Qin Official

"I don't ask for a high salary, I just want to work for the county captain and repay the unpaid kindness..."

Ju was originally a stableman in the village. Now he has reached retirement age and has resigned from the stable. However, he is still strong, so he hopes to raise cattle and horses for Hei Fu.

"The county captain now has a big business, with more than a thousand acres of land. He has to buy horses and cattle. He hopes to take me in. I am not just bragging. Among the horses and cattle people in this county, I am one of the best!"

While talking, he also showed off his skills. He immediately walked into the stable, opened the mouths of the cows and horses, and accurately determined the ages of Heifu's six horses and three cows based on the growth and wear of their teeth. The ground has been reported, and even the varieties can be counted as treasures.

The horse's eyes were vicious, as if it could clearly see through the hides, muscles, and even bones of the cows and horses.

"It is the law that saves the girls, not me."

Hei Fu wanted to refuse, but he still couldn't persuade the stubborn old man. In the end, Hei Fu even knelt down and had no choice but to agree.

Thinking about it carefully, what Ju said makes sense. He does need to buy a lot of livestock. If he doesn't have professionals, he will easily be deceived and it will be difficult to raise them well. So he might as well keep him.

Hei Fu knows the ability of horses. He is not only good at judging horses and cattle, but also breeds good horses. The "Red Dan" he bought from him has carried him thousands of miles and is very popular with Hei Fu.

In addition to Ju, his daughter Yuan, who is married to a good family, also hopes to come to Hei Fu's house to work. Hei Fu still has an impression of that little girl. He was staying at home in the blind mountain. If she hadn't run out to ask for help tactfully, he would have died. Perhaps the results would have been very different that day.

So Heifu hired Ju at the price of four shi of grain per month and asked him to help manage his own cattle and stables. His daughter Yuan came to help control the servants and concubines, and gave her two shi of grain per month...

After finalizing the matter, Heifu counted his fingers secretly: "An ordinary cow and horse costs tens of thousands of dollars, and an adult concubine costs more than four thousand dollars, as well as furniture. From now on, I have to support more than twenty people. More than a dozen cows and horses, after all, more than 100,000 yuan is gone!"

Heifu couldn't help but feel a little sad. He had very little left of the 70,000 reward he received from the last war. Now he could only rely on the two brothers' salaries and the food in the fields to help him...

Again, no matter how much money you have, it will never be enough. Heifu now urgently needs a way to make long-term profits. It seems that he must start the brown sugar industry as soon as possible. He only has this thing in his hand and has not handed it over to himself. Exchange titles with relatives.

…

After the meal, while it was still dark, Zhong called Hei Fu to follow him for a walk in the nearby fields. He pointed at the ministers who were busy in the paddy fields and said:

"This was originally the Yun family's rice field, but now it has become a public field. July is a critical moment for rice booting. Not only does it need to be irrigated with enough water, but also top-dressing fertilizer is needed."

Heifu knew that there are three types of fertilization techniques these days: seed fertilizer and top dressing.

Basal fertilizer is spread over the field to increase soil fertility; seed fertilizer is planted with fertilizer when sowing; top dressing is applied to the ground when the crops have eared, using decomposed silkworm arrowheads and human excrement. This was also invented with the technique of compost retting. Finally, a newly developed method was developed.

Zhong told Heifu that the method of composting and retting has become popular in Anlu County.

"However, it is only applied to public fields near the county seat, and private fields cannot be promoted for the time being."

Although the Qin State abolished the well-field system after Shang Yang's reform and granted state-owned land to each family, there were also many fields directly in the hands of the government, which were also called public fields.

The public fields use prisoners and slaves as labor force, and the number is very large. There are hundreds of people in Anlu alone. There are more than a thousand field slaves in Jiangling, and the harvest of the fields is all owned by the government...

Although the method of composting and retting has been approved by the county governor, considering the speed of information dissemination in this era, it is still difficult to fully promote it.

Most counties can only let the county's Tian Shifu and Tian Zuoli implement it in the public fields near the county seat first. After this year's autumn harvest has the effect, they can let the field regulations in each area be publicized to the people and encourage them to follow suit. This is equivalent to The activities of bringing science and technology to the countryside in later generations...

Therefore, when traveling to the county in April, County Superintendent Teng’s optimistic estimate of “an increase of three to four million shi in grain production in Nan County” may be greatly discounted. Based on the proportion of public land and private land in each county, a million shi would be good. .

"In addition to being difficult to promote in remote rural areas, we also encountered a problem."

Zhong pointed to the ministers who were topdressing the rice fields and said distressedly: "There is not enough manure!"

From his heartfelt account, Heifu learned that fertilizing one acre of land requires at least hundreds of kilograms of manure, and one hundred acres is tens of thousands of kilograms. If it is less, there will be no significant effect. In the past, when we planted a small amount at home, or used the power of a county to supply hundreds of acres of land, this problem was not serious. However, as this method is promoted, manure has become scarce.

Faced with this problem, the field officials in Anlu County have also thought of many ways, such as putting plants and trees together into manure tanks to let them rot to increase the amount of fertilizer.

This is knowledge that farmers have already mastered. In the "Moon Order" issued by the Qin government to various field codes, it is stated that "in the month of Jixia, the soil is moist and humid, and heavy rains occur, which is good for killing weeds. If you use hot soup, you can kill weeds." Dung fields can beautify the territory..."

Farmers in this era would collect weeds, leaves, and straw in April, and use the summer high temperatures and rainfall to recompose the weeds to make green manure. Now combined with retting, the amount of fertilizer can be doubled.

"But it's still not enough."

He said helplessly: "The manure collected from the cattle and horse stables near the county town, plus the decomposed weeds, can be used for public fields. Next year, I am afraid the quantity will not be as good as this year... And the manure in the toilets of each farmer's household, I’m afraid it’s only enough to irrigate the vegetable fields and won’t help increase food production.”

Heifu nodded. This is the limitation of the compost retting method. It is precisely because of this limitation that the increase in Nanjun's production this year will be far lower than Governor Ye expected. A million stones would be good, and it might even be possible. It will be as low as five or six hundred thousand stones.

"This old fox, no wonder he only gave Zhong a hairpin, instead of being directly promoted to Bu Geng Jue as he said before..."

After thinking about it, Heifu asked: "Brother, do you think the compost and retting fertilizer used in Anlu County this year is mainly the manure from the cattle and horse stables?"

"Of course."

He nodded sincerely: "Only these places are under the jurisdiction of the government, so it is convenient to collect manure."

Hei Fu just felt that they seemed to have made a mistake: "Wait a minute, brother, let me ask you, where is the most crowded place in Anlu?"

Without hesitation: "Of course it's the county seat."

Heifu said: "There are more than a thousand households in the county, and nearly ten thousand people eat, drink, and defecate every day, which can produce 20,000 to 30,000 kilograms of manure, which can be applied to a hundred acres of farmland. I heard that the public land near the county seat is only a hundred acres, why is it said that it is not enough? "

Zhong blinked his eyes and said, "Brother Zhong doesn't know. Officials, powerful officials, and wealthy households all have their own toilets in their homes, which are used to water their fields. There is no way to collect them. But most of the poor people in Lu Zuo don't have toilets at home, so they just go out in the wild." , under trees, in ravines, it is convenient, not to mention impossible to collect..."

"In other words, most people in the county are still defecating in the open!"

Heifu immediately understood that there were two reasons for the shortage of manure. One was that the population was too small these days and each household could not produce enough farmyard manure; the other was that the government did not properly manage the collection and collection of farmyard manure. By using it, the manure produced by the large population in the city is wasted...

"Brother's problem is not difficult to solve."

Heifu burst out laughing suddenly. When he asked for a solution, he deliberately refused to answer and pointed to the toilet in his own courtyard...

"In five days, more than a thousand garrison troops will gather in the county town. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I have a good method I learned in the army that can be implemented in Anlu! Not only can it make up for the lack of manure next year, but it can also make people Anlu has become the cleanest and most respectable city in the entire Nanjun County, and even the entire Qin Kingdom!"

…

On the tenth day of July, as the autumn heat wave gradually receded, more than a thousand conscripts from Anlu County and three townships gathered in the southern suburbs of the county.

Under Heifu's arrangement, two hundred county soldiers have set up a camp here in advance. In the next month or so, more than a thousand good family members will be training here. They are not allowed to leave without authorization. All food, drink and diarrhea must be handled in the camp... …

Gongshi Quji from Chaoyangli has lost his old sick appearance. He and the people from Tongli and Tongting formed the "Huyang Tingtun". Their pavilion chief was named "Hua", who followed Hei Fu to Wei and Tingting. Chu was one of the nine people who came back alive.

As a former county captain, in the past six months, he went to work in Huyangting where the county captain started his career. Hua felt that his village was a level above other villages! He is a direct descendant!

And Gongshi Quji was appointed as chief by Hua because of his connection with Heifu. The group of people walked into the camp quite proudly. Before they could find their own camp, they found that hundreds of people who had arrived first , all gathered at a building on the edge of the camp, talking noisily.

Hua He Quji squeezed to the side where there were less people, only to find a newly built earthen house standing here, occupying a large area of ​​half an acre! The top is covered with black tiles. There are many cross-shaped holes in the adobe wall, which are like arrow holes in the city wall. There is a door on the left and right. Soldiers are constantly going in and out. The people who go in are full of novelty, and the people who come out are wearing belts. He was full of praise and said that he also enjoyed the treatment of a wealthy official's family...

"What is this house used for?" Qu Ji asked curiously.

"Go and look at the front for yourself. There are words written by the county captain himself."

The merchant's son named Yuan Bai said this angrily, and then turned to others and praised the county captain for his wonderful idea.

"When I was on duty, I lost thousands of money to the county captain. It's not an injustice!"

Faced with Yuan Bai's words, everyone just said that he was bragging, and no one believed him. Who is the county captain? How can he bet with you?

So Tun Changhua and Shi Changquji could only go around to the front where there were more people, stood on tiptoes, and found that on the whitewashed earth wall, there were two big seal characters written by the Anlu County Captain himself:

"Public restroom!"