The imperial army arrived on the second day after the Japanese pirates retreated. The leader of the army was Commander Fang Da, who had gone out to sea with King Yang, and was appointed General Zhenhai. He led 10,000 elite troops to guard the coastal area of Jinweifu.
Not only that, but also in the coastal area, a hundred households are set up every ten kilometers, guarded by hundreds of soldiers, and a watchtower is required to be set up every hundred households, and two people take turns to watch the sea. There is such a one-hundred-household office near Dongshan Village, and the watchtower is set up on a seaside cliff where Xiaocao and the others often go to catch the sea.
When the team of soldiers passed by outside Dongshan Village, the villagers in Dongshan Village only dared to watch from a distance, for fear of getting into trouble. What the village chief was worried about was that the Baihusuo was so close to Dongshan Village, that these soldiers would show off their power in the village from time to time and demand property! If Xiaocao could see through his mind, she would definitely tell him: Grandpa Village Chief, you are worrying too much. In our village, there is a great god, the king of Yangjun, who is pestered, and if they have a few more guts, they will not dare to pluck the hair from the tiger's mouth!
The Baihusuo was set up on the ruins of the next-door village, and the village had been sprinkled with medicinal materials and lime for the plague. The soldiers cleared out the surviving houses in the village and used them as camps. Going back and forth between the cliff and the camp every day, I worked hard to build the watchtower. The watchtower not only serves as a lookout, but when something happens on the sea surface, a beacon will be ignited to convey the message.
When Yu Xiaocao occasionally goes diving at the seaside, she looks at the cliff from a distance, and the watchtower there is progressing rapidly, changing every day. I don't know if it was her illusion, but she always felt that there was a gaze on the cliff chasing her. Could it be that the soldiers of Baihusuo regarded her as a surveillance object? After that, Xiaocao didn't dare to dive near the cliff to catch the sea. Fearing that the soldiers staring at the sea all the time would discover her secret, she always let the little dolphins carry her to the deep sea after she entered the water before daring to come out of the sea.
This year, the amount of sea treasures that the Zhou family paid tribute increased, so Xiaocao had to take advantage of the gap to go into the sea a few more times. Every time she harvested a lot, and sometimes she would bring back big lobsters and some deep-sea fish for extra meals for her family.
After living in Zhao's residence, it is even closer to the other courtyard. It is more convenient for Zhu Junyang to come over for a meal. Every summer, he is blessed with delicious seafood. Like "sea urchin and lobster roll", "charcoal-grilled salmon", "tuna lettuce rice roll", "pan-fried yellow croaker", "grilled silver cod in oyster sauce"... these dishes he has never seen before, he sighed repeatedly: If you leave After losing the little grass girl, how should he live in the future. Ever since, for his future appetite, King Yang entangled Yu Xiaocao even tighter.
The foundations of the houses in Dongshan Village have just been laid, and the winter wheat in the village has already matured. Yu Hai handed over the task of supervising the construction of the house to his third uncle. He took his elder son and younger daughter, together with the team of King Yang, to rush to the front line of harvesting.
Of course, harvesting wheat does not require his own hands as the owner. Zhuangtou stood behind him, reporting the growth of the wheat to the owner with a happy face. This year, the wheat in the field is growing particularly well. The ears of wheat are a cup bigger than those of Zhuangzi next door, and the grains are full. According to his many years of experience, the output of wheat is estimated to exceed 500 catties!
One must know that this is not the previous life where the output of wheat was usually 200 to 300 jin. More than three hundred catties is already a high yield. If it is five hundred catties, I am afraid it is an unprecedented myth! The owner of Yu Hai's field expressed his satisfaction, and praised Zhuangtou verbally.
Before harvesting, Yu Xiaocao asked the tenants to cut off the ears that were relatively long and particularly full in the wheat field and put them together separately. When planting wheat in the coming year, use these as seeds and open up a separate plot of land for planting to see if the yield can reach a new high. A yield of 500 per mu is still not up to Xiaocao's goal. If the yield per mu can reach a thousand catties or more like in the previous life, why would the people of Ming Dynasty not have enough food and clothing
Seeing this, Zhu Junyang also asked the steward to instruct the long-term workers to look for ears of wheat that were longer than the index finger and with relatively full grains in his 800 mu of fertile land, and gather them all in the grass. After threshing, it actually exceeded a hundred catties. In this way, fifty or sixty acres can be opened up as a test field.
It has been sunny recently. After inquiring about Xiaobutianshi, I learned that there was no rain for half a month, and the summer harvest began vigorously. The tenant farmers on the Zhuangzi each have their own fields in charge, and they work very hard to collect them.
More than 100 mu of wheat, the steps of harvesting, threshing, and drying were completed in less than five days, and the grains were returned to the warehouse. After a rough calculation, the yield of one mu of high-quality good fields is 600 catties of wheat, that of medium-sized fields is 500 catties, and even the lowest-class fields have a yield of more than 300 catties per mu. The whole Zhuangzi boiled up!
In this way, after deducting the rent handed over to the owner, there is an average of more than 200 catties of grain per mu of land. Some families have a lot of labor and divide 40 to 50 mu of land. Wouldn't that mean nearly 10,000 catties of wheat? And that's still only one season, plus the fall corn income... omg! Even if you eat white noodles and white rice every day, you can't finish it!
