Winnowing

How to Feed a Billion Souls

Prior to the Jordbani, magic based agriculture had been a powerful, efficient, and effective means of supporting the food needs of almost a billion people – a system without which the continent could not have supported its population. Magic fertility and nourishment spells provided by agricultural specialist wizards were used to enhance both the nutritional value and the yield of crops and the animal products generated by farms. Magic spells that suspended the biological processes that led to crop rot preserved the freshness of agricultural products, and allowed the farmer to deliver natural, healthy foodstuffs to the consumer.  

The Jordbani changed all that.

Millions of acres of arable land – in fact, the most productive crop land in the continent, was destroyed by the Jordbani and the rise of the Miorskrípi.  With the soil and water contaminated with magic that was antithetical to human life, farms produced crops and products that people no longer trusted to be healthy.  At first, the excess food supply in the distribution system and in people’s cupboards was a stopgap, but farms had to become productive and restore confidence in the food supply.

Among the farmers of Elgenbridge, a way to do this was found.

Elgenbridge

Eryia had long ago abandoned manual mechanical techniques for farming the land.  Magic was simply more efficient, but now, contaminating dust was everywhere – and food needed to be purified before it could be consumed.  In Elgenbridge, farmers turned to ancient techniques of threshing, stripping and winnowing to create grain crops and animal feeds that had significantly lower levels of Magichem contamination than elsewhere in the continent. 

The farmers researched the history of ancient farming and figured how to adapt magic fueled machinery to hitch animals to those machines to operate them.  They could plow the fields and seed, but the Magichem was everywhere in the fields.  The crops were covered with it.  Washing the crops was impossible.  Aside from the immediate spoilage and toxic molds and fungi that would grow on the wet grain, fresh water sources were unreliable and often contaminated from the earthen leyline dust defeating the purpose of the process. 

But once the Jordbani passed, and the slow lava flows began, the one blessing, the one elemental power that had the ability to remove at least most of the Magichem on a crop and leave it edible, was the wind.

Ancient techniques for growing crops became important and Eldenbridge farmers sought the old ways, a knowledge preserved by the Convocation of Sol .  These old ways were hard, but offered hope.  Thus, among farmers, a reverence for the wisdom of the past and a thankfulness to the god of life and light and warmth became the norm.  Every day, farmers thanked their ancestors for their wisdom and asked for Sol’s blessing on their work.  And in the fall, during harvest, they practiced the winnowing.

The Winnowing

The winnowing happens when the grain is ripe during the harvest.  It has become the most significant and holy ritual performed on the grain crops in Elgenbridge attaining an almost mystical holiness.

The fields are harvested and threshed – cutting the crop near the ground and beating it or driving plow animals over it to break off and release the grain heads from the straw.  This process is used when the bottom crop is needed for animal feed.  If there is no need for the straw for the farm animals, the grain heads are stripped from the stalk and the straw left for green manure instead. The grain is then lightly beaten to loosen the grain from the hulls and chaff. 

The grain is then brought to the winnowing barn, a tall structure that consists of a square covered building with a hole cut in the floor that stands on 20 foot stilts and is built over a smooth stone floor.  The farmers wait for a day when the winds are just right, then the family and hands will pour the first bag of grain through the winnowing window.  The wind catches the chaff and residual straw that has not been separated during the threshing process, and blows the straw, chaff and the Magichem dust from the grain which falls to the winnowing floor.  The first bag is gathered, and a runner, usually the eldest child of the house, brings the first bag of grain to the local priest of Sol, an offering of the first fruits of the harvest to the god who was wise to preserve the ways of the ancients.  The runner recites the winnowing prayer to the priest:

The day has come for the harvest to be made whole,
We wait upon Sol's grace,
Bless us now with the winds of cleansing,
That the peoples may be in your halls,
And the bread of life may be across the land.

— The Winnowing Prayer

The priest accepts the grain, and pronounces the blessing of Sol upon the harvest:

May the winds favor you and drive illness from your grain. The breath of Sol be with you and bless the fruit of your fields, the creatures that you tend, and the labor of your hands.

— The Winnowing Blessing

He then gives the runner a feather dyed bright yellow attached to a red string, and the runner returns to the winnowing barn.  The feather is attached to the corner of the barn and sways in the wind while the winnowing is performed.  If the feather falls from the eaves, the work is stopped until it is restored to its rightful place, for it represents the wisdom of Sol and the cleansing power of the winds. 

For every thirty bags of grain that is winnowed, the farmer will save one and return to the priest with these bags after the winnowing is complete giving them to Sol as a thank offering for the size and purity of the harvest.

While winnowing is not a perfect process, it does remove a large amount of Magichem from grain crops reducing toxicity of these fresh foods enormously.  Grains and animal products from the region of Elgenbridge are highly prized and extremely valuable in the global economy due to the effectiveness of these practices and the blessings of Sol.