The next morning Kasidy had breakfast in the office as the soldiers finished their preparations for their outing and just before lunch a whole wagon train of soldiers and supplies exited out the side gate and into the first of the farming villages. A few had left earlier to start spreading the word around town to the villagers and set up tables and tents.
By the time she arrived, things were in full swing. There were long lines of people going into the medical tents where all the doctors from the four towns as well as the soldiers trained in basic injury medicine and the town herbalists, were all working together to give free treatment and medicine to anyone who needed it. They would all be well compensated for their time.
Nearby were tables of herbs, the piles ever growing and shrinking as patients took what was prescribed and towns kids knowledgeable in foraging were pared with soldiers as they scoured the woods and fields and streams for useful herbs and edible plants. The edible plants had another set of tables and those piles steadily grew to later be sorted to go to the homes in the most need of stocking up for the winter.
She helped the soldiers tasked with setting up a lunch banquet and a few talented soldiers took turns playing music. Kids laughed and played and rushed around to collect more herbs, she's offered a prize to whoever gathered the most while adhering to the one-fifth rule; never taking more than one-fifth of any one plant or cropping of plants. she preferred the one-tenth rule but people were hungry and she'd be encouraging them to plant more in and around the village so hopefully that would prevent a shortage in the coming years.
Two hours before dusk all the gatherers would be called back and the woods would be left in silence so the animals would feel safe enough to come out at dusk. By then hunters would be hidden amongst the trees waiting for the Dieternal animals to come out.
A ways off some of the soldiers were holding lessons on different ways of making traps and hunting and fishing to anyone who wanted to learn.
Since harvest was done schools were starting back up so, after lunch she brought several useful books to the schoolmaster with instructions to have the kids make copies of and make projects on how and when to pick things so that their food source doesn't get depleted. With instructions to swap out books with the other two farming villages, she had another few books in mind for their one merchant town.
She visited the orphanage and talked with the town leaders to get a better idea of what sort of problems they were facing this year and to make plans on how to solve them.
The day ended with dinner. Meat smoking and salting stations were put to good use and cured meat would be distributed with the foraged wild edibles and some donated grains from the mansions storage. Stories were being told and laughter filled the streets. It was a long exhausting day, the morning crew of volunteers had left and the clean-up crew would be here long after she headed back.
Then they would do it all again the next day and the next in the other farming villages. She'd give her soldiers a day to recuperate and then they'd spend two days in the much larger merchant town.
Her aunt's rescue team should be arriving at the marques' sometime tomorrow she estimated, and it would take at least twice as long to get back with her aunt and doctor in the carriage.
Hopefully, by then all evidence of her philanthropy should be relatively hidden. She already had her old aide who still worked for her uncle working on fudging the numbers on their manor's storage supplies to hide the money she took from the vault to pay for the doctor's help this week. as well as donations to other places that seemed in need.
It was a huge undertaking on such short notice but everyone had pulled together and done so well that she knew it would all be worth it.
She spent the evenings in the office too, going over her notes with the town leaders with her aid Brinn and Captin Thatch. Before going to bed late and repeating the cycle the next day.
On the fourth day, her volunteers rested. But for her and her closest staff, it was no less demanding. She locked herself in the study and set herself to doing paperwork with Brinn, trying to get minor local laws and regulations passed and approving or denying funding for various projects while she was again acting Earl until her uncle came back.
When her aunt arrived, she planned to just fain illness and sleep for a week to make up for all the late nights and early mornings. She'd used the same excuse so many times that they'd begun to think she was prone to illness. Luckily their doctor was on her side so they hadn't realized her illnesses and general fatigue were simply due to overworking herself while they were all asleep or otherwise disposed.
on the 7th and 8th day after her arrival to the Earldom, they held a similar type fair at their much larger town.
The kids helped build small hutches and each kid could take home a grown laying hen when done. This practically depleted the estate's chickens. They'd be hatching chickens for months, they'd already collected fertile eggs all week and they were being carefully incubated in a seldom-used corner of the kitchens. They'd give some story about a hunting dog getting into the hen house as an excuse for the lack of chickens and eggs.
Since there wasn't as much for game around the bigger town and more mouths to feed they sacrificed all the roosters, two pigs, a cow, two goats, a sheep, six rabbits, and eight ducks from the estate. A breading set of rabbits had been given to each orphanage, a pack of coyotes would be unjustly blamed for the lack of rabbits... the ducks... well they must have migrated...
The estate only had a small farm to help support the castle in case of an attack, it used to be bigger of course but her aunt hated the animals on the estate grounds; finding it tacky as they could just buy food. It had taken her a lot of convincing to get her to keep some. Luckily her aunt's love of fresh food had proven useful. Maybe a few months without fresh eggs or chicken would help her realize the importance a little more.
The towns and villages would share their knowledge and resources over the next few weeks helped by the soldiers, many of which lived in or had family in the town or villages. With survival skills trending she wouldn't have to worry as much about her people starving over the winter due to her uncle's overtaxation. He could not be allowed to become Earl.
On the 9th and 10th day after her arrival, she drowned herself in paperwork until a scout notified her and Captain Thatch that her aunt's carriage had reached the town. They scrambled to hide the evidence of their good deeds and ran to greet them like proper loyal subjects and family as they stepped out of the carriage.