From early October to December, the weather in Nanyang became colder and colder this year, and it started to snow.
The construction work on the village surface has basically been completed.
In ancient times, villagers were good at farming and building houses. These are basic life skills that everyone must learn.
Every household started to get busy, and Shen Chen also gave guidance at this time. From foundation to construction work, the entire family, with a population of over one thousand, and about 200 households, had to build 200 to 300 houses.
Seeing that the cold winter was approaching, Wang Yi and Deng Qi also helped organize villagers around Xinye to help them work. In order to thank them, Huang Menting specially gave them some wages.
It was originally organized by the county government and the township, and the surrounding villagers thought it was like doing corvee labor. Unexpectedly, there were still wages, which greatly increased their enthusiasm, and the construction speed was also very fast. The house was built in one month.
The next step is to dig cellars, tunnels, farmland and water canals. Now the villagers are still in the stage of sitting on nothing. That is to say, Shen Chen got a lot of grain and grass supplies from Mi Zhu and resold some of them at a high price when he passed through Peiguo. Otherwise, they would They were so poor that they only had food for the winter.
In addition to the construction work of the village, Shen Chen also began to prepare to build a Qiongcong. The tunnel is actually easy to dig.
Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when marching and fighting, if they encounter difficulties in attacking a city, they often dig tunnels, and a passage can be dug out within two or three days.
However, the design of the Qiong Cong is in a hilly mountain valley, so the design, construction materials, area size, etc. are all problems.
Although this thing existed in the Han Dynasty, it was a difficult question whether the soil quality in Xiliang was the same as that in Guandong, and whether it could be built according to the same pattern as the Qiong cage that Shen Chen had seen in his previous life.
Finally, after thinking for a long time, Shen Chen decided to build a cave dwelling by burning paper bricks and building them with bricks. Then, he used rammed earth to lay the walls outside, and covered them with lime mortar to increase the stickiness.
This was a technology for making city walls at that time, and it was even inferior to ordinary county city walls, because ordinary city walls were made of rammed earth without bricks.
The so-called Qin bricks and Han tiles, bricks have already appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
However, the firing technology was not very good. After Shen Chen worked in design work, he saw all kinds of buildings. Later, he also found the original cave dwellings and blast furnaces in some rural places.
Although it cannot be compared with the industrial civilization of the new era in later generations, these technologies were all products of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, and represented the peak level of the feudal period.
At least in the Han Dynasty, the bricks and porcelain produced in the caves designed by Shen Chen were more refined and durable, and the ironware fired in the blast furnace was of very good quality and could remove more impurities.
However, this is just an idea, because the most important thing now is the survival of the village and the guarantee of infrastructure.
Therefore, the current work is to complete the surface work of the village, build the houses, repair the huts, and then dig the canals and cultivate the fields. Every household must redistribute the land.
If you stand on the hillside and look at it, you will see hundreds of brand-new houses scattered for miles.
This design work is not a simple matter, because the land must be close to the house, otherwise it will be inconvenient to cultivate, and other functions such as vegetable planting and breeding need to be taken into account.
If all the villagers were gathered together, it would be difficult to divide the land.
There are far and near fields, and the villagers who were allocated far fields must have complained, so the construction could only be scattered at random.
Fortunately, there is nothing else in the plain, except that the land is large. Although the villagers live separately, they have also made unified planning and carried out resettlement work one by one.
It was not until the spring of January of the next year, after the local infrastructure was completed, that Shen Chen began to plan to cast cave dwellings and build a blast furnace.
According to the agreement between him and Liu Biao, he would not go to Xiangyang until the clan was completely resettled. Now he had just started to cultivate the fields, and he still needed a lot of farm tools, seeds and other materials, so there was still plenty of time.
Deng Hong went to Xiangyang again and tried to buy some production tools, but it was not enough, so he finally approached Liu Biao for help.
These items are strategic materials, which are too expensive on the market. Only Liu Biao has a lot of them in his treasury, so we can only go to him shamelessly.
Liu Biao was quite generous and sent some supplies to them, so that the elders of Huangmenting Township could finally start production.
Shen Chen asked the villagers to collect animal excrement, bones, human excrement, burned plant ash, platycodon ash, and human and animal excrement into the hut, and add a certain proportion of water to create dung water.
After two or three months of fermentation and brewing, to be honest, it is difficult for the villagers to tolerate the taste.
Since there was no retting technology before the Southern Song Dynasty, they used to do their excrement and urine in the wild. Now they put the huts at home, which really makes them feel a little uncomfortable.
But Shen Chen said that using the fertilizer reted in this way can increase soil fertility and increase grain production. Therefore, the villagers were hesitant and could only follow his instructions. Every household dug a hut and irrigated the land with manure.
By spring, the elders of Huangmenting Township had reclaimed more than 10,000 acres of land, dug out some fish ponds, purchased some pigs, cattle and sheep, and finally started a new life.
At the same time, Shen Chen summoned the village leaders, and after everyone finished their work every evening, they continued to work overtime to dig out cave dwellings and build a blast furnace behind the mountain.
