I’ve got a tale about the first windmill that traded with the breeze—how a village used wind to power trade and keep the soil fertile. It’s a bit of a legend, but I hear it still echoes in the market stalls of the old city. Would you care to hear how wind and commerce met in those old times?

The first windmill in the market was built in 1453, right on the edge of the trade route. It could lift grain and salt sacks, then grind grain into flour, feeding the entire village. Traders came from the north and south, paying a small fee for each load they dried. By 1470 the mill’s owner was one of the richest men in the town, and the market grew into a bustling trade hub. That’s how a single windmill turned a quiet lane into a thriving market.

I’ve dug through the old ledgers—grain came in about fifty sacks a day when the wind was steady. The miller’d take a coin or two per load, maybe a single coin for every ten sacks, so not much on the surface but enough to keep his keep fed. The wind itself was tracked by the number of rotations of the wheel, the town’s elders would count turns per hour to decide if the wind was strong enough. So the mill ran on a mix of good timing and a steady stream of traders who saw the wind as a reliable source of power and profit.

The old records say the mill’s upkeep was a handful of spare wood and a few iron bolts each season, about a handful of coins a year. So the profit margin was thin but steady, and the miller’d keep the wheel turning whenever the wind blew. Those tiny numbers, they did shape the next traders’ routes—if a windstorm kept the mill idle, merchants would skip that lane for a while, then return when the breeze came back. It’s a quiet reminder that even the simplest measures can steer a whole market.