mesbooks Chapter 276 It feels like it’s time to make money
Chapter 276 It feels like it’s time to make money
Just as Shen Youyou finished drawing the blueprint, Shen Zhiqiu came out, holding the blueprint in his hand and looking at the busy people in and outside the yard, his heart was warmed.
This group of people were too self-conscious. When he came back, he directly asked his wife and several others to follow him into the main room. He just asked them to prepare the tools for clearing the wasteland without making any arrangements at all.
But now everyone is doing their own thing, and they all do different things.
As soon as he came out, Shen Laoshi reported: "Third brother, aren't there some trees on the wasteland in the west? When the time comes to plant the crops, we should cut them down. I'm thinking about sharpening the saw blades and axes."
Shen Zhiqiu nodded: "Okay, sharpen it, and sharpen the sickle and other things too."
He then called out to Wang Fuxi who was working on a curved plow, "Brother-in-law, put the curved plow aside for a moment. Look at this blueprint and make this sickle first. We have to cut the thatch before we can use the curved plow to plow the soil."
The drawings are drawn using sketches, which are very formal, and each component has a separate explanation.
But as a carpenter with decent skills, this job is not a big deal at all, especially the production method of the sickle is quite simple, not to mention Wang Fuxi himself, even other men can do it.
After understanding the blueprint, Wang Fuxi was delighted: "I think this thing is very useful. How did you come up with it?"
Shen Zhiqiu explained: "I saw it in an agricultural book before. You should teach others how to do it first, and then make a batch after they teach you.
We also need to make some of the large wooden frames used to build mud-brick houses in our village. I’m not talking about the kind used to make adobe, but the kind used to make rammed earth.”
Wang Fuxi thought: "We are going to build an old earth house. If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools.
It is not enough to just make a wall screen, you also need to make a rammer, a clapper, a trowel, a bamboo scraper, a wooden shovel, a dustpan, etc.
It would be better to ask someone else to do it. He would be exhausted to death with these few people and there would be no way to finish the work."
Shen Zhiqiu asked his elder brother-in-law to make a wall screen. It was made of old hard fir wood, usually about two steps long, half a step high, and half a step wide, and its shape was similar to a wooden mold for making bricks.
One end of the wall screen is open and supported by a "wall card" made of hard miscellaneous wood to form an "H" shape, and the other end is fixed with a "wall pin" fixed by a tenon, which is convenient for disassembly and adjustment of the thickness of the earth wall.
As for the pestle, it is also called a pestle stick. It should be made of heavy wood that is not easy to crack, weighing about 10 or 20 pounds, with one end larger than the other, a diameter of three inches, and the hand-held part cut to a suitable length, and the height of a person.
When tamping, use the small head first, and then use the large head after it is flat.
There are two types of clappers: the large clapper is about one inch long, and the small clapper is six inches long and two inches wide. Both have round handles and smooth surfaces. The large clapper is used to pat the compacted wall, while the small clapper is used to repair and trim the wall.
Of course, some other tools are also needed: including round wooden crossbeams, ropes, measuring tools such as Lu Ban ruler or Yang Gong ruler, short wooden ruler and triangle ruler, level, as well as hammer, hoe, shovel, pickaxe, hoe, etc.
They did have these. After all, some of the tools were made of iron and they were reluctant to throw them away. As for the ruler, it was even more impossible to throw it away because these were the tools that Wang Fuxi needed as a carpenter.
They worked until dark, and the people who measured the land at noon had not returned yet.
It was Shen Zhiqiu who brought people to deliver the food, and the people from Lin Tangjia Village were also delivered, after all, they could go back to eat. The main reason was that Shen Zhiqiu asked for everything to be measured.
In order to finish the work earlier, I had to work overtime, but there was nothing delicious, just steamed corn bread and fried bamboo shoots and salted fish.
The people in Tangjia Village were dumbfounded. Tang Guangzheng asked: "Do you usually eat this?"
Shen Fugui replied, "How is that possible? Do we look like a family that can eat meat often? We caught this fish while fleeing from famine. We couldn't bear to eat it, so we made it into dried fish. It's because we saw you helping us that our grandfather and the third son let you make it."