Once you have a cave dwelling and a blast furnace, you can bake kiln bricks, porcelain, and refine steel to create better agricultural tools and weapons and equipment.
Fortunately, coal is widely distributed in every province in my country, but Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong are the provinces with the largest output. It does not mean that there are no other provinces.
There are also coal mines in the Nanyang Basin, and there are coal mines near the Shahe River where the elders of Huangmenting Township live. They are not big mines, but they are enough.
During the day, Shen Chen asked everyone to continue cultivating farmland and irrigating millet seedlings with dung water. In the evening, they used the cave to bake kiln bricks and porcelain, and then collected the entire clan's ironware, refining it and letting the blacksmith make it.
However, the ones they built were just ordinary farm tools, and no curved shaft plow, water drum cart, or keel waterwheel was invented.
Because it is used for paddy fields, the planting method in Nanyang Basin is similar to that in the Yellow River Basin. Dry fields are mainly used for spring millet and autumn wheat. Too much water will kill millet and wheat seedlings.
After more than three months of this, the millet seedlings finally grew. After careful cultivation and irrigation, the millet seedlings planted in Huangmenting were all full and had huge fruits. The yield actually increased by 40%, which was higher than at any time in previous years. high.
This news immediately made the villagers excited and happy. Some of the original dissatisfaction with Shen Chen's request completely disappeared, and the rest began to blindly worship and believe in him like a god.
However, Shen Chen knew that the 40% increase in production this time was due to sufficient soil and the first use of retting technology. In the future, the production will decrease year by year and eventually stabilize.
According to the knowledge he learned during his previous interviews, if chemical fertilizers are not used, light retting technology can increase crop yields by 20%, which is usually between 10% and 20%. Only chemical fertilizers are truly revolutionary products.
By April, the entire village had basically taken shape. The villagers had settled down, and tunnels, bunkers, and cages were being constructed in an orderly manner, and everything was on track.
Liu Biao said before that after his clan was settled, Deng Hong would go to Xiangyang to take up his post. It was time now.
Before departure, Shen Chen held another meeting.
This time it was not in a shack at the foot of the mountain, but in Deng's newly built ancestral hall. This time he even sat on the main seat, with several uncles sitting next to him.
Shen Chen looked around and spoke first: "Uncles, now that the clan has settled down, my sixth uncle and I are going to Xiangyang. However, Nanyang is not peaceful. If you want the clan to stand on the world, you must not let your life be in the hands of others. , you have to grow stronger yourself.”
Deng Mao asked: "Achen, what are your plans?"
"I plan to train troops."
Shen Chen said: "I built tunnels, bunkers, and cages just to prevent anyone from attacking our village. Now there are bandits everywhere in Nanyang. We are rich in production, so we may be robbed. How can we not have the ability to protect ourselves?"
Deng Mao asked: "For military training, the village leaders have to practice all day long, but everyone has to take care of the farmland, so where will the time come from?"
This is a big problem.
The total number of people in Huangmenting was just over a thousand. Especially after Cao Ren's night attack, more than 200 people were killed and injured. In addition to the more than 100 people in Zhuanyangju, the other 100 or so were young village leaders. This was a big problem for the clan. Said it was a huge blow.
Currently, the working population of the entire clan between the ages of fifteen and fifty accounts for 80%, excluding women, only 40%, and those suitable for military training are even less, accounting for only 20%, which is almost more than 200 people.
These people were members of the tribe before, and it was okay to briefly train them to protect the tribe when they moved south. But after they settled down, they had to become the main labor force of the village.
If they are trained as soldiers, who will farm the land?
Shen Chen had already considered this issue and said in a deep voice: "So I don't plan to use the whole clan as soldiers. I will only train fifty people. One soldier for every twenty people. They will be fully armed and carefully trained. They must be brave enough to fight to the death." Only a brave and brave person can have the strength to fight."
Deng Mao hesitated and said: "Fifty people? What's the use of this? Besides, now that we have been entrusted by Liu Jingzhou to train rural soldiers, is this still necessary?"
"This is necessary if we want to develop."
Shen Chen said firmly: "There are many remnants of the Yellow Turbans hiding in the mountainous areas near Nanyang. We can take in the refugees and attack the small forces first, relocate their people, and then use our model to promote it. Gradually occupy the surrounding fields, gather the people into a city, and grow step by step. There are fifty people now, and tomorrow there will be five hundred or five thousand people. Let’s see who dares to invade!”
Deng Mao and others looked at each other.
Their grandson is very ambitious, but now that he is at ease, he suddenly wants everyone to train soldiers, and he doesn't know if the villagers will be willing.
However, unlike the villagers of Xiaofu Ji'an, they have read a few books and have some knowledge.
He also understood that if he did not control his own power in these troubled times, any prince could send one or two thousand soldiers to massacre his entire clan. Therefore, seeing that Shen Chen was full of ideas and ambitions, he did not dissuade him, and all agreed to it. Let him do it.