Next to Huaiyu's village, there is a village with dozens of households.
After Shuofang was pacified, the villagers hiding in the city worked for a period of time in Shuofang City for relief work, and then received a notice from the Yamen to go home and distribute their fields.
It turns out that most of the people in this village have no land, or only have a very small amount of land, but this time the policy given by the government is to grant one ding to a hundred acres.
The original land will be deducted to reach Yongye Field, and the shortfall will be made up.
For the villagers, this is simply a piece of cake. After being a subject of the Liang Kingdom for ten years, they have not enjoyed any good treatment. For example, the village of Wu Huaiyu was one of the imperial villages of Liang Shidu.
Most of them belonged to the people of this village, but the best one thousand acres were taken away by Master Liang.
Other Liang Guoxun nobles also occupied a piece of land here and a piece of land there. They always found ways to annex and occupy it. In the end, their land became smaller and smaller, and they even became tenants completely.
Now dozens of villagers have replenished their land, and all of them are taking advantage of the season to replant winter wheat. Due to the loss of livestock and other things, the villagers are faced with the shortage of farm tools and cattle, and the yamen also provide some rental help.
However, nowadays there are not many cattle farming tools, seeds, etc. in the Yamen area. The Yamen still calls on the wealthy landowners from all over the country to come out to tide over the difficulties together and rent cattle seeds, etc. from the people.
Wu Huaiyu's Zhuangzi provided a lot of seeds, cattle, and farm tools for rent to the villagers of this small village, and agreed to pay the rent with grain after the summer harvest.
They can also come to the Wu family's village to work part-time to make money when they have time. This is not free, but paid, and even the wages are very generous.
As for Wu Huaiyu, he now has a lot of land, and there is no shortage of cattle, horses and farm tools. The cattle and horses can be transported from Lingyan plug, and farm tools and seeds can be transported from Guanzhong. These are all problems that money can solve.
Zhuangzi is still mainly short of labor. The Wu family now has 5,000 acres of land in Lingzhou, 11,000 acres in Yanzhou, and more than 20,000 acres of new land in Xia Sui Yinsheng and the four states, adding up to 40,000 acres.
Although it is a large estate model, which is relatively efficient and can save some manpower, agriculture today is still a labor-intensive industry.
Ordinary people, one man and one woman can cultivate a hundred acres of land and raise twenty baskets of silkworms. Men farm and women weave. Collective estates are relatively more efficient, mainly because the fields are concentrated, cattle, horses and farming tools are available, and the equipment such as water diversion and irrigation is relatively complete.
But in addition to growing grain, manors usually also develop side businesses such as breeding and even some primary processing.
There are forty villages outside the Great Wall. Each village is now basically equipped with ten rooms of slaves, and there are forty or fifty people, old and young, including about twenty young and strong.
These people are enough for daily life, but not enough during the busy farming period. Hiring surrounding villagers to do part-time work, or even hiring some young people to do long-term work, is a good solution to the manor's shortage of manpower.
This is actually a good thing for the villagers. After all, although the fields have been divided, the fields are dead, and the income is only so much, and the weather will not always be smooth. If you can earn more by working extra, you will have more income.
Even children from villagers' families can come to the landlord's house to earn some money, such as tending sheep and pigs, etc.
Traditional rural villages in ancient China were mainly composed of powerful landlords and ordinary people. This structure is actually relatively stable. Fewer powerful landlords occupy more field resources. The farms of these landlords can produce more new farming and agricultural tools.
Technology, etc., is even the ballast stone in rural society.
There are good and bad sides to any affairs. When this situation cannot be reversed, actively guiding and supervising the powerful landlords is actually more realistic than blindly suppressing them.
This Zhuangzi is located on the outskirts of Xiazhou, so Fan Wuniang not only arranged to grow potatoes, rape, radish, carrots, etc. here, but also raised sheep, pigs, chickens and geese. She also planned to build a greenhouse here so that it can be used in winter.
Plant some corn and other vegetables, and when you live in Xiazhou City, the pigs, sheep and vegetables you eat will be fresh.
The oxen slaves started chopping potatoes again early in the morning. After yesterday's real rewards, the oxen slaves now want to compete for the first place in exchange for a pound of mutton. Even if they are slow, they must work hard to complete the assigned task, and at least they will be rewarded with two steamed cakes.
.
The monk's maid, Wu Niang, had a happy face this morning. When she got up, she told Huaiyu that she felt like she had been hit this time.
"A lot of people came to work in Goda Village today."
