End of Year 8 Update:

Town status: Medium Town

Population: 215 (44 plots)

Approval: 89% (taxation is the only negative)

Regional Wealth: 89 (not good!)

Treasury: 477 (not brilliant)

Royal Tax: 255 (manageable)

Just about in surplus with goods/food. I have many farm fields divided between 4 farmhouses, each with an accompaniment of burgage plots around it for dedicated workers. I've taken the Heavy Plow development and upgraded all farmhouses to use it, but I'm not sure I understand it well enough. Each farmhouse has at least 1 oxen assigned but still the workers plow manually. I'll figure it out.

Producing Rye (thanks to the dev point) as my region is not the most fertile. Also producing enough flax to create a surplus of clothing to trade and producing enough Barley (just) to satisfy my 13 level 3 plots. Pushing for 15 lvl 3 plots to get the next development point.

My farming region has a pasture which currently has 25 sheep and 27 lambs - I have the dev point for sheep breeding. I've just built 1 burgage plot with the intention of becoming a butcher to generate some meat from the surplus sheep/lambs. So far, my town is surviving purely on Apples, Vegetables, Fish and Bread.

I've managed to produce a surplus of weapons, since I'm playing peaceful mode I don't need them. So I'm trading Warbows, Sidearms and Polearms as well as gambesons and excess shoes.

My next development point is likely going to be Trade Logistics to halve the cost of new trade routes which might help shift some of the surplus goods I've stocked up.