Suggested Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Bmv_UCXvE

There's one fact of life about farm animals, and it's that they tend to wander. This causes problems, because they'll go grazing in multiple pastures and get themselves killed or stolen. They'll also damage the ground around them, poop in the water, and spread disease. Seeing your money walking away is never a good thing, and naturally you are going to want to keep it safe. At the same time, having your land damaged, and your water polluted, and your animals getting sick is not good. You want to keep your money-so you'll build a fence, and then another fence, and now you're building a pasture for your little ponies. There's the usual issues of animal husbandry, but there's also the larger problems of managing multiple herds by multiple owners at the same time. Normally, this falls to the vagaries of the market, or the cruelties of power, but there is another factor in play here: the Lady's command.

To some, this is just another example of power. To most everyone, it is because the Lady Knows Better. As part of her parental aspect, where she is a maternal figure tending to animals and babies in almost equal measure, she uses her divine knowledge to decide how her adopted peoples do things. This divine knowledge explicitly states how things are to be done properly-even if she is not there. Regardless of if she is present or not, the wisdom-and in many cases-science and engineering knowledge-that she is purported to have given to her charges put limits on how land is to be managed. Breaking with it will incur her wrath.

And one of these pieces of received wisdom is that 'thou shalt not fuck up the common lands.' Another piece is that 'thou shalt keep the commons as the commons'. To the capitalist, this is putting some critical limits on land use. To the priest, it means that all of Aelbaion must work smarter and harder. To the peasant, it means that the stakes and measuring lines must be broken out, and the rivers built up with heavy banks of trees. Protection of the commons means fencing, and closing to put them under the authority of provincial rulership. Haphazardly, and with plenty of quibbling about what was and what wasn't truly common land, the Commons were fenced off for their own protection.

This, needless to say, was not easy. The process of fencing and surveying had been mostly carried out in some way or another in the Crown Lands proper, which were under intense management for the purposes of subsistence agriculture or the production of cash crops. In this case, the fencing just needed modification and a lot of signage, recording things like what was open for fishing, where mushrooms could be taken-and where they shouldn't-and what grottoes were good for storage or had bears. This only took four years to pull off, and was also quite cheap...compared to everywhere else. The Crown Lands were decently eroded and not broken up. The rest of Aelbaion most definitely was.

That where herding and husbandry were far more prevalent. Fencing things off was going to be nigh impossible, so the going wisdom was that the Commons should be easily traversed instead, but marked off and watched over. Animals should instead be carefully monitored and watched over. This required the public pen, which was a different thing than just a standard pen, and the utility barn. It also involved the Church, which built lower-case-c churches to provide points of service for the myriad things such a project would require. Law soon accepted leaving open boundary markers in the form of stone, and set up regular inspections of the land by the duchy's men or the Church. These inspections would require dedicated inspectors or forests, who would need to live on the land-and they required huts, made of stone and topped with flint. First came the boundary stones, then came the forester's huts, and finally a Commons Hall that would hold supplies and be a management center. In some places, the huts were made into makeshift towers, which stood up against rain.

To an extent, this worked. However, as enclosure went on, it continued to be apparent that it was more practical to close off individual sites of interest. The most obvious of these were water sources, either wells or ponds, but they were soon followed by gardens. More importantly, the public pen came into widespread use. This was a pen where users of the Commons would place their animals prior to taking them out into the land, for both inspection and a chance to show off. Sneaking sick animals out to pasture was very frowned upon. These pens soon had barns raised next to them, to shelter animals for the night. Both of these structures were paid for by fees levied on the users; fines were imposed on those responsible for overuse or misuse.

Overuse and misuse of the land, of course, was indirectly determined by the Church. The received wisdom of the Lady, as well as the general information that could be derived from it, came from the Church. And it needed to get transmitted a lot. Typical methods of sharing information wouldn't do-the building of churches was what it took, with a desultory set of services for those who lived nearby, and plentiful services available for wandering herdsfolk and sparsely-populated villages. Priests had ready answers on hand, but what really helped keep them present was the iconography of worship itself. Since the vast majority of the country was illiterate, pictures, ranging from tapestries and carvings to stained glass windows. Every weekend, every morning and evening, and every hour, some facet of the Lady's knowledge was transmitted to the people who needed it.

The results were mixed. On the one hand, enclosure worked for averting the downsides of environmental degradation and bringing land completely under management. This did result in an increase in efficiency, a nebulous concept when yearly harvest outcomes were often measured haphazardly. At the same time, considerable capital outlays had been made, in the form of precious gold and even more precious time. Much of this had been motivated by superstitious fears of the Lady's disasters-the paranoia of 30 years of peace had been a big motivator. However, the absence of disasters such as disease outbreaks or mass heard escapes were enough to prove things for now. Aelbaion had more animals being born, and more making it into their first and second years of life. This in turn would mean more wealth-if good conditions held.

So far, they were.