GBP Chapter 214 That bastard wants to order us around again?
Chapter 214 That bastard wants to order us around again?
As the famous decadent writer Mr. Zhou Yucai once said: A good local official can not only make the people under his jurisdiction work, but also treat the emperor and the civil and military officials in the court like cattle and horses.
Magistrate Yang agreed with Mr. Zhou Yucai's views, so he wrote a memorial to Emperor Zhu Chongba, requesting that the emperor reward the carpenters in Ningyang County.
In addition, Magistrate Yang stated in his memorial that because the machine was manufactured too late, by the time it was completed, the people of Ningyang County had already finished harvesting their winter wheat. Therefore, they could only use wild grass from the wasteland around Ningyang County for verification.
It turns out that combine harvesters can cut grass much faster than humans can cut grass with sickles.
Without using animal power, three people operating a combine harvester can cut grass slightly faster than three people cutting grass with sickles; the difference is negligible.
When using livestock such as oxen, horses, or mules, two people operating a harvester can cut grass much faster than five people using sickles.
However, regardless of whether the speed is the same or much faster, the most important thing is that people no longer need to bend over to harvest wheat.
Yang Shaofeng, the magistrate, also stated: Ningyang County is a well-known impoverished county in the Ming Dynasty, a very backward small county with a small population and very rudimentary conditions. If Emperor Zhu Chongba could have the Ministry of Works improve the harvester, its efficiency would surely be further enhanced. In the future, both "walking sickle harvesting" and "circling sickle harvesting" would gradually fade from the historical stage, replaced by harvesters that would allow people to stand up straight.
The so-called "walking sickle cutting" means bending over, holding the wheat in the left hand and the sickle in the right hand, and cutting it to the right and back. This is the posture that men usually adopt when cutting wheat.
The so-called "squatting" is a posture often used by women, half-squatting. Although it is less efficient, the stubble cut is lower, and they can sit down and rest when they are tired.
Some capable women would often go to the fields to harvest wheat as early as 4 a.m. (the hour of Yin), when it was just getting light. By 7 p.m. (the hour of Xu), a woman could often harvest more than one or even two acres of wheat.
In his memorial, Yang Shaofeng pointed out that not all people could afford to have two or three sickles in every household. In many places, a family might only have one sickle or even none at all. The emergence of the harvester not only solved the problem of how people harvested wheat, but also solved the problem of the lack of sickles among the people of the Ming Dynasty.
Then, Magistrate Yang ordered the memorial and the harvester to be sent to the capital, while he himself went to Liu Miao Village once again to check on the people's threshing.
In the first year of the Hongwu reign, all the people of Ningyang County gathered at the threshing ground outside the county government office. They used a stone roller to repeatedly roll and thresh the dried wheat to separate the grains from the straw and chaff.
By the second year of the Hongwu reign, because each household had cultivated more land and grown more wheat, the open space in front of the county government office was no longer sufficient. People from each village had to dry and thresh their grain in their own village's threshing ground.
In rural areas, the so-called threshing ground is usually a relatively open, flat, and high-lying place near the village. Various tools are used to repeatedly compact the soil of the selected site, and then a roller is used to repeatedly roll it.
During this process, water must be poured on the ground of the threshing floor, the wheat straw must be crushed and mixed into the soil, spread on the threshing floor, and then repeatedly tamped and rolled over until the soil on the surface of the threshing floor becomes very compact, so that it will not be soaked into mud even if it rains. Only then can the grain be dried, threshed, and winnowed on the threshing floor.
Moreover, unlike before, when Magistrate Yang was arranging to build roads with simple cement, he had already thought about using cement to level the threshing grounds in each village. Therefore, the threshing grounds in each village outside Ningyang County are now all cement-surfaced, less affected by rain, and are also more level.
As for what to do if the people in Ningyang County have no threshing grounds.
It's such a simple matter. You can dry your grain anywhere along the road south of Ningyang County that leads to Yanzhou Prefecture, or thresh it anywhere along that road.
There are always more solutions than problems.
While lost in thought, Yang Shaofeng, the county magistrate, watched as Liu Sanshier directed the villagers of Liumiao Village to spread the already dried wheat onto the threshing ground, and then directed the able-bodied men to harness the livestock to the millstones before the threshing began.
Magistrate Yang examined the harvest carefully for a while and then asked, "How is this year's harvest?"
Liu Thirty-Two replied with a broad smile, "Thanks to your blessing, sir, this year's harvest is much better than last year's. Each mu of land can yield about 130 jin."
Yang Shaofeng hummed in agreement, then secretly began to make his own plans.
Based on an average family of three with 30 mu of land, a family could harvest approximately 4,000 jin of wheat.
If we calculate based on a family consuming 800 jin of wheat per year, how many 1,600 jin of wheat would this family of three have left after a year of hard work?
No, Emperor Zhu Chongba exempted Ningyang County from taxes, which is why they were able to save 1,600 catties of wheat. If taxes had been collected according to the normal standard, this family of three would have saved about 1,000 catties of wheat.
That's not right.
A piece of land is not just for planting wheat for one season and that's it. There are also late soybeans or late sorghum, or other miscellaneous crops that can be used. At the end of the year, the amount of grain left over is definitely more than a thousand catties.
Thinking of this, Yang Shaofeng couldn't help but laugh twice, patted Liu Sanshier on the shoulder, and said with a smile, "This time it's good, the people of Ningyang County can finally live a few good days."
Liu Thirty-Two chuckled twice and replied, "What you say is true, sir. Just thinking about how much grain we can harvest and how much will be left over by this time next year gives me boundless energy."
Magistrate Yang hummed in agreement and then asked, "By the way, how are the silkworms you're raising at home? Shouldn't they be spinning their cocoons by now?"
Liu Sanshier nodded and replied, "Yes, the cocoons are about to form. However, I have been keeping in mind the master's instructions and plan to make silkworm paper first after the silkworms emerge from their cocoons, and then boil the cocoons to extract the silk."
Yang Shaofeng smiled and nodded again, saying, "That's good, that's good."
……
Just as Magistrate Yang was happy that the people of Ningyang County were about to live a better life, Emperor Zhu Chongba of the Ming Dynasty had been sitting in the Qianqing Palace, grinning foolishly for most of the day.
That bastard wants to order around Zhu Chongba?
No problem, he can use it however he wants, and Zhu Chongba will absolutely not say a word!