Chapter 114 Farming
On the fifth day of February, the first batch of Bingzhou refugees left Shaoyuan and Panyuan and headed for Yiyang.
It will take them about three days to arrive at Yunzhongwu, where they will then undergo military control and start spring sowing work one after another.
Shao Xun did not go with them, but rushed back to Yunzhongwu first.
After a few days, a wooden fence has been erected at the foot of the hillside on the south side of the platform.
The owner of the building, Jin San, is holding a sword and a bow, looking majestic and pointing.
The teenage boy was already quite impressive. The Luoyang coolies who were generally at least ten years older than him were respectful. After a while, a few people were assigned to hide in the nearby woods with small flags. among.
This is setting up hidden sentries and mobile sentries, using small flags to communicate regularly. Once contact is lost, the Silver Spear soldiers will immediately assemble and prepare for battle.
If a big thief arrives, the whole village will ring the bell.
The men in Zhuang Keli immediately mobilized and went to the top of the city to fight.
The healthy women served as auxiliary soldiers, carrying the wounded and various defensive equipment.
Children will not be idle either. They will do whatever they can, such as delivering water and meals, taking care of the wounded, transporting medicine for arrow wounds, etc.
In short, when all the people join the battle, no one will be idle.
Shao Xun dismounted from a distance and walked quietly along the valley water, watching silently.
There are still flat fields on both sides of this Luoshui tributary, and people are already plowing in spring. They are all the family members of the former bandits, working hard and numbly on the farmland, living mechanically.
Thieves don’t have an easy life. In this world, they can only rob people or small caravans, and their income is limited. After all, they still have to rely on farming to support themselves.
"Master Shao." Jin San was notified quickly and rushed over, followed by two honest and honest middle-aged men - it was all an illusion, and thieves could not be honest.
“Who is this?” Shao Xun pointed at the person behind him.
"Li Yu, Qiu Da, and Li Xian, whom I appointed, are responsible for fifty households each." Jin San replied.
Yi and Li are grassroots organizations, and they were transplanted to Wubao in their entirety.
That's what people did back then. When Yu Gun was in Yushanwu, he ordered "the towns to push their elders" and "the locals to push their talents", and divided the residents and households of the village into management units. Therefore, "the orders should be consistent, the superiors and subordinates should be polite, and the young and senior should be polite."
“Have you ever farmed?” Shao Xun looked at the two wise men and asked.
"Planted."
Shao Xun nodded, and then led them to walk along the canal.
“You dug these canals, right?” he asked, pointing to the crooked and crooked irrigation canals.
“Yes.”
“You are planting millet?”
“Exactly.”
“Have you ever planted wheat?”
>
“Only planted twice.”
"Spring sowing or autumn sowing?"
"Once spring sowing, once autumn sowing."
"Why not sowing?"
"There are not so many canals."
Shao Xun understands.
In fact, there is not that much food. Support them to extend the existing irrigation canals. To put it bluntly, they are still poor and cannot invest huge resources at once to improve the infrastructure, even if the visible benefits in the future are higher. .
"After sowing in autumn, we will harvest wheat in May next year. What will you plant after harvesting?" Shao Xun asked again.
“I planted some grains, all kinds of grains, and harvested them before it snowed.”
“Were the days more relaxed that year?”
“Yes. ”
Shao Xun looked at the Qugu water winding northward and made a decision in his heart.
If the wheat planting area at this time was only one point, it gradually became two-thirds in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, four-fifths in the Tang Dynasty, and in the late Tang Dynasty, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, it had become Seven or eight points.
Why are people so enthusiastic about growing wheat?
One is that the yield per mu of wheat is higher than that of millet at this time, but this is only one reason.
More importantly, you can harvest one more season of food.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the two-year and three-crop system was quite mature in northern dry farming production. This planting tradition evolved from the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
The tradition of the Wei and Jin Dynasties was that one crop of millet could be harvested once a year, and only two crops of millet could be harvested in two years.
Three crops were harvested in two years during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Millet was sown in the spring of the first year, wheat was harvested after the autumn, and wheat was harvested in May of the following year. After the harvest, a season of miscellaneous grains was planted and harvested before snowfall. Within two years, one crop of millet, one crop of wheat, and one crop of miscellaneous grains (mainly beans) can be harvested. The land utilization rate is greatly improved, and the output is also greatly improved.
This planting model is so common that the government has changed the tax collection system, and there has been a summer tax and an autumn tax, two taxes a year.
The summer tax collects silk, cotton, wheat and cash (250 wen per household), and the autumn tax collects rice, millet, beans and hay (usually 10 bunches).
From the tax collection objects, we can get a glimpse of the agricultural production model.
As the wheat planting area increases, the planting, processing, and cooking technologies surrounding it will gradually emerge, and you don’t need to worry about this.
At this time, there are a lot of wheat-based foods in the noble manors, and Jinguyuan has more than thirty districts. Each district has even built special roads to transport various grains, and processing technology The door is very clear, it just doesn't spread.
This is also an important reason why Shao Xun wanted to take over Jinguyuan. The irrigation canals and processing equipment were all ready, but all the people were gone. The rebels were not interested in these things either. What they wanted was the goods in Jingu Garden.
Things like flowering steamed buns cannot exist only in noble manors forever.
"Spring sowing as soon as possible, don't delay, try to plant as many varieties as possible, so plant millet." Shao Xun bent down, picked up a handful of soil, looked at it carefully, and said: "After the spring sowing is completed, start digging Ditch and sift the soil.”
“No.” Jin San, Li Yu, and Qiu Da responded together.
There are also some livestock grazing on the river bank.
Among them, five horses, thirteen cows, and dozens of sheep were grazing leisurely on the left bank of the river. These should have been the original livestock of the thieves' village.
