Lu Ming

Chapter 166 Buyer Era
In the south of the Yangtze River in the Song Dynasty, most of the human manure was applied directly on the fields.But in the Yuan Dynasty, farmers have generally used the method of decomposing, "put bricks on the head of the field, and use them after they are ripe in the cellar."

However, the natural decomposing method is too time-consuming, usually more than half a year.

In the Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan began to use the "steaming method".When the weather warms up in winter, dig deep pools to collect dung, close it for retting, cover it with soil, close the door, and let it heat and rot inside the house.The resulting cooked manure is also called "steamed manure".

In addition, some "boiling manure methods", "simmering manure methods" and "pit manure methods" during the Ming and Qing Dynasties are all secondary processing technologies developed spontaneously by the folks in order to accelerate the decomposition of fertilizers.However, in the final analysis, these are all scattered and manual operations without technical standards, and the quality and output cannot be guaranteed.

Now that the beggars have dominated the manure industry in Hangzhou and integrated the raw material transportation channels, the Weituo manure field outside the city can exert the power of industrialized production of farmyard manure.

A large amount of excrement and municipal waste soil are first piled up in the manure field.

All kinds of human and animal manure and green manure such as straw will be piled up in proportion. The most important thing here is to adjust the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio: generally speaking, it is 30:1, that is, there must be 30 parts of carbon source for every part of nitrogen.

Human and livestock manure contains more nitrogen, and crop straw contains more carbon, so generally speaking, about 40% of straw should be added to each ton of manure.

After the various straws pass through the crushing and soaking process, they can start to be layered with the manure.In order to preserve nutrients, sprinkle some finely ground garbage soil into each layer.The material is piled up and sprinkled with water until it forms a 2.5-meter cone, which is considered complete.

The next step is the key "dumping" link.

After the compost heap is piled up, the internal temperature can reach 5°C to 10°C within 60 to 70 days.

This is where the time-travel artifact comes into play: the temperature measuring rod.

A few specially trained literate refugees, under the key protection and monitoring, their daily task is to insert the temperature measuring rod on the cone.

Once the temperature in the dung heap is qualified and kept for 10 hours, immediately overturn the dung heap, break up the large pieces, mix the dung and grass, replenish water, and pile it up as it is.

After about 10 days, the pile temperature rises to about 60°C again, and the pile is overturned once more, and the pile is completed.

Under the guidance of the time-traveling artifact, every 20 days or so in Wei Tuo Farm, a batch of farmyard manure with qualified quality and stable fertilizer efficiency will be produced.Rows of neat dung piles are like a forest, and hundreds of refugees who are full of food and drink are busy here.

The fertilizer effect of the new variety was soon reflected in the rapeseed fields outside the city. A large number of vegetable farmers in the outskirts of the city began to spontaneously row boats to Wei Tuochang to buy fertilizer. It didn’t take long. Even farther away, Haining and Huzhou had dung boats rowing over , Do the business of exchanging manure for fertilizer.

The new type of fertilizer industry, in the city of Hangzhou alone, has placed thousands of excavators and boatmen, and there are no fewer than 500 public toilet construction teams. Sewer sludge everywhere.In short, everything that can become fertilizer will not be let go.

The vigorous transformation of the urban environment has made Liu Mengqian, the prefect of Hangzhou, who was originally only recited poems and painted paintings, but was satirized by Zhang Dai's essays, and became a "capable member" overnight, and was praised by all the gentry.

And Zhou Tong, the leader of Zhou Tong, who started out as a pupa, is now able to swagger into the government offices of prefectures and counties in broad daylight—not only officials, but all the big gentry in Hangzhou who are concerned about this matter are figuring out what Zhou Tong's fertilizer industry is. After a virtuous circle, everyone is amazed.

Of course, Chief Zhou never took off the "soft hedgehog armor" he was wearing next to his body when he went out and embraced him.There is no way, there are too many enemies, and Lao Zhou will save his life until the day he becomes a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

As the head of the Hangzhou station, Lu Cheng was also very busy during this time.

Not only have to stand behind the beggar gang to point out the country at all times, but also take care of the overall work of the Hangzhou station, maintain contact with all parties, and also wipe some people's buttocks
A certain person who posted a small selfie video that caused serious discomfort to the viewers has already run away, and the half-finished projects left by this guy need to be taken care of by Lu Cheng.

The first is the field.

After Mr. Huang won the election, there should not be too many small landlords and rich peasants who came to "donate" their fields.This is essentially affiliation: the land is still owned by others, and everyone uses the tax-free quota of Juren as a partnership to benefit.

However, the time travelers do not need this kind of support. What the time travelers need is their own land that is completely under their own control, without tenants, and where refugees can be placed as temporary workers.

This kind of land is difficult to buy in the Jiangnan area: there are too many gentry and wealthy households, and the fields have been scattered into countless private fields after hundreds of years of changes. The land is difficult to ascend to the sky.

Of course, if Huang Juren mixed up to the point where Xu Jie and Xu Ge were old, they could also wantonly enclose land-Xu Di Wang went from the first assistant to the squire, and his fields had been embezzled year after year, with as many as 24 mu and tens of thousands of tenants.

Therefore, it is basically impossible for a small person like Huang Ping to buy a large piece of fertile land in the Jiangnan area.

But now there is an opportunity.