"Let's arrange it if there is work. Anyway, we are busy with autumn planting now. In addition, the village is newly built, and we need to add some houses and sheep pens. It is not easy for everyone to rebuild their homes. The old rules are that wages are paid every ten days. They
You can ask for food or money, and try not to default on them."
Geda Village got its name because it is located near the Geda River, a tributary of the Wuding River.
There used to be hundreds of households here, but now there are only seventy or eighty. Half of them were resettled after Shuofang was pacified. Most of the other villagers were either moved to Lingqing and other places during the previous siege, or were driven into the city.
starving.
A war, although this war was not a fierce siege of the city, but to the people of Shuofang, it was still whitewashed.
Now that the land has been divided and granted, it is too difficult to renovate the house, buy farm tools, furniture, buy cattle and horses, etc. They can only do it bit by bit. They can't all rely on the imperial government office. The Wujiazhuang next door will become
become their best object of attachment.
"We can just calculate it first and then it can be used as a deduction for the money they paid for renting seeds, farming tools, cattle and horses."
The monk's maid said.
Huaiyu waved his hand, "Look at how we all look. They are all sallow and thin, and their families have no food left. It is not easy to rely on the little food relief from the court. We Zhuangzi are here, and we will have to deal with the villagers frequently in the future. We need to
There are many places where they can help.
If you are in trouble now, if you can help, you must help."
"I have something to say, that is, many villagers want to borrow grain from Zhuangzi. They agreed to borrow it in the fall and pay it back after the summer harvest, but now they have nothing..."
"Don't worry about that for now. Let each family borrow some first. As for the interest, don't talk about borrowing one and paying back three. If you borrow now, you can pay back the grain until next autumn's harvest. Let's get one profit for each principal."
"Is it too low?"
Everyone else borrowed a dou, and the interest was only two dou and three dou, and the time was only half a year. Huaiyu actually wanted to borrow it in Qiu and pay it back in autumn. It took a full year, and the interest was only one dou.
"It's very difficult. Don't think about interest at this time."
In fact, the interest rate Wu Huaiyu finally set was two or three times the interest rate for half a year compared to others, but it was actually only equivalent to five cents for half a year.
This interest rate is very low in today's Tang Dynasty. Under normal circumstances, you can't borrow this kind of money. The government will occasionally get some low-interest money like this when providing relief to the victims, but the amount is small, and ordinary people can't borrow it.
In addition, only the family's ethnic warehouses or some charity warehouses can have such low interest rates.
Wu Huaiyu also had to consider other powerful landowners and not set the price too low all at once, otherwise he would overturn the table and break the rules.
Now it sounds like the interest rate is double, which is equivalent to the interest rate of government government money. In fact, compared with private grain loans that mainly have half-year terms, it is much more conscientious.
"If the water flows slowly, these villagers will be neighbors with our Zhuangzi for generations."
At this time, Wu Huaiyu still hopes to have a more benign relationship.
In this way, the contradiction between the powerful landlords and ordinary people will not be so prominent, and the powerful landlords will have more prestige, and it will be more convenient to do things in the future.
Even analyzed from a cruel perspective, even if these villagers are now divided into fields, they are still equivalent to a piece of leeks raised next to a powerful family. The ability of ordinary people to resist risks in this era is very low, and a flood, drought, and frost disaster
, or a disease accident may bankrupt a family.
At least they need to borrow money, and at this time, they basically have no choice but to borrow money from the landlord next door. No matter how conscientious Wu Huaiyu is in this era, the interest rate is lower than others, but the interest rate on loans is generally high.
Even if you can hold on and recover, you may have to work for the landlord for nothing for the next few years. If you can't hold on, you can only sell your land or even your children and yourself, and become a slave of the landlord, or become a slave.
Landlord tenants.
Over and over again, the common people are like leeks, harvesting one crop after another, while the landlords make a lot of money from it.
Of course, you have to be careful when cutting leeks. You can't pull them out by the roots, you can only cut them.
Loan grain to the villagers, even rent seeds to farm cattle, etc., so that these villagers can grow healthily so that they can be harvested when the time comes.
Of course, Wu Huaiyu would not express these essences directly, but the essence is like this.
This is the inevitable result of the people not having much means of production.
Huaiyu hopes that the villagers next door can live a stable life.
When ordinary people really can't survive, in fact, the first ones to suffer are often the powerful landlords next door to them, the so-called wealthy households who suffer in disaster years.
The hungry refugees no longer care whether you are a landlord or a powerful person. They only remember that you have food at home. When the refugees gather together, they will dare to do anything.
Wu Huaiyu hates those greedy people who only kill chickens to obtain eggs. They are short-sighted. These days, any strong man with some background can usually create a benevolent persona for himself. This is the long-term way.
