Outside, in front of his little handcart, Lucas gave the sales pitch he had been working on since last night, "I'd like all of you to work for me on an assortment of projects from now on. This won't be a short-term thing, but rather a long-term contract, so think carefully before you accept as there will be some strict conditions you'll need to follow. The starting wage will be 50 Coppers a day…"
Lucas went on to explain what the work hours would be like, how many days they would have off a month, what kind of tasks they would need to perform, and a myriad of other things; but honestly, the boy could have stopped after the words '50 Coppers a day'.
Some of the orphans who 'graduated' from the orphanage managed to get apprenticeships in town with the various craftsmen, merchants, hunters, or even Town Guardsmen, but those were rare cases. Most of the kids, having no outstanding talents, background, or connections, were stuck working the lowliest of jobs.
For such simple, labour-intensive gigs, like the ones these youths had been working before they were summoned by Director Leah today, the starting salary was generally 25 Coppers a day, which was something like the minimum wage in Redwood Town.
If one worked an average of 29 out of the 32 days each month, only taking a Rest Day every 10 days, as was mandated by the Rockwell Kingdom, they could just barely afford the simplest roof over their heads and enough food to not starve.
Having a Rest Day every 10 days was a law passed by the first king, Frederick Belton Rockwell, during the final years of his reign. The idea was to give the ordinary citizens and civilians time to focus on cultivating, improving the populations overall strength, and was considered quite forward thinking at the time.
A few hundred years later, it was now customary to use the Rest Day to do chores, run errands, or even just find another job to work.
Very few people actually spent their Rest Days in silent cultivation, and in some places with more unscrupulous Lords, the practice had basically been abolished, the excuse most often being 'if you're not cultivating, then you don't get to rest!'
After working such jobs for a few years, as long as one was diligent, they could accumulate some useful knowledge and skills, allowing them to move up from being a novice grunt to a veteran grunt.
Veteran grunts were more useful to employers, and could thus earn more, normally 30 to 40 Coppers a day. That was enough to move into a better living space and eat heartier meals; or, if one was frugal enough, they could consider getting married and starting a family.
Many years later, if one could find steady employment in a single workplace, they might be able to rise above the status of grunt entirely and become a manager of sorts, increasing their daily wage to perhaps 50 Coppers. It wasn't enough to splurge recklessly with, but it could allow a person or a small family to live in relative comfort with the occasional luxury, like a large roast of meat every few months or so.
Being a manager and earning 50 Coppers a day was basically the pinnacle an un-skilled worker could hope to achieve in life; yet now, Lucas was directly offering them that much to work for him!
If it wasn't for them not wanting to offend their generous new boss by interrupting his speech, all 5 of the youths would have already cried out with joy and accepted Lucas' recruitment then and there.
Despite their heads spinning slightly from the extremely generous terms being offered to them, this group of 5 quickly collected themselves and began listening very attentively to what Lucas was saying.
A few minutes later, once he was done, Lucas turned his best business smile towards the 5 older kids and asked, "So, what do you think? Are you willing to work for…"
"YES!!"
Lucas was slightly taken aback by the burst of enthusiasm he was hit with. From his perspective, working for a 9-year-old brat on a new business that had yet to be proven viable was a big risk.
Even if he was offering a high wage, he had expected these 5 to at least hesitate for a while or ask some questions before they accepted his offer. He was even prepared to raise the starting wage from 50 Coppers to 60 if that was what it took; but now, it seemed he had been seriously overthinking things.
After taking a moment to recover, Lucas nodded before continuing, "Good. I'll sign a contract with each of you tonight to formalize your employment, but right now, I need all of you to come with me."
Lucas had discovered the hard way that despite it looking essentially like water, the lych tree sap actually went bad if he left it in the buckets for too long, so daily collection and processing was essential if he didn't want to suffer significant losses.
Over the next few days Lucas would rise with the sun, complete his morning exercises and chores, and then meet up with his new employees at around noon. From there, all 5 of the older kids would follow him to the Great Western Forest's edge where they would first use carts and large water barrels to collect the sap which had been drained from the lych trees that day.
Once all the sap was collected, 2 of Lucas' workers would haul the carts back to town while the rest of them would continue searching for appropriate lych trees to tap. Only after the last buckets he had ordered from the various craftsmen arrived did Lucas stop venturing out in person to the woods, turning over the entire harvesting process to his employees.
Lucas had wanted to build his own specialized workshop, with giant stoves and custom pots which he could use to quickly and efficiently boil down all the sap he collected, but that proved to be impractical. Not only would it cost too much to build such a facility, it would also take too long.
As such, he struck a deal with his Aunt Sasha to use the Town Lord Manor's kitchen, which already had several large stoves and several massive pots available, to complete this part of his sugar production.
When they learned where they would be working, the 5 youths were understandably a bit nervous, as all of them had only ever been to the Manor perhaps once or twice in their lifetime, but after interacting with the Town Lady and the regular staff a bit, they eventually calmed down.
