had never seen a plow where the entire body was made of steel and the tip looked like a smooth steel shovel.
Furthermore, they were even more amazed to see that instead of a person holding and pulling from behind, it had wheels and a person sat on top of the plow.
Uncle Tae-seok asked.
“Is it really possible for a person to sit on top of the plow and pull it like this?”
It was natural for him to be surprised, as sitting on a plow while pulling was a method that even the Russian farmers here didn’t use.
“It has wheels like this, so it’s easy to pull. In any case, you have to press down with heavy weight from above to plow, so wouldn’t it be more comfortable for a person to sit there?”
“Is it even possible to control it that way?”
“Just watch.”
In this kind of grassland, the roots of the grass were so firmly intertwined that a Joseon plow wouldn’t have even been able to penetrate the surface.
However, the Reclamation Plow made in the United States was an invention specifically designed to remove the roots intertwined in such grasslands.
The narrow, pointed plow, pulled by four powerful Western horses, advanced as it fiercely cut through the grass roots tangled deep underground.
And as the plow passed, the inner soil that had been entangled in the grass roots was flipped outward and piled up.
Alongside the people from Joseon, the trio of Russians were also watching me pull the Reclamation Plow.
This was their first time seeing such agricultural machinery, and they found it incredibly fascinating.
After pulling the plow for about 100 meters as I had first determined, I stopped and changed direction.
After pulling the plow once, I got a feel for the intervals at which I should plow.
When I returned to the spot where I had first started plowing, both the Joseon and Russian men wanted to try driving the plow themselves.
“It’s good for everyone to practice, but I think the plow lacks a bit of power. Skipper, can you lend me about two horses?”
Fridolf Gek nodded, and we brought two more horses from Fridolf’s stable and tied them to the front of the plow.
Now, a total of six horses were pulling the plow.