A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 591 Wu Jin
Wujiazhuangzi on the Shenhe Plateau.

This place was originally called Laoquanzhai and is now called Wujiabao. Although this land has been owned by nine people in ten years, it has indeed changed many owners back and forth.

Although the previous owner of Wujia Zhuangzi was the Third-order Baita Temple, the previous owner was said to be named Guo.

The elder Yuan Master still remembers a saying, the mountains of the Feng family are the land of the Yang family, the mules and horses of the Lu family are longer than the carts, and the gold and silver of the Guo family are measured in measures.

This is talking about the four great powers in the Sui Dynasty in Shenhe Plain. Although these four great powers are far inferior to Jingzhao Weidu, they were once very powerful in Shenhe Plain.

The current Wujiabao Zhuangzi is actually the former Guo family courtyard. It faces south and covers an area of ​​100 acres. There are [-] courtyards and more than [-] houses. When the Guo family was at its most prosperous, it owned more than [-] acres of land.

Although the dynasty has changed, the Guo family has been blown away by the rain and the wind, and the manor and land have changed owners several times, but now that the surname has been changed to Empress Wu, the eleven-year-old courtyard is still standing.

At that time, the Guo family had [-] acres of land, but now [-] acres belong to the Wu family, and another [-] acres are under the name of Xiangji Temple and have been given to dozens of villagers outside the temple for permanent farming.

Approaching Zhuangzi, you can see a large area of ​​land in the distance.

Although it is on a plateau, the terrain is flat, with thousands of acres of fertile farmland seemingly stretching as far as the eye can see, and Zhongnan Mountain in the south appearing so close.

Compared with the golden fields of wheat planted by the villagers in Xiangji Temple next to it, the Wu family's land looked very empty.
"The summer grain planted this year is corn, which has just been harvested. Now the fields are planted with sweet potatoes, radishes, soybeans, and some corn, wheat and some vegetables."

Zhuangtou did not expect that the head of the family would suddenly arrive and bring the emperor with him, so he was very nervous.

Compared with the golden wheat fields next door, the Wu family's land, which had already harvested in summer and even completed a new round of farming, seemed very empty, but Zhuangtou said that the harvest this year was good.

“How much does one acre produce?”

"Our Wujiapu corn can produce two stones per acre after threshing this year."

This yield surprised Wu Huaiyu. Under the same water and fertilizer conditions, the yield of corn is much lower than that of wheat. In fact, the real "high yield" of corn must be in mountainous areas. Other crops grown in mountainous areas have low yields, but corn It has strong adaptability and can produce good yield, so it appears to be highly productive in comparison.

In fact, when corn is grown on fertile fields like Shenhe Plateau, it is not as good as wheat and rice. In fact, millet is not as good as wheat. However, many areas in Guanzhong are relatively water-scarce and arid, so planting millet, millet, Buckwheat, oats, etc. are more adaptable and have higher yields than wheat.
But in the fertile plains and fertile fields, they are no match for wheat and rice.

If you grow wheat in Wujiabao, you can produce three shi per mu in good years. The Wu family can produce two acres of corn, which is an unexpectedly high yield.

"Why not plant wheat?" Although Li Shimin was surprised that the Wu family's corn yield per acre was high, he also felt that one stone was missing.

Huaiyu settled a score with the emperor.

The Wu family plants corn in the spring and harvests it in the summer, yielding two stones per mu. Then they can continue to plant another crop, whether wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, or soybeans, and still have another season of income.

The most important thing is that the price of food is now low. Wheat costs only twenty or thirty yuan per stone, and an output of three stone per mu only costs eighty or ninety yuan.

The corn grown by the Wu family is not used for food. After selection, it is used as seed corn for sale, and the price is much higher than the price of grain.

The leftovers can also be used to make wine or make feed for pigs and chickens.

This is just like after the Wu family harvested corn, most of the land was planted with sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are excellent for raising pigs. The sweet potato vines can be cut one after another to feed the pigs. The yield of sweet potatoes is still high, and it is easy to fatten and grow long. Fat, fattening pigs is much more cost-effective than growing grain and selling it now.

What's more, the Wu family now not only raises pigs, but also slaughters and processes them. The Wu family even raises many sows and sells piglets.

The Wu family even has an in-depth cooperation model with surrounding farmers, such as claiming piglets for free, which the Wu family can buy back when the pigs are grown, and the money from selling the pigs will be deducted from the piglets plus some interest, or they can receive piglets for free, and each piglet All you need to do is guarantee how many carts of pig manure will be given to the Wu family manor at that time. When the pigs grow up, they will be repurchased without any capital.

This model in which the Wu family produces piglets, farmers raise pigs, and finally the Wu family buys them back is now very prosperous. People who lack capital and want more income are willing to give it a try. After all, raising pigs is hard work, but there are more The only cost is labor and time, and there are no other costs.

What farmers are worthless is their labor and time.

The Wu family now relies on this model. Although the Wei family has not yet succeeded in raising pigs, it is already a rising star. In particular, the Wu family raises sows very well. They even open classes to recruit students to teach postpartum care for sows. , and there are also veterinary classes. If you learn these skills, you will definitely not have to worry about food.

Li Shimin walked through the Wu family's land, looking at the crops that had just been planted, and then went to see the Wu family's pig pen, which was semi-free range. They were let out for a walk every day and fed twice a day. Compared with what they usually saw, The kind of black and thin pigs that the Wu family breeds are obviously carefully selected, and they will become fatter with careful care.

Even the skin is rosy