Perhaps it is God's will in the dark. Although the Little Ice Age lasted through the end of the Ming Dynasty, since the first year of Chongzhen, the natural disasters in the Jiangnan area have suddenly entered a climax stage: various large-scale disasters represented by drought, flood, and locusts. , the end of the Chongzhen Dynasty, year after year, there are many reasons for the demise of the Ming Empire, but the endless natural disasters are the thickest coffin nail.

Just in July this year, there was a severe drought in the south of the Yangtze River, and then continuous rainstorms. On the 7rd, a hurricane broke out, and the sea tide broke through the dams on both sides of Qiantang. All the coastal areas of Hangjiahu, three prefectures were affected. The number of deaths reached 23, and the number of deaths in Shangyu, Kuaiji and other places was not much higher.

The flood was followed by the plague, and then a large number of landless farmers were produced. After that, the fields would become salinized due to being flooded by the tide.

Well, a mass of lost fields, a mass of bankrupt homesteaders and sharecroppers, that's all coming after July.Recently, Lu Cheng frequently traveled to several coastal counties to the east of Hangzhou, just to investigate and count the field data of various places.

According to the original plan, all these tasks should be done by Mr. Huang, but the plan could not keep up with the changes. Now Lu Cheng can only hastily set up a "rental store", and under the guise of helping Huang Juren to manage and purchase farmland, he went around and investigated. .

In order to cope with the tidal disaster that will come in a few months, Lu Cheng not only has to expedite the removal of a large number of "existing" refugees, but also investigates in advance, plans the disaster fields, and also applies to the senior officials for a full-time farmer. People come to Hangzhou with the seeds of certain crops—in places where floods and droughts occur frequently, rice is not a concern, and root crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes are king.

Even in this busy schedule, Lu Cheng still had to find time to attend some entertainment, for example, the opening ceremony of Huang Ju's family's bank.

As a Juren, it is normal to open one or two money shops and teahouses.Before Huang Zhicheng set off for Fujian, he had already completed the membership procedures in the Money Industry Association, and bought a bank at the entrance of Mishi Lane.

This bank, which specializes in exchanging money, is nominally owned by Mr. Huang's family, but in fact it is still presided over by Lu Cheng. Its main function is to provide industrial metals for the officials: gold, copper, lead, tin, etc.

Needless to say about gold, the gold-silver ratio between the Ming Dynasty and Japan was about 1:8, while in Europe it was more than 1:12 at the same time, so the colonists had been buying gold from the Ming Dynasty and Japan.Now the cross-travelers have also joined in - after this village, there will be no such shop, and in a few years, the price of gold will be evened out.

As for other copper, lead and tin, these are industrial metals that are in short supply, especially copper.The most important task of Huangji Bank is to exchange silver for all kinds of copper coins: even if it falls on the ground and becomes eight petals of bad money, Huangji will also exchange it with vain silver. Of course, in this case, 1 tael is exchanged. Don't even think about 1 pass, 3 passes will not work.

In essence, this is actually crossing the crowd to exchange freshwater cultured pearls for high-grade copper-lead-tin metal mines. No one can tell who wins and who loses.

Some time ago, the first ship of industrial products from Dayuan arrived at the port. Tangzhuang, a freight distribution station in the 17th century, finally ended the embarrassing operation of only buying but not selling, and began to get on the right track.

Industrialization has a standard feature: cheap.No matter what kind of commodity it is, from sewing needles to oil lamps, paints, guns, jeans and cars, as long as the production line is activated, these commodities can hit the market across agricultural countries even if they travel across oceans.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the country of steam, which was regarded as extremely simple by later generations, relied on the whistling steam production line to transport goods across the seven seas, dominate the five continents, make the country rich and the people strong, blast away the markets of countless ancient empires, sign countless colonial treaties, matchmaking , foreign cigarettes, foreign oil, foreign cloth
And in the era of crossing the crowd, with the first ship being industrialized and dried, and the cut commercial timber transported to Tangzhuang, an epoch-making process in this plane began——global trade entered the buyer's market 300 years earlier than history.

Even though it may take decades for the people of the world to feel what it means to buy one get one free, the arrival of this ship of timber is just like Watt’s steam engine. They blew the industrial revolution The clarion call represents the advent of a new trade pattern.

Nowadays, the variety of goods transported to Tangzhuang by the sand fleet has gradually begun to increase, and the exquisite industrial products have quickly opened up sales in Hangzhou.

"Master Gou, Mr. Gou, you are always a regular customer in the cabinet. Can you still trust the craftsmanship of my Zhao Da? There are [-] clay makers in and around Hangzhou. I, Zhao Da, say that I am the second, which one dares to be the first?" ?”

On the river beach to the north of Tangzhuang, in the middle of rows of light red, knife-cut red bricks, a group of masons is surrounding a butler-like man to solicit business. Callous, the whole body is full of craftsman temperament.

"The queen mother will give you a fortune too! Let's see if you can do it!" Before Steward Gou could reply, the craftsman Guo had already started to speak up.The tall and ugly craftsman Guo glared and scolded, and in an instant he turned back to the face of an Akita dog: "Master Gou, I paid money to learn this skill of wiping cement in Tangzhuang. If you don't believe me, please read it. "

As soon as Mr. Guo spoke, he showed a gilt mounted flower, written in brush calligraphy, and stamped with two or three big red clay seals of "First-Class Cement Construction Certificate".

(End of this chapter)