After returning to Texel with 500 households of serfs, Marin immediately led everyone to build. First of all, adobe houses were built for 500 households as residences.
Then, 700 male laborers from 500 serf households were organized to start road construction. As for the seaside cooking salt center, Malinte invited several professional masons from Cologne to help build firewood-saving stoves. Moreover, Marin also sent a boat to the mainland to bring a lot of bricks.
In fact, there is no technical difficulty in saving firewood stoves. The only troublesome thing is to build a high chimney. Ordinary people have no problem building a furnace wall, but they are not professional masons, and they can't build high chimneys well. If one is not done well, the tall chimney is easy to fall down. Therefore, Marin specially invited masons to build a wood-saving stove for cooking salt.
A professional is a professional. Several masons completed the task well and built 20 wood-saving stoves with high chimneys. And Kohler also retrieved the 20 large iron pots he ordered from Amsterdam.
Because there are many places that need to be built on the island, Marin simply left the 8 masons borrowed from Wright. Moreover, they sent someone to say hello to Wright and picked up the family members of these eight people. Because of the alliance of interests, Wright did not hesitate, and immediately agreed to Marin's request.
It took a month to complete the construction of the salt cooking center by the sea. The road from Te Horenche to Boiled Salt Center was successfully completed by 700 strong men. In addition, they took time to dig a ditch on the beach in the salt cooking center, leading to the sea, letting the seawater flow in so that everyone can get seawater. In addition, Marin asked them to dig a small drainage ditch for discharging brine...
After the road was repaired, the briquettes loaded and unloaded from Te Horenche began to be continuously transported to the boiling salt center. This boiled salt center was named Salttown (Salttown) by Marin...
The 20 cauldrons were fully activated, and after many tests, everyone finally determined that the daily production of 1,000 quarts of sea salt...
Moreover, the new technology proposed by Marin was applied to the boiled salt, and refined salt with a good taste was obtained...
In fact, it is not considered advanced technology. The main thing is that when the salt is boiled to the final stage, a part of the seawater is left, and it is not completely evaporated, but the seawater is poured out.
This part of seawater actually contains salts such as magnesium chloride and potassium chloride, which are more soluble than salt. Magnesium salt is different from table salt in that it is very bitter, while calcium salt is astringent. If the seawater is boiled dry, the salt left is coarse salt, which is slightly bitter in taste due to impurities such as magnesium salt and calcium salt.
The part of the seawater that is drained is called "bitter". Throw away the bittern, and the salt obtained is barely considered refined salt. This kind of refined salt also contains some magnesium salts, but the content is already very low. The bitterness of refined salt is relatively light and difficult to taste. The difference in taste between this and the chemically treated refined salt of later generations is relatively small.
In the Middle Ages, the British boiled salt but did not know how to remove the bittern. Therefore, their salt can only be regarded as coarse salt. The mineral salt from salt mines such as Lüneburg has a lot of bitterness, and there are very few high-quality refined salt without bitterness.
In fact, the secret of removing bittern is that people inadvertently picked up some salt grains under the bittern in the process of drying the salt. After tasting them, they found that there was no bitterness. Refined salt. In the era of boiling salt, people used to boil sea water dry to obtain coarse salt at the bottom of the pot. Generally, no one pours out the bittern when cooking more than half of it, and they don’t know how to remove the bittern...
The refined salt produced under the guidance of Marin tastes better than most of the current European salt. After Wright tasted it, he immediately judged it as the finest refined salt, and believed that this refined salt should only be eaten by nobles...
Wright didn't know the reason, but thought it was because the seawater in the Texel area was of good quality. But he didn't know that Marin just added an extra step to drain the bittern. But it is this simple step that greatly improves the taste of salt.
For the refined salt produced in Yancheng, after pouring out the bittern, Marin asked to add some fresh water to dilute some impurities such as magnesium ions, and then pour it out... In this way, there will be less bittern left...
Then, heat the remaining salt and evaporate the water to dryness. Then, someone used a copper hammer to smash the salt particles. In this way, the refined salt produced in Yancheng is powdery white salt similar to the refined salt of later generations...
This kind of white powdered salt was definitely considered high-grade salt in medieval Europe. It is no wonder that Wright gave it a high evaluation.
Even, because of the high grade, Wright took the initiative to increase the purchase price to 4 shillings. Of course, the benefits of his 3 pfennigs remain the same...
After cost calculation, these 20 large pots for boiling salt only need to consume 15 Chartron briquettes every day because of the use of firewood-saving stoves. In other words, the daily 50 Chaltron briquettes provided by Hoffman Estate could not be used up, and only less than one-third of it was used.
In fact, Marin can expand the production of salt. However, Marin felt that at the beginning, it was necessary to test the market's response and not to produce so much. Otherwise, it will be troublesome if there is too much production and it cannot be sold.
And the 20 salt pots, plus the labor of transporting coal, etc., add up to less than 100 people. Then, there were 600 more young and strong laborers...
This time Marin brought 500 serf families on the island, bringing the total number to 3,100. There are as many as 700 young and strong laborers alone.
Right now, only 100 people are needed to cook salt, and Marin simply took the remaining 600 people to reclaim wasteland near Den Burg...
Now, it is the beginning of March in the early spring season. Just in time, spring plowing is about to start. And Marin has 1,000 draft horses in his hand, which can be used to plow the land and reclaim wasteland. However, these draft horses lack plows.
So, Marin sent Kohler to a nearby city, recruited a group of skilled blacksmiths, and settled in Denburg. At the same time, a lot of iron ingots, wood, and some forging equipment were purchased...
When these blacksmiths arrived on the island, Marin immediately arranged for them to work with the carpenters on the island to manufacture a batch of curved plows and various iron labor tools.
Afterwards, these agricultural tools were distributed to the serfs. The farmers of the original three farms were arranged to take care of the original 800 Yugram arable land.
Under Marin's arrangement, all human dung and horse dung on the island were thrown into the fields. This aroused widespread protests from the serfs. They felt that what Marin did was simply dirtying the grain field, which would make the grown grain "disgusting".
But Marin had no time to pay attention to their protests. Under the suppression of 400 soldiers, the serfs had no choice but to follow suit. Otherwise, the angry serfs would have to beat Marin up. However, Marin has a castle, and there are 400 tough soldiers who have seen blood. These honest serfs, even though they feel disgusting, they can only follow suit.
While arranging for the serfs to farm the land, Marin also asked Kohler and Sauer to lead people to pick up the families of these guys from door to door according to the addresses given by the big soldiers.
The reason why Kohler was sent was because Kohler was the smoothest servant under Marin and was very good at handling things. For example, Kohler has enough eloquence to negotiate with those family members who were detained by the original manor and refused to let them go. Even, you can bargain and use money to redeem it.
Therefore, only Kohler is suitable for this matter, Sauer is also barely capable, and Schwartz and others are not suitable. Marin himself is actually suitable, but he is now the lord, and there are a lot of things in the territory, and he is too busy. Moreover, it would be a bit out of place for me to personally go out to pick up a family member of a soldier. If the family members of the generals under him go out to pick them up in person, that's about the same. But the family of Schwartz, the number one general under his command, had already been placed in the Hoffman Manor. Therefore, I don't have to go out of my way to win people's hearts anymore. Those big soldiers are not worthy of going out on their own...
After Kohler left, Marin calculated the cost himself. He found that Yancheng daily produced 1,000 quarts of refined salt, but the actual selling price was 3 shillings and 9 pfennigs per quarter. After deducting the price of briquettes, transportation costs, and labor costs, the total is about 9 Finneys. On the average, his profit was as much as 3 shillings for every quarter of refined salt. 1,000 quarters is a net profit of 3,000 shillings. And 3,000 shillings is 150 pounds (or 225 marks), which is equivalent to 600 ducats...
This is a day's profit! Marin was dizzy, 600 gold coins a day, 365 days in that year, even after deducting holidays such as Christmas and New Year, there were at least 350 working days (there are no weekends in this year, and most major holidays are closed). So, can't I earn 210,000 gold coins a year? Ma Lin trembled a little with excitement, just like Wu Er Er next door who had a cerebral thrombosis...