Spring is extremely cold. Although last year was a rare warm winter, this spring is extremely cold. February is here, but a spring cold has come.
It was only about ten miles from Puji to Zhujiapu. When Zhu San arrived, he was wearing a cotton-padded jacket and a sheepskin wallet. As a result, halfway through the return trip, his head was smoking and he was covered in sweat. His precious green horse
The mule's chest and legs were soaked with sweat, which made the third child feel distressed.
This mule is his treasure. He spent five silver dollars to find it in person at the cattle and horse market in Xi'an and bargained for it. He takes care of it like a treasure at ordinary times and adds grass at night. His current business cannot be separated from this treasure.
, counting on it to be powerful.
The sun in the sky had no heat, and the snow that had just fallen a few days ago was melting, making it difficult to walk on the ground. The big mule pulling the carriage had some difficulty walking on the snow-melting road, and the wheels often got stuck in it. The third child also pushed hard all the way.
With difficulty, he finally walked through a section of muddy road and reached a hard spot, where he was able to take a breath.
"Dad, we should buy a horse. The mule is still a little weak." His son was on the other side of the car. The two men were walking beside the car, both covered in sweat.
"Buying a horse is not cheap. A big horse costs more than ten silver dollars. You also have to pay a horse tax and get a horse license. You may also need to apply for a carriage business license. You will also have to pay a tax and a deed fee. Not to mention raising horses.
It’s much more expensive than raising a mule.”
The son mentioned buying a horse more than once, and even suggested replacing the old two-wheeled carriage with a four-wheeled one, but the third son refused to let go. He felt that buying a horse or replacing a carriage would cost a lot of money, and he would have to pay taxes.
"Dad, if we buy a horse and replace it with a cart, it will be much easier to go to the market to haul dung in the future, and we can also contract dung for another market. By then, our dung farm will be bigger and we can sell more dung and make more money.
There are more.”
"It costs money."
"Loan, I asked about our situation. We can apply for an interest-free three-year loan of fifty silver dollars. We can advance some by ourselves. We already have the money to buy a horse or a carriage. We can guarantee one or two more loans by then.
If we expand the manure field and recruit more workers, we can sell more manure and make more money. There will be no problem in repaying the loan in three years."
"Slow down, don't be in a hurry. If you can't afford the loan, it's better not to borrow it. It's said to be interest-free, but after all, we still have to pay back the capital. Let's save it slowly. When we save enough capital, we can buy a horse, replace it with a carriage, and expand the dung farm. Let's
There are about ten people in the family, don’t just eat dry food for two days and then become homeless.”
The two fathers argued over this matter countless times, but every time the old man used the sentence "I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice" to block his son back and rejected his plan to expand production.
The old man's surname is Zhu. He is from Zhujiabao, Puji Town, Wugong County, Chang'an Prefecture, Guanzhong. There are many people named Zhu in Zhujiabaozi, and many of them are red belts. Zhu Laosan is not a red belt. He has been for several generations.
A poor man, the third child followed his father in collecting manure when he was young.
According to his father, he once told him that their ancestor also belonged to the Prince of Qin's Palace, but he was just an illegitimate son born from a foreign wife. That ancestor was just a sideline concubine of the Prince of Qin's Palace who didn't even get a title or salary. Naturally, there was nothing he could do.
This illegitimate son was given a title, but for some unknown reason, no one took care of him, and he was eventually reduced to a dung-picker during the war and famine.
The third child suffered hardship for half his life. Later, with his faithful and diligent performance, he won the favor of the manure factory owner. He married the unmarried old girl in her thirties to the third child and adopted her as his son-in-law.
After the owner of the dung farm dies, the third child becomes the new dung farm owner.
From a poor manure collector, he became a small farmer.
However, in those years of Chongzhen, Shaanxi was the hardest-hit area. There were droughts, locust plagues, and bandits all over the place. The third child was forced to take his wife and children to the dung farm and go to the Central Plains to beg for food and become refugees. Fortunately, they were lucky and survived until the end of the war.
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Not only were they able to return to the Guan, they were even given some land to their family. There was not much land, and although the Guanzhong Plain was fertile, it had a large population. The third son returned to his old business, taking his children through the streets to collect night incense and collect it at other people's homes.