"In the future, villagers will come to work. As long as there is work, they will be arranged, but they will have to pay for their work points. Those who cheat and cheat will not be used in the future. They will be paid according to their performance.
If something happens at home and you need a loan or something, whether you want to borrow food or money, I will lend it to them."
Wu Huaiyu looked at the cattle slaves in the fields, the villagers in Goda Village, and the stewards in the village, and said, "I plan to invite a teacher to come over and set up a school in the village. Then we will have school-age children in the village and nearby villages."
Everyone can come to school,”
"It costs money to hire a teacher to run a school, and paper, ink, pen and inkstone are not cheap." The monk's maid felt that this was another additional expense.
"This is what I think. We won't charge tuition for this school. The students themselves can just give their husband a little training each year."
"You still don't charge tuition?"
"We work part-time, go to school for half a day, and then work in the manor for half a day. We waive their tuition fees and provide them with paper and pens,"
The monk's maid found it a little difficult to understand that this kind of purely money-making thing was not necessary.
But Wu Huaiyu thinks that this school is worth pursuing. Firstly, it is difficult to study nowadays. If you provide such an opportunity to everyone, you will definitely get a good reputation. Secondly, if these students who are working part-time in Wujia Manor have good talents, they will naturally be successful in the future.
You can also choose to work as a clerk in the Wu family's manor or business.
If you start cultivating this from a young age, you will know more about it.
"Are the children of slave slaves also allowed to go to school?"
"If you have a son in the family and study some books, he will be better able to work for the Wu family."
The monk and the maid thought for a while, "Then let's block these forty villages and run them all for school?"
"Well, take it step by step, and I'll definitely do it in the future."
On that day, in Xiazhou City, the Wu family began to recruit village students.
Because it is just an enlightenment teacher, no advanced education is required, and there is no age limit.
If you can master two or three classics, you are already qualified.
At this time, after the war in Xiazhou, there were still many down-and-out scholars. When they saw the recruitment of the Wu family, they all rushed to sign up.
This is a recruitment for the governor's family. Even if it is in the manor, it is worth a try. It will also be a qualification in the future.
Moreover, the conditions offered by the Wu family are indeed pretty good, including food, accommodation, paper, ink, pens, inkstones, etc., and wages are paid in two parts: monthly food and monthly money.
With such a job and such income, there is no reason to hesitate, especially for some older and poor scholars.
There were too many people who signed up, and fortunately the Wu family needed many gentlemen. This time, they also hired some accountants for Tianzhuang Saltworks and others.
In the end, more than a hundred people were recruited, and they were all very happy. After Wu Huaiyu met them in person, he specifically asked them to have a set of clothes and shoes made for each of them, and then paid two months' salary in advance to settle down.
"Erlang, your reputation is getting more and more famous now. You actually treat all slaves as sir."
Cheng Chumo, who had just arrived from Chang'an to take up the post of governor of Yinzhou, first came to the Governor's Mansion to pay homage to Shangguan.
After not seeing each other for more than half a year, Wu Huaiyu couldn't recognize this guy for his birthday. He had become thicker again. This guy now looked exactly like Cheng Yaojin, as big as a bear.
"Your family used to raise horses, and they knew they had to train them well. That way they would be more valuable,"
Cheng Chumo took one egg in one mouthful and ate fourteen of them in a row. He actually said he was just filling his stomach first.
"Why do you have such a good appetite now?"
"It's nothing. I eat at least twenty eggs, two roast chickens, and several kilograms of mutton a day now..."
Huaiyu was greatly surprised when he heard this. No wonder he looked like a bear now.
"Listen to my brother's advice, don't eat like this again, your body will break down easily. You have to combine meat and vegetables."
"I'm going to fight you soon. Isn't it normal to eat too much?"
He is very satisfied with his current body shape.
He was able to serve as the governor of Yinzhou this time mainly because of Lao Cheng's contribution in Luzhou. Lao Cheng was already a real duke. After he made great achievements, the emperor promoted Lao Cheng's eldest son to the title of marquis and granted him the title of princess.
Cheng Erlang, the son of Feng County.
Cheng Chumo was still a little concerned about this. He hoped that he could make meritorious deeds, just like Wu Huaiyu.
"I'll check your pulse later and prescribe you two doses of medicine to recuperate. You can't continue to eat like home. Your body won't be able to bear it. If your body is gone, how can you make achievements?"
Cheng Chumo looked at the half-peeled hard-boiled egg in his hand, whether he wanted to eat it or not.
"Forget it, it's up to you," Cheng Chumo pushed the egg to Huaiyu.
