I love that game 
IIRC, Bountiful Feast covers most if not all of the hill. I have no problem either selling vis or making for a temporary solution. But we do need to think of longer term ways to make money. Moving forward on the wine making could help. Expanding the sheep farming would help but I would want to diversify rather than specialize. We are getting close to be able to make books but that is more cost for not much or specialized income.
Or cutting expenses... 
Can't really expand the sheep enterprise, it's already pulling in all the cash, and Mons Electi is fully vertically integrated. If it can be made from a sheep, Mons Electi has it...
Just like in our government, it is hard to take away something from people once it has been given.
I'll let Gerg tell us where we could cut.
Here's my precis on cost savings. In the "victims of our own success category": the fact that we are a Summer-lifestyle covenant with a Legendary income source makes it very hard to cut expenses, for two reasons. First, adding specialists or laborers doesn't actually achieve the usual cost savings, because we're paying for such a great lifestyle for all our covenfolk. Second, even a rare specialist who ends up saving us silver saves only a fraction of a percent of our total budget, since our income is so large.
In terms of cutting costs, then, our options would include the following rather unappealing list: hiring a whole bunch of skilled and rare craftsmen; reducing the lifestyle we provide to some or all of our covenfolk; reducing the lifestyle of the magi or making the labs cheaper (egads!); letting go some of the specialists, craftsmen, or grogs (and thus a few servants with them). Or - reducing the huge amount we need to pay the bishop every year! - even a 10% reduction would cover the new costs and more. (By the way, we will be helped a little bit once the Tribunal is over and Viscaria is no longer on site, I suppose.)
The other category of things to try is magical assistance. We could simply CrTe some silver (with all the problems that go along with that). We may or may not be able to cast a second Bountiful Feast every year. We could create a different ritual, say a weed-killing spell, that would have a cost-savings effect of a similar magnitude. What about a similar ritual that buffed the health and hardiness of the sheep - Bountiful Flock perhaps? And/or, a ritual ReAn spell that made the sheep easier to control. Ritual spells, cast yearly, basically turn vis into silver at a rate of 1 pawn = 5 pounds (by default, at least). Similarly, creating enchantments turns a one-time expenditure of N pawns of vis into a yearly savings of 2N pounds of silver (by default). With our great Rego aura, we could have ReTe spells/enchantments to help workers transport goods around, to plow the fields, to ward off vermin, to keep clothes clean and pressed, to do the dusting.... Once the Tribunal is over, Viscaria may or may not be leaving the stonecutter's rings with us - those could be used to reduce expenditure as well.
We could of course try to boost income in other, mundane ways as well. Rashid the silk-weaver has started a workshop, gotten assistance, and gotten going on storing up Labor Points. But the troupe would have to decide what that actually means in terms of income. Does the creation of the workshop create a Trivial source of income, which can then be increased through the normal mechanics? Even that might be a bit generous.
Muhahaha!
We could have Alips and Fiona train a bunch of women (and maybe a few guys), send them to the nearest good-sized town and cities, and make sure they send back half of what they make. (Fiona could go herself, but I don't know if there's a market for nine-foot-tall redheads. Redheads, yes, but maybe not ones that big). :deadpan:
We have a decent sized group of fighting men. Dispersing them or putting them to additional use could help.
A ritual for the sheep made me think of 6-7' balls of wool with legs that the sheep might become with some magical hair growing ritual
Is the silk weaver needed now that Viscaria and the spider ( hence the source of the silk) are leaving?
I'm all for using a ritual to make silver for 1 year ( with all of the problems). Done during the year of the tribunal will make [strike]laundering[/strike] spending it easier. We can sell 5 pawns of vis for 50 silver (HoH:TL pg87) but we do not want to do that often.
Is it just me, or is JL even more eerie than usual when his sinister remarks aren't attached to a specific quote? 
All the sheep would want to mate with these woolballs 
Well, good point. It's possible that they would leave behind the [strike]infestation[/strike] boon of spider babies. I could see it either way I guess.
Personally, I've always felt that the possibility of simply selling vis for silver really cheapens the mythic feel of the setting.
For magical creation of silver, there's the wonderfully named The Riches That Are Rightfully Mine(d) (Covenants page 61), a CrTe 35 ritual that makes 2000 pounds of silver coins, with a Guernicus-administered cavity search thrown in for free. We could try to on-the-sly create a lesser version of this, maybe CrTe 30 for 200 pounds of silver coins, and spend them over the course of several years. (Would it work to design a CrTe 25 ritual that just made a 200-pound lump of pure silver, thus doing away with the +1 for complexity?)
See, nobody listed to Fiona when she mentioned raiding way back when. Now we have a budget crisis, and a surfeit of able-bodied fighting men....
Just sayin' 
I'm thinking probably not. Or maybe roll him into the "regular" weavers, which (if it's not already) could be a relatively profitable enterprise.
And some of the shepherds.
We could [strike]beam them into the Klingons' cargo hold[/strike] sneak them into Montverte's stores somehow.
When I don't use a quote, you can be pretty sure that I'm referring to the previous post in the thread, or the general theme of posts up to that point.
This is the crux of the summer covenant's problems. They've got just enough resources to see to all their needs, but not all of their wants. Or all of their wants, but not all of their needs. Think of it like a game of Jenga, or something...
I did bring up the fighting men for 'other uses', which could include raiding. Alexei is not big on it, but if we have a defined enemy, harrassing their supply lines is viable. My big concern then would be that it likely has a steep learning curve and we'd be getting into the game late.
The woolballs are the sheep!!!!
Jacques would be all for taking the men out for some "exercise" on supply routes
That's really who I was thinking. The turb that was with him seemed already fit for that work. My other concern is giving more of an excuse to attack us.
Did the gold that Fiona and the others acquired get added to the money stores?
You're referring to the trip to the magic realm in 1223 ... we sort of hand waved that the covenant silver stocks at the end of 1223 were 10 Mythic pounds, so maybe that gold was part of that, I dunno.
To be honest it doesn't seem like people are that keen on having finances as part of this saga. The exercise generated the qualitative answer that the covenant has enough income to pay off the Bishop handsomely and still run everything else, but not much left over. If people are cool with that, I am too.
If people want more detailed tracking, I'm happy to do that too - but then other players need to get involved when money becomes an issue, such as with Roberto's arrival.
Sure...but it was a lot of gold...
35 pounds of gold. As in almost 16 kilograms. So...yeah. Oodles of gold.