Manbao and the others ran too fast. It was impossible for them to wait for Lao Zhoutou. With such a big sun hanging, waiting on the road would be boring.
So they asked along the way where they had arrived first.
It was a quite large village, it looked about the same size as Dali Village, but the houses were not very neat, and there were a few scattered houses dotted in the endless wilderness.
Man Bao restrained Chi Ji, turned around twice, looked around the area, then pointed to the big village and said, "It should be over there. Come on, let's go over and have a look."
The three of them rode over, and Daji followed with two guards.
As soon as the horse ran to the entrance of the village, the children who were looking at the millet at the entrance of the village immediately jumped up. Half of them stood under the trees or under the eaves to watch them from a distance, while the other half turned around and ran back to the village.
This looked similar to their village. Man Bao came up to the horse and looked at Bai Shan before jumping off the horse.
Man Bao took off his purse and poured two snacks out of it. Seeing so many children, he felt a little embarrassed to take action.
Bai Shan touched his body and found only a few snacks.
Bai Erlang looked at them with disdain, took out his purse, and poured out a dozen candies.
The children's eyes lit up immediately.
The three people distributed the candies and snacks to them and asked, "Is this Pucun in Qiyang County?"
Even a child knows the names of counties and villages, so he nodded, "Yes, who are the nobles looking for?"
Man Bao smiled and said, "I want to find your chief."
While he was talking, several adults and a group of children came over.
The first one is an old man, wearing wide sleeves, which are very long at first glance.
In the countryside, except for landlords and village chiefs, who would wear wide sleeves?
And I heard that most of Pucun are tenant farmers, and there are no rich and land-rich landlords like Mr. Bai.
So Man Bao came forward with a smile, and the elders bowed first. The other party's eyes quickly glanced at their clothes, and glanced at the horses behind them. Naturally, they also saw the tall and strong Daji.
Three guards.
The chief also smiled, returned the greeting, and then asked: "Who are the young ladies and gentlemen here?"
Manbao quickly took out her official seal and the document given by the Ministry of Revenue from her sleeve pocket. It was actually a thin piece of paper with the seal of the Ministry of Revenue stamped on it, indicating the scope of her job, as well as the location and so on.
.
"I'm due next week, so I'm here to take a look at the job field under my name."
The chief looked at Zhou Man in surprise. He knew that the official in the field under his jurisdiction had changed again, and he heard that it was an editor and an imperial physician. He felt a little more relaxed, but he didn't expect that the official was a little girl.
He glanced at the paper in his hand and asked hesitantly: "Do you want to manage your own job?"
Man Bao smiled and said: "I want my family to take care of me. Of course, I will need the mayor to take care of me in the future."
Man Bao grew up in the village and knows how important the support of a village leader is.
But the chief smiled and said: "The adults are joking, what can I do to take care of the adults?"
He immediately came back to his senses, folded up the official document he had read and handed it to Zhou Man. He took the bamboo hat from his son behind him, put it on and said, "Since you are here, why don't you show me your job title?"
field"
Man Bao happily agreed.
So everyone turned and walked out of the village.
The people in the village soon knew that the master of the field was coming to see their fields. This was related to everyone's livelihood, so many people followed to see their fields.
The head of the village quietly looked at Zhou Man and the others, and saw that they looked calm and didn't seem to mind, so he stopped driving away the villagers.
Not all of Manbao's thousand acres of working land is here, but most of it is here, and part of it is in the other two villages and villages. It's just that those two places occupy less, so Manbao came here first.
At this time, all the crops in the fields have been harvested, and the fields are either empty or overgrown with weeds.
Manbao and the others have all farmed, and they have grown up in the village. They often watch people planting in spring and harvesting in autumn. They can guess how the tenant farmers are working just by looking at the conditions in the fields.
At this time, the fields that had just been harvested were completely covered with weeds.
Man Bao walked to the field, kicked the weeds in the field with his toes, then squatted down and pulled them out, but they didn't move even after a lot of effort.
Bai Shanze squatted down and dug up a handful of soil. He stretched out his hand to squeeze it and said to Man Bao, "It's all mature soil, but it's just not turned over very often, so the quality of the soil is a little bad."
The Li Chang standing nearby raised his eyebrows slightly, turned around and glanced at Bai Shan, and saw that he was the most luxuriously dressed, with dark patterns on the silk and satin on his body, and a half-hidden crane embroidered on his sleeves. He looked like a group of people.
The most noble among them.
He didn't expect that he also knew how to farm.
Man Bao nodded, looked up into the distance, and found that everywhere she looked were weeds, which gave her a headache. Even so, her father wanted to dig up the ground and bury weeds for the winter. She felt that her eldest brother and their waists
It will probably hurt a lot.
Man Bao shook his head and asked the chief, "Where did this job come from?"
It is impossible to walk through such a large piece of land, but the chief can point out and roughly tell her where to go from there, and which parts are missing. This is land that belongs to good people."
Although there are occasionally other people's fields in the middle, basically her career fields can be connected.
The imperial court was able to connect such a large piece of land, and it seems that it bought land from many people.
Man Bao had a question in his mind and was unhappy if he didn't ask clearly. He asked, "I heard that the imperial court would redeem the land from the people. This land used to belong to the villagers?"
The chief was stunned for a moment and then smiled and said: "That's not true. This area used to belong to a general named Liu. That was during the previous dynasty, and it is even harder to trace back. In my grandfather's time, I heard that
These ten miles and eight villages will have to be replaced by a refugee commander every two years. Today it belongs to this general, and tomorrow it belongs to that gentleman. After the establishment of this dynasty, the imperial court directly took back this large area, and later distributed it to
Let the officials do their jobs."
The leader said: "We all moved from other places after losing our land, and we have only settled here for more than ten years."
Man Bao was curious, "Then where is your hometown?"
Li Chang said: "It's not that far, it's also in Qiyang County, but it's just on the other side."
Bai Shan asked, "Why did you lose your land?"
The chief was silent for a moment, then forced out a smile and said: "The emperor's grace is so great that our land was redeemed by the imperial court."
Manbao and the others:...
Man Bao nodded and walked down this large piece of dry land. When he reached the field, he saw that the ground in the field was cracked, one big piece after another. The cracks were very big, so he
I know the drought is quite serious here.
She asked: "Will there be a locust plague this year?"
"Yes, but not big." The head of the village also took a look at the cracks in the ground. He knew that these young masters and young adults were all people who knew how to farm, so he did not hide it. "Don't look at how many locusts there are now.
Let the children run into the grass and they will all fly."