Those bears got to eat too.  They like the take-out 

Not the bears! Though I too would be tempted by fish...

Chapter 3


  The problem with drying fish would be the bears.  We tried it once.  We hung the fish on racks in the sun to dry and we soon had several bears coming to eat our fish.  Anthon, the fisherman, could not fish or even leave his house.  When the fish were gone so were the bears but as soon as we hung more fish on the racks, the bears returned.   After the third try, we gave up; the bears lingered and prevented us from doing a lot of our outside work until they left.  The drying racks became firewood.



  Smoke fish?  A smoker?  We never tried to smoke fish or ever had smoked fish.  I suppose we could try it if you would tell us how to build a smoker and smoke the fish.  We could trade some of the smoked fish for wool and keep some to have in winter when fish and wild foods weren't so plentiful. 



  As it was, we always have to save some of our potatoes to plant the following spring.  That 2nd spring we prepared a small field next to the clerk's office.  I cut the potatoes into small pieces with eyes and Matticus planted them.   We almost had the small field planted when the families, that left old town before we did, returned.  There were 3 couple with 3 children and 2 young adult girls.  We were all happy to see them again and sorry they had a rough time since they left.

  It was just after their return that we tried to dry the fish since there would be more mouths to feed the following winter. 

Chapter 2


  We built an old clerk's office next to our house to keep birth records and other town statistics.  My husband, Matticus, was our town elder at age 22.   All the old records are still in the clerk's office back in the old town. 



  We built a woodcutter back behind the stockpile.  We were concerned that our firewood supply would not last the winter.  We were out often picking up branches that came down every time the wind blew stronger or the snowfall was heavier.  We built a forester shed back off the road from the asparagus hedgerow.  We wanted to be sure to always have enough logs.  There was a lot of stone, iron, and wild foods growing in that area that needed to be gathered.



  We were concerned for our food supply, we weren't farmers but we grew some potatoes like our parents and grandparents did.  It was cold fishing and gathering food and firewood; we only had light clothes.  We weren't hunters so we had no hides, only wild flax to make linen clothes with.  There was flax growing wild, and some growing in the 2apple tree hedgerow, as well as a patch in old town that one of the grandma's planted years ago.  The flax still comes up there every year.  What? A town up-river has wool and will be a stop on the new trade route?  Yes, it would be nice to have wool.  We could certainly figure out how to make warm clothes with it.  But what would we have to trade for it except fish?  No, fresh fish does not keep long but drying it would be a problem.

Hi @taniu
I hope all is well and that spring is coming to you too.

      

kid1293     Thank you very much

   thanks, Kid!

Chapter 1


   Our grandparents came down along the small stream from the north many years ago and settled just north of here by the lake. They were fishermen.  We were all born here.  The last of the parents passed on just this past winter.  The very young and old were susceptible to illnesses.  The cold mist seemed to linger longer along that stream and in that valley where they settled.  The houses had become pretty run down; the parents didn't want much help.  Some families moved elsewhere but we came here to still be close to home.



  We built a road down from the north, asparagus and herbs come up every year along that road.  There were 18 of us, 12 adults and 6 children; one of the 6 became an adult before all the houses were built.  We built a storage barn first and a large stockpile.  There were a lot of dead trees and weathered wood in the area to build with.  We used some of the stone to build a tiny workshop next to the barn, the houses were all wood.   One family moved into a house next to the workshop and 3 houses were built across from the barn.  My husband, Matticus, and I moved into the end house by the stockpile with our 2-year-old son, Lorent.  My name is Noella.





  A young single male age 7 moved into a house by the fishing pier that was built down by the river.  The fishing wasn't good in the lake that the old folks fished from, especially in winter.  There were a lot of hungry times back then.  They grew a few potatoes, and there was a hedgerow with apples, chestnuts, and flax, and there were wild foods to gather but that was about it; they weren't hunters.
 


 We found another hedgerow like the one back home not far from our new barn. We thought the river and the cove might be better places to fish, so a fishing pier was built in the cove along with 2 houses on the road from the barn.  By late autumn, all the families had homes and by the end of that 1st year, there were 3 newborns, including our 2nd son, Haskelly. 

I think it is because I do not want to add a lot of extra resources.
It feels like spam to me. There is no use for gems and gold in the game.
I do not want to invent new professions. We have enough already.

CC and RKEC have a lot of that. Add a few dwarven buildings and you can have a mining town.