Sasha even stopped by to help out every now and then as she too was quite interested in the production of sugar.
Collecting sap, filtering out debris, stoking fires, boiling down liquids, shoveling out firewood ashes; the whole process was dull and repetitive, but none of the workers complained as they were being paid very handsomely. Lucas even let all of them sample a bit of the finished product on the first day, which naturally brought a smile to all of these youths and boosted their enthusiasm for work greatly.
Growing up in the orphanage, these 5 had almost always gone without luxuries, each of them having perhaps tasted a small spoonful of honey once or twice in their lives. Now, being involved in creating this sweet delicacy themselves, these older kids couldn't help feeling like they were participating in something magical.
Once the initial period of hustle and confusion had passed, and everyone had settled into a kind of steady rhythm, Lucas organized a rotation so that his workers had some personal time. The schedule was for 4 of them to work each day, with 1 of them always having a day off.
At first, all of the older kids objected to this 'leisurely' schedule, asking to do more, but Lucas insisted on following his original proposal, a fact that only made his new employees want to work even harder.
For most of the rest of April, when the team of harvesters went out, they would collect somewhere between 150 and 200 litres of sap. While this might seem like a lot, using four big pots, it would generally take less than 2 hours to cook it all down into 3 to 4 kg of sugar.
To fill the rest of the work hours, Lucas would either have his new employees go around town buying fat scraps and render them down into tallow, or to collect certain wildflowers and herbs to make scented water.
Both of these components were essential to his soap production, and together with all the wood-ash he obtained from boiling sap, Lucas was confident he would soon be producing over 1,000 bars of soap a month.
Unfortunately, before the end of the month even came around, Lucas found himself running short of funds, so he had to stop expanding production on his cleaning products for the moment.
In a stroke of luck, however, the last few days of April saw a late chill blow through Redwood Town, resulting in a massive harvest of lych tree sap. On the first day of the cold snap, Lucas had to call in all his workers and personally help gather the precious liquid, making almost 10 round trips from the Great Western Forest to the Town Lord's Manor!
The following 2 days didn't yield nearly as much sap as the first, but there was still a substantial amount collected.
By the time the fourth day rolled around, and the weather warmed up significantly, the fridge at the Town Lord's Manor had basically been taken over by Lucas and was filled with giant barrels of tree sap, despite the stoves in the kitchen almost never going out as more and more of the sweet nectar was boiled down into sugar.
8 days, 5,000 litres of sap, and nearly 1,000 kg of firewood later, Lucas and his team of workers, along with Sasha, Helen, Grace, and several other 'volunteers' who the boy had recruited, were all thoroughly exhausted from standing over the hot stoves, stirring the giant pots, and crushing the crystalized sugar.
It was now just after dawn, with everyone having worked through the night to finish off the last batch of sap, but staring at the over 100 kg of freshly made sugar in front of them, only smiles could be seen on all their faces.
Together with what Lucas had managed to process over the previous half-a-month, there was now some 150 kg of sugar in total. This was a much bigger haul for the season than the young boy had anticipated, and it also represented a massive fortune for him.
Even if Lucas set aside 30 kg of this sweet substance for personal use, the remaining 120 kg could be sold for at least 350 Gold Coins, more than enough to provide a generous bonus to his workers, buy some expensive cultivation resources, dramatically expand his soap production, and run numerous other experiments he had been putting off until now!
Lucas was so happy, that in order to celebrate, he directly melted an entire kilo of lych tree sugar back into syrup, then worked together with his Aunt Sasha to cook a massive ham and pancake breakfast for everyone who had been involved in the production process.
Even though the pancakes were a bit flat, and the ham was a bit old, this was still an extraordinarily extravagant meal that many considered so wasteful it bordered on insanity, but Lucas insisted on treating them all, and after tasting the first bite of the fresh, fluffy pancakes, covered in melted butter and syrup, everyone decided it was alright to indulge themselves just this once.
The alluring scent of pancakes naturally drew in others from around the Town Lord's Manor, and Lucas of course did not forget to invite his own parents along, so it wasn't long before the number of guests at the table had tripled.
Even so, no one complained, as they were all in too good a mood right now and were happy to share in the bounty they had just created.
Just as this impromptu early morning banquet was coming to an end, Farah arrived to make her usual delivery and was drawn over by the sweet, sugary smell in the air.
No one present would deny this respected Senior a seat at their table, so Farah was hurriedly called over, sat down, and served a stack of steaming hot pancakes covered in freshly churned butter and a healthy amount of syrup.
Quite contrary to her usual gruff behaviour, Farah was delighted with the prospect of this sweet treat and immediately dug in, her eyes narrowing happily after her first bite, a rare smile gracing her lips. However, just seconds later, a look of surprise came over her face, causing her to look down and inspect the lych tree syrup more closely, scrutinizing it intensely.