Of course, these high-yield wheat must not be eaten. The grass is going to be reserved for next year's seeds, let's see if the wheat seeds improved by Lingshi water will reach new heights next year. Therefore, when all the wheat seeds were threshed, the Yu family purchased all the wheat seeds from the tenant farmers at market prices.
The news of Yujiazhuangzi's high wheat yield spread like wildfire. The first person who came to contact Yu Hai was the steward of the Zhou Family's Jitian. The Zhou family has business contacts with the Yu family, so they are old acquaintances. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the steward explained his purpose of coming straight to the point: "Master Yu, our old man heard that your wheat production is good, and would like to know where your wheat seeds come from?"
Yu Hai just wanted to say that these are ordinary wheat seeds, but was stopped by his youngest daughter. Xiaocao smiled and kicked the ball at King Yang: "The wheat seeds on our Zhuangzi were given to us by King Yang. At the beginning, the seeds were no different from ordinary wheat, so I never thought they would be so productive."
The king of Yangjun once went to the west to bring back many high-yield crop seeds. Not to mention Tang Gu, the people of the entire Ming Dynasty knew about this news. The steward of the Zhou family pondered for a moment, then said: "Then... I wonder if Mr. Yu can distribute some seeds to the Zhou family. The Zhou family is willing to pay a lot of money to buy them!"
Yu Hai glanced at his daughter, saw her nodding at him, and said, "I don't know how many good breeds the Zhou family needs?"
The steward pondered for a while, then said: "The Zhou family has 500 mu of land for sacrifice, 300 mu of fertile land under the name of the big house, and the second house..."
"Liu Guanshi, our family is also the first year of planting and the first year of harvest. We don't have a lot of seeds, so we can only give you 500 mu of seeds for sacrifice." One mu of land needs 15 to 20 catties of seeds. , Zhou Jiaguang needs nearly 10,000 catties of seeds for offering sacrifices to the fields. The Yu family's Zhuangzi harvested a total of 70,000 catties of seeds, and if Liu Guanshi went on, the Guang Zhou family would divide one-third of the good seeds. After a little calculation in his mind, Yu Hai hastily interrupted the words of the manager of the Zhou family, and said.
When Liu Guanshi heard it, there were only five hundred acres of seeds for the sacrifice field? The task given by the old man, he only completed half of it? When he wanted to fight for more seeds, Yu Hai insisted that he could only give 10,000 catties, and nothing else would be discussed!
Yu Xiaocao smiled at the side and said nothing, if the eldest family of the Zhou family treated Zhou Xiaosan better, maybe she would intercede for the Zhou family and sell them more wheat seeds. But the big house of the Zhou family is full of wonderful flowers, and they often bully Zhou Xiaosan's orphans and widowed mothers. The elder of the Zhou family, from time to time, put on the picture of being a father, trying to make a point of finding out about the second wife of the Zhou family. It would be good if their Zhuangzi had no grain harvest, she let them die! As for the land under the name of Zhou's second wife, as long as Zhou Xiaosan asks, can her father not give him face
Over there, the price of the good breed has been negotiated. Since the yield of improved varieties can be doubled compared with ordinary wheat, the price must be increased several times at least. For example, ordinary wheat seeds are ten ten jin per catty, and one mu sows twenty catties, that is two hundred wen. One mu of fertile land can harvest three hundred catties of wheat, and the market price of wheat is five cents per catty, that is, one mu of land can harvest fifteen hundred cents, which is seven or eight times the investment.
Her household wheat seeds can produce a high yield of 600 jin. If it is replaced with better seeds next year, the yield will definitely be high but not low. Assuming that the yield per mu is 600 catties, one mu of land can earn three taels of silver, so it shouldn't be too much for her to receive fifty coins per catty of seeds, right
The abacus in Mr. Liu's mind was crackling, and with a smile on his face, he said, "Master Yu, is the price a bit high? You see, the yield of your improved seeds is only twice that of ordinary seeds, but the price is five times higher. Times. Are you charging too much?"
Yu Hai also felt that his daughter's price was a bit high, so he just smiled, didn't answer, and turned his attention to his youngest daughter.
Yu Xiaocao gave him a look of "Be safe and don't be impatient", and said to Guanshi Liu with a smile: "Guanshi Liu, I will do the math for you, and see if this deal is worth it. Ordinary wheat seeds cost only 1000 yuan per acre of land." It can produce more than one or two taels of silver, while our family's fine-grained wheat can earn three taels of silver per mu of land. Ordinary wheat needs 20 catties of seeds, while our family's fine-grained wheat only needs 15 catties. That is Say, if you invest seven hundred and fifty renminbi, you can exchange for an income of three taels of silver per mu, and the net income is 2,250 renminbi. If you invest 500 mu of land for sacrifice, you will earn 1,125 taels of income. ... If you only use ordinary wheat seeds, you can earn at most six hundred taels, which is nearly double the silver!"
Guanshi Liu took the abacus from the buddy behind him and calculated it. Sure enough, the same field produced nearly twice as much silver. Those who don't do this business are fools!