The toilet at home would be cleaned regularly, and even every once in a while, some fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the home would be given, making Laosan stand out among the country folk who collect night fragrance.
Over the past few years, Laosan has even contracted most of the evening incense and toilet collection and cleaning work in Puji Town, defeating many opponents with its service.
Relying on the manure source in Puji Town, he built a manure field in Zhujiabao, processed the collected manure, and sold it to landlords and farmers as dry manure.
This business actually doesn't make much money, but it is a good living for many ordinary people.
The family had ten acres of land, and rented another twenty acres of government land, and then opened a dung farm. The family collected and processed the dung during their off-farm time, which made the family more and more prosperous.
There are more than a dozen people in the family, and their living standards are even better than those of the father-in-law's family when the third child got married.
The third child now leads his family to farm and collect manure. He is very frugal and refuses to waste anything. He saves money to buy two acres of land every year and sends his grandson to school.
He firmly believes that hard work and frugality can lead to wealth, and at least he will not have to worry about food and clothing.
After experiencing the hardships in the first half of his life, he paid great attention to savings and became more cautious. His son wanted to take out a loan to expand the dung farm, and even wanted to imitate others in investing money in the mines and buying shares. The third child always refused because he knew that his sons disliked the dung farm.
This is a job, but he won’t dislike it. Both his father and son have been doing this for generations, and it has supported them.
Although his family now owns more than ten acres of land, he will never despise a job that can provide them with enough food.
"Dad, I just heard in the town that the saint is coming. It seems that he will pass through Wugong County and pass through our Puji Town in the next few days." The eldest son is actually the same age as the emperor. He wears a dog-skin hat on his head.
, wearing a patched cotton coat and a sheepskin horse gua covering. The eldest son is a little short and thin, which is caused by lack of nutrition when he was young.
At the same age, the ninety-five-year-old Supreme Master could only follow his father to go around the toilet to collect night incense. He was not satisfied with this kind of life. He also wanted to do other things to make a living, but his father thought that what he was doing at home now was
It's a good living. As long as you work hard and work hard, you can pass it on to your family. It's a very good family business. After a year of hard work, you can not only feed and clothe your family, but you can even save money to buy two acres of land, and save some grain and food.
Money is reserved for emergencies.
If the family is more frugal, they can still provide for the boys to go to elementary school. If there is a talented boy, the family will grit their teeth and provide for him.
I became an official in the Yamen.
The third child never thought about recognizing his ancestors. He felt that he couldn't explain it at all, so there was no need and he might as well manage his own life well.
"Have you ever heard of the day when the saint passed by?"
"Either the day after tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, it should be those two days."
The third child nodded, took out his tobacco bag, filled the pot with a pot of cigarettes, held it in his mouth, and lit it. He smoked the dry tobacco he grew at home, and said to his son, "Go back and find out what happened."
When."
"What to do?"
"When a saint passes by, our whole family has to kneel down to greet him. How can we survive in troubled times thanks to whose blessing? Because of the saint, our family can now have our own land, our own livelihood, and food and clothing.
Who do we rely on? He is a saint. We must not forget the well digger when we are drinking water. Our whole family has received the grace of the saint for survival. Today's new life depends entirely on the saint. How can we not be ungrateful?"
"You go home and catch a sheep, two chickens, prepare a basket of eggs, and put two stones of grain in it, and then offer them to the saint together."
The eldest son felt a little distressed, "Dad, these things are almost worth a donkey."
"People must be grateful, otherwise they are no different from animals."
There was another muddy road ahead. The two men stopped talking and bent down on the car to help push the cart. The big mule also began to work hard to pull the cart.
On the country road, two people, a mule and a cart were heading towards the countryside carrying several large buckets of dung.
The ground on the roadside has been plowed, and half of the snow cover has melted into the ground.
Last year was a warm winter, and everyone was worried that there would be insect pests this year. Fortunately, this late spring brought heavy snow, which might be able to kill a lot of insect eggs in the ground.
Last year, counties and townships organized locust prevention and control, mobilizing people to dig up the places where locusts lay eggs on rivers and lakes, and even mobilized people to dig up locust eggs to exchange for food. The elderly and children came together, and they could exchange several kilograms of food in one day.
The eight hundred miles of Qinchuan is the most fertile land, but the Guanzhong Plain has always been densely populated. After a major rebellion, a large number of rebels were relocated, but a large number of Han people from the mainland immigrated, and there were a large number of residents stationed in Guanzhong.
Defense camps, provincial patrol camps, villages and towns, inns, government offices at all levels, schools and river workers all occupy a lot of land.
It was good for the third family to be allocated ten acres of land at the beginning. In the past few years, they saved money and bought another ten acres of land. They are now considered small landowners.
When this late spring cold passes, the fields will be busy, the wheat will grow, and their manure will be sold like hotcakes.
"Dad, I recently heard that a fertilizer factory has opened in Xi'an City. It is said that it is under the name of the Royal Young Master."
The third child didn't believe it, how could the royal family compete with the common people for a job like collecting dung?
"Their manure is different from ours. It is said that their manure is made from guano shipped back from the islands in Nanyang, and then processed. It is said that the manure is extremely fertile, and many royal estates have begun to use it.
This kind of excrement is in short supply."
The third child taught his son, "Even if bird droppings can fertilize the land, how can we get so much bird droppings?"
"I've also heard about it. It's said that on some islands in the South Sea, the guano has accumulated for countless years. The guano is several feet thick. It's like mining coal. Ships can keep digging. These guano are
After being processed into fertilizer together with animal bones, it can greatly replenish soil fertility, which is much better than our dung."
"I don't believe it." The third child didn't believe this ridiculous rumor at all.
Land cultivation does require replenishing soil fertility, usually by burning straw, or applying plant ash from the stove to the ground, and then collecting the dung of cattle, sheep and other livestock and applying it to the ground, or collecting human excrement and urine. Lao San and others
The dung farm is a deep processing of dung. After accumulation, fermentation, and even adding some soil, ash, etc., it is made into high-quality fertilizer, which can effectively replenish soil fertility.
Otherwise, general fields cannot be replenished and can only be rotated or left fallow, and the yield per mu will be greatly reduced.
Every old farmer knows how much manure plays a role in farmers' farming. There is no piece of cow or sheep manure going to waste on the roads in the countryside.
In order to fertilize their land, people would even dig out the mud and silt from river ponds in winter and dry it before adding it to the fields.
But Lao San, a professional manure farm owner, has never heard of using bird droppings. How much bird droppings can there be?
The boss himself was dubious. He had only heard about it, but had never seen it. He could not refute his father, so he had to change the subject, "Dad, I heard that many people go to the west entrance to the Hetao to reclaim wasteland and plant oats. If the year is good, they can plant oats.
One year's harvest can be eaten in ten years."
Oatmeal, also known as oil wheat, is drought-resistant and easy to store, and can be stored for ten years without spoiling. The Hetao area was originally a nomadic land for Mongolians, and now immigrants continue to migrate there, but it is still a vast area with sparsely populated areas.
Many people in the mainland who are short of land but unwilling to leave their hometowns will go there to lease land, also called merchant villages. Usually businessmen go there to contract a large piece of land and then recruit people to farm it themselves. The land rent is cheap.
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There are also some people who spontaneously contact a group of relatives and friends to go there and rent a piece of land to plant together. As long as there are no disasters, a good harvest in one year will be enough to feed them for ten years.
The main reason for such a harvest is that there are few people on the land there, so it can be extensively cultivated and planted. One person can plant two to three hundred acres. Even if the yield per mu is low, it cannot support the large amount. Usually there is not much needed there.
When the harvest season comes, all the wives, children, and children at home are called over to harvest. The grain can be sold directly to the government or military warehouses in the Hetao, and the price is very reasonable.
Next year, you can rent another piece of land, so you don't have to worry about insufficient land.
In addition to oats, buckwheat, red wheat, rapeseed and potatoes are also mainly grown there.
There are also many farmers who go to Hetao to reserve land. After a few years of running like migratory birds, they simply apply for immigration and settle there, and then they can be assigned their own fields, or they can continue to lease land. In the past, people mainly
I was worried about the Mongolians in the Hetao area, but after a few years, I found that the Han and Mongolians are getting along very well there now, especially since the imperial court has a large army there. The immigrants who settled in the past have divided up a lot of land, and their lives are pretty good, and they are getting better and better.
More and more people were interested, so they simply moved there.
The eldest son of the third son also thought about renting land there, and even wanted to settle there, but the third son disagreed. He opposed the separation of the family, and did not want his children and grandchildren to go to the frontier. He still liked Guanzhong and Babai.
Li Qinchuan, what a wonderful land this is.
The border areas are good now, but what if one day the court cannot control the Mongols? What will happen then? If we want to return to the Guanzhong Plain, there will be no place.
In front is Zhujiabao.
The fort is on a mesa, and there is a circle of earthen wall outside the village. This is the village wall, which can prevent thieves and thefts. However, now that the security in Guanzhong is very good, this village wall has lost its original function.
Outside the village wall are the vegetable plots of each family, patches of green and full of vitality.
Seeing Baozi, the third child felt relieved. It felt like home, very warm.
All good things are not as good as home.
A golden nest or a silver nest is not as good as your own kennel.
"I heard that the saints conquered various countries in the Western Regions. Now when people immigrate to the Western Regions, they all have the best oasis plains, especially the newly conquered Yinli River Valley and Suiye River Valley. It is said that one person can get at least fifty acres of land by immigrating there.
A family can get up to 300 acres of land, and once they get there, they become landlords and even get pasture." The eldest son's tone was full of envy.
Although the family now has enough food and clothing, and owns more than 20 acres of their own home, they also farm some government land, and have a dung farm, there are more than a dozen people in the family, including three of his brothers, who are already married, but they are still
Living as a big family.
He really wants to separate his family and live another life. He even wants to immigrate to the Hetao or even the Western Regions. He wants to have his own land. Today, in such a peaceful world, the brave will be starved to death and the timid will starve to death. No matter how hard he dares to venture or fight,
Poor, but my father was only willing to stick to his hometown and the dung farm, not allowing them to do this or that.
"You young people are just too impatient and unable to keep your feet on the ground. You are too frivolous and can easily fall into somersaults."
The old man is very grateful to the current emperor. Without Emperor Shaotian, there would be no new Ming Dynasty, and there would not be today's peaceful and prosperous age. He can return to his hometown, be allocated fields, and live a stable life with low taxes.
Living a stable life is something I never dreamed of before.
He doesn't have much ambition, he just wants to live a practical life, save money every year to buy a few acres of new land, save enough money to buy a few more cars or a few horses and mules, so that the dung farm can contract more market towns.
Collect more dung, hire more people, and accumulate more throughout the year, and you can buy more fields.
He just wants to take his time, and does not want to take out a loan or borrow money, nor is he willing to immigrate for the land on the frontier. He is very satisfied with his current life, so why should he take risks and leave his hometown?
He is used to everything here and doesn't want to leave here.
The life he once lived on the run still occasionally gave him nightmares.
As soon as the little rich is at peace, he will be satisfied.
He understands his son's thoughts, but stubbornly believes that he has experienced a lot, so he knows better than his son, and that his son is taking too many risks, which is wrong.
He doesn't want his son to leave. It's great for the family to be together.
When I got home, my son seemed to be deeply shocked and went back to his house feeling a little depressed.
The third child called his wife and daughter-in-law and asked them to prepare new clothes for the whole family. They should prepare the cleanest and most decent clothes and starch and wash them in advance. When the time comes to meet the saint, they must look decent and glamorous.
In addition, sheep, chickens, ducks, eggs, rice noodles, etc. must be prepared.
"The government didn't say anything about donating these." The old woman was a little reluctant to give up. When she was young, she looked like a man, tall and thick, so even the daughter of the owner of the dung farm was not easy to marry. In the end, the old dung owner also
He had no choice but to recruit the third son-in-law of his own dung worker.
The third child is very kind to his wife. He takes care of the house while she takes care of everything in the house, including money and food. Over the years, the husband and wife have cooperated tacitly.
"This is not something the government is asking for. It is our own gratitude to the saint. Go ahead and prepare."
Although the old wife was mumbling, she still went to prepare.
The third child was sitting in the house, smoking a dry cigarette, thinking about what his son had said before, about the bird droppings in the Royal Young Master's prison, the land harvested in the commercial villages in Hetao for ten years, and the plowing of broken leaves by immigrants to the Western Regions.
, a family can be allocated at least fifty acres of land, and a household can be allocated a maximum of three hundred acres of land. Thinking of this, he fell into deep thought, and even had some doubts about his persistence.
Do we really want our eldest son’s family to immigrate to the Western Regions or the Hetao?