There are more than twenty horses, mules, and seven or eight cows on the right bank of the river. They are the draft animals of the Silver Spear Army and are managed by a few soldiers. Besides grazing livestock, they were also very diligent in collecting dry firewood and branches.
"How to deal with livestock manure?" Shao Xun suddenly asked.
"Pick it back and pile it in the corner."
"Let's go and have a look." Li Yu and Qiu Da were a little surprised, but they did not dare to neglect and led the way.
A high-ranking official of the imperial court actually wanted to take the initiative to look at the feces and didn’t know what to say.
Shao Xun smiled, "What's up, I like this."
Wang Yan’s wife, Guo, even sent the maids in the mansion out to see if there was any dung on the road. If there was any, she would quickly pick it up and take it home.
This is called running a household well and running a business properly.
Cattle sheds, horse sheds and sheep pens are located inside the village. This is understandable. Livestock is important property. It would be very painful if one died of illness, let alone having someone snatch it away.
When approaching the cowshed, Shao Xun smelled a smell from a distance.
He looked carefully at the pile of cow dung without even frowning.
It seems that they have been piled up for a while. They are not that good on the outside, but they are probably "cooked" on the inside.
In those days, when people picked up excrement and returned home, they basically threw it in a corner and then cleaned it up after a while.
Shao Xun doesn’t know if this is good or not, it doesn’t feel right.
He entered the cowshed again, and the smell inside was even more impressive, as if it had never been cleaned.
Finally he couldn't hold it any longer, frowned and asked, "Why don't you clean the cowshed?"
"The manure has been shoveled..." Li Yu saw Shao Xun frowning Frowning, a little scared.
"Let's do this..." Shao Xun pondered for a moment and said: "I will tell you a few things, put them into words, and formulate them into regulations in the future."
His words were a reference to Jin. San said, because he is literate and can write.
“No.” Jin San immediately asked people to bring in desks, wooden tablets, and pen and ink.
"First, the excrement within one year is not allowed to be used."
"Second, when rivers and canals are dredged, the silt dug out will be mixed with the excrement."
"Third, , the stables are cleaned regularly, and a layer of soil is spread every half month, and then spread on the manure pile. "
"Master Shao, why is this?" Jin San wrote. The mind asks questions.
Shao Xun didn't know much about it, so he could only say: "Manure mixed with soil lasts longer."
"Oh." Jin San responded.
"Also, I will raise horses in the future, and of course I can't make the stables look like this." Shao Xun added.
There are two ways to raise horses. One is to raise horses on pasture; the other is to stable horses, that is, "parallel horses die in stables".
To put it bluntly, it means keeping the horse in captivity and letting it out regularly for activities, which is beneficial to the physical and mental health of the horse.
This method of raising horses is very popular in areas lacking large areas of grassland, and is a desperate alternative.
This was the case for the Nanzhao Kingdom in later generations.
The horses in Dianchi and Yongchang are left in the wild and are not placed in stables.
Select hundreds of Yuezu horses (Tengchong horses) to Dali, and feed them with rice porridge juice within three years. They will be slightly older in four or five years, and they will be mature in six or seven years. Horses fed in this way have high tails and are particularly good at galloping.
Stable horses can be carefully managed and fed with grain, so the horses are of high quality.
When charging head-on, you can smash the wild horses to pieces.
The cost is also really high. A horse eats at least three times as much food as a human. Shao Xun does not have such luxury for the time being.
But raising horses is a must.
Even if you don’t form a cavalry unit, there are many other uses for horses.
A scout has to take several horses out.
When setting up camp at night, a few horses should also be prepared in the dark bunker that is set far away, so that if you see the enemy attacking at night, you can return to camp in time - change the horses so that you have sufficient horse power. Running at high speed, sending back news.
The battlefield messenger wants a horse.
A small group harasses the enemy's rangers.
The baggage troops must draw horses or other draft animals.
Mid-level and senior officers should prepare several horses. One is to charge on the battlefield. When the horse power is insufficient, he can directly jump on the back of another empty horse and continue to fight. The other is to have another horse to ride on when escaping to maintain high speed.
The personal soldiers of senior officers also want horses, and there are more than one.
Pure infantry troops are also equipped with a large number of horses.
"Fourth, it is convenient to build livestock pens near farmland. If there are thieves coming to attack, they can move them."
Shao Xun said several more things in one breath, which was enough to reassure him. The meager inventory was cleared out.
After Jin San finished recording, he showed it to Shao Xun for review. After making sure it was correct, he carefully put it away.
“If you have any good ideas, you can also put them forward. After they are verified to be valid, rewards will be issued.” Shao Xun added.
After the text is formed, it can even be collected into a book, copied and disseminated in the Wubao and manor under your own name, mainly for the Wubao owners and farm dians who participate in actual management.
If other Wubao and farms have unique agricultural technologies, they can also be exchanged with each other.
He never dared to underestimate the manors of those wealthy families.
They have been in management for many years, some for several generations. In long-term agricultural practice, it is impossible not to sum up experience. The key is that they cherish their knowledge and are unwilling to disclose it to outsiders.
This is similar to the so-called general family.
The knowledge of marching and fighting is only circulated within the family, and there is even a military book compiled by the family, which is kept secret.
This is the foundation of the so-called aristocratic family.
If they were willing to share with each other, they would be able to greatly speed up the spread of knowledge, but no one is willing to do this.
When did flowering steamed buns become popular among the people?
Shao Xun is not from a wealthy family, but his heritage comes from later generations and is very profound. In some specific fields, he alone is worth the accumulated knowledge of several generations of aristocratic families and tens of thousands of people in their estates.
His Wubao will not be worse than others, it can even be run better.
This is his confidence.
(End of this chapter)