Tang Guangzheng was stunned after hearing this. For the first time, he felt that this group of people were okay. At least they understood the ways of the world and he knew that it was very hard for them to measure the land.
In previous years, the land was measured by the head of the village or the village chief, who would then send officials to measure it. However, due to the large number of refugees who have settled in the area recently,
Half of the money from the sale of the wasteland will be given to the village. Basically, no head of the village or the village chief will do anything at this time. The village will measure the land and then take people to the county government to report their settlement.
Of course, the government will also send officials to verify, so don’t have any fluke mentality. Just estimate the approximate number of acres of land. The officials who are mainly responsible for this will know whether you have lied after taking a look around.
Shen Zhiqiu saw that the food was delicious, so he prepared to ask the village head for something: "Village head, is there any tax exemption from the imperial court for reclaiming land here?"
Tang Guangzheng, who was eating cured fish with gusto, said: "Yes, it was tax-free in the first two years. But in the first two years, we just reclaimed the wasteland and couldn't grow anything else. At most, we planted some beans."
Indeed, planting soybeans on newly reclaimed land is the best choice during this period, because soybeans have rhizobia at their roots that can fix nitrogen in the air, thereby increasing the nitrogen content in the soil.
This nitrogen fixation effect not only helps the growth of soybeans themselves, but also provides rich nitrogen fertilizer for subsequently planted crops and improves the soil fertility structure.
Secondly, it has a certain inhibitory effect on diseases and insect pests in the soil. Planting soybeans can reduce the risk of subsequent crops suffering from diseases and insect pests.
It can save a lot of labor and cost. Since soybean planting does not require tilling the soil and fertilizing, it only needs to plant soybean seeds on the ridges, which can reduce the investment of manpower and financial resources.
Finally, we have to talk about its root system. Because it is buried deep and has a well-developed root system, the absorbed nitrogen is stored in the root system and evenly distributed in the soil.
Deep tillage of soybeans can effectively turn out bacteria deep in the soil, achieving a disinfection effect.
But Shen Zhiqiu started to get angry again. Once the land was transferred, it would have to be reclaimed. If so much land was reclaimed, there would be no time to do small business to make money.
The government should have about 300 taels left. In addition to buying food for the next month, it would cost 30 taels to buy all the coarse grains.
And it's not like I can just buy it for a month. I'm renting a house in Tangjia Village now, so there's really nothing I can do.
I was afraid that buying too much food would be unsafe, but I had to set aside at least seven months' worth of food, which would be more than two hundred taels. I didn't need to buy oil or salt for the time being.
But you have to buy some necessary things for a thatched house. Apart from other things, you have to have windows when you build a house, and if you have windows, you have to buy window paper, right?
The most critical issue is that everyone has to put on more cotton clothes when winter comes. There was no other way last year as they stayed in the cave and stayed warm, but this year they can’t just go through the same old routine.
You can't just eat dry food and not eat vegetables. Even if you don't eat good vegetables, you must at least have some radishes and cabbages.
So don’t even think about buying seeds the first year you plant beans.
Of course he also has ways to make money, but in order to make money, someone has to delay the reclamation of wasteland, as there is already a lot of land.
However, what Shen Zhiqiu didn't know was that while he was very worried, his daughter was already helping him to do the math. No matter how she calculated, she felt that the most important thing while opening up the land was to make money.
Shen Youyou asked Li Jingshu tentatively: "Mom, do you think there are any kudzu roots or anything like that on Fangshan Mountain?"
As a result, her mother, who was originally smiling, immediately warned her seriously:
"You don't have to think about going up the mountain. Haven't you heard that wolves are often seen over there? Your father and his friends are clearing the land, so they don't have time to bring others to follow you up the mountain."
Okay, actually she had thought of this result before she opened her mouth, but she still tried it out, and if it didn't work, she would think of other ways.
If not, I'll go out tomorrow to see where the girls in Tangjia Village are picking mushrooms and digging wild vegetables. It would be nice to get some vegetables then.