Ruvka is a small village in the barony of Baron Talbot, which is mostly known for the noble family that was in charge of the area for the food produced by the small farms on the outskirts of the village. The only notable landmark in the area is a large swamp to the south of the village. Other than that, the land is mostly flat with dispersed rolling hills. Due to the frequent rainfall, the area is considered optimal for growing most of the types of crops that sell well in the Sinclair Kingdom.
The land-mass that the Sinclair Kingdom sits upon is shared with 3 other kingdoms and is surrounded on all sides by vast oceans. The landmass is quite small for a continent, but it is the largest single landmass in the vicinity and is considered a continent. There are some islands surrounding the continent with single kingdoms that dominate each one, but none are comparable to the 3 on the continent.
The Sinclair Kingdom is the weakest kingdom on the continent, but it has much more furtile land than the other kingdoms and had managed to forge an alliance between both of them in the past by providing grain while maintaining a strong border. This makes the farmers in the Sinclair Kingdom protected. While they are not particularly looked after like nobles, they do have more rights and protections than in other kingdoms.
Arthur was a young farmer who married a girl on the farm next to his family farm when they were both 17 years old and had their first child together in the same year. After being married for 6 years, they now have 3 children, with their youngest child having just been born. Since both families had been wiped out in the plague that nearly destroyed their village shortly after their first child was born, they have had no problems with food or money since they operated two farms on their own.
While running two farms would ordinarily be an arduous task for one man, he had plenty of cattle to till fields, and the problem of having enough hands to take care of the farm was actually also solved by the plague that killed his parents, as well as those of his wife.
The plague that hit the surrounding area had a kill rate of about 40% for those between the age of 28-42 and heavily affected men. The result was many young men from the ages of 15-24 had to take over the farms of their parents before they were ready, resulting in situations such as the one Arthur had run into.
The children of merchants and some skilled laborers found themselves on the farms as hands. Due to the abundance of people with no future occupation waiting for them, people like Arthur managed to hire enough hands to take care of their entire farm and then some, without threatening their own means of living.
The main reason Arthur managed to get away with all the workers he could possibly need is because he had lots of land that had only been filled with trees, for as long as he knew, that could be cleared for housing to be built. Since the housing was only a temporary shelter that had no clearance from any certifying official, no one had any claim to his lands, but they did have a place to stay as long as they worked for Arthur.
This also gave Arthur the leverage he needed to pay his hands less than the going rate since not everyone could accommodate their workers.
Thanks to his circumstances and the inheritance he gained, he actually lived a life that was less stressful than when his parents and siblings were alive. His kids did not have to starve even during winter, and his wife still looked young and beautiful, so even now that he was about to be 28 years old, he still had a healthy family, which was more than could be said for most people in his position.
While Arthur and his family did not suffer from total poverty, they were actually still considered to be poor people. Clothes were more expensive to buy than the people they hired to help with the farm, but many of the things that were necessary on the farm were built or created by hand.
His wife, May, worked hard to craft the clothes they needed and to mend what they already had. She also took care of the children and the house while ensuring everyone had at least two good meals per day.
Since Arthur raised animals on his farm, his family and workers had meat for every meal. While they were unable to eat as much as the people in the city, it was still enough to build some lean muscle and maintain a healthy appearance.
Most of the good cattle had to be sold when they were ready to be eaten, but from time to time there was an animal that needed to be put down for one reason or another. One of the skills that Arthurs family passed down to every male born was butchering, though it was a rough skill for getting meat from their cattle when they needed it.
They were by no means able to butcher the cattle themselves when it was time to sell the meat, nor was that a feasible process since it was hard to preserve food for peasants like them. The levels in such a skill were earned by constantly butchering cattle every day, which his family was unable to do at the moment.
Jacob was the name of Arthur's great-grandfather, and the man that Arthur looked up to most in his lineage. He was sad to admit it, but his father had not lived long enough to contribute greatly to the knowledge that Arthur wielded above that of his peers.
The men in his family were taught from a young age to keep a journal on them where they were to keep their knowledge instead of writing about their day-to-day life. This allowed his family farm to already be one of the best in Ruvka, even before it had been merged with the farm next to theirs.
The main source of knowledge was from Jacob, who had taken his own father's teachings and expanded them to the knowledge that was now considered common in Arthur's family. Reading, writing, arithmetic are among a few of the skills that are considered basics in Arthurs family but are largely unknown in the village of bumpkins.
Only the merchants tend to know about many of the skills that Arthur teaches even his youngest child, and the merchants know not to try to swindle the Arthur family.
While these skills are acknowledged by the system on their planet, the skill levels that they are able to acquire for the 'aristocratic' skills, as they are called, are not high. They are able to break through the first ten levels which is where the merchants generally stop messing with the peasants, but Arthur will not be getting a job as an accountant, nor will he be writing a great novel any time soon.
After level ten in most skills, diversity is required to gain further levels, and farm peasants usually lack the knowledge and breadth of knowledge to gain the skills to begin with. Peasants like Arthur have nearly no chance of getting their hands on more than the basics.
Arthur had not named his firstborn son after his great-grandfather because, at the time, he still missed his own father dearly. Thus, the oldest son of Arthur was named Caleb in honor of his father. Lila was born two years after Caleb, and she was named by May after her oldest sister, who also died in the plague.
When Jacob was born, Arthur knew he had to name him after his great-grandfather since by that point he had learned so much just by reading his journal about how to take care of the farm, how to hire men to help with the farm, and how to take care of the equipment of the farm.
The equipment was an especially important piece of information since the equipment could make or break the farm, depending on what broke and at what time of the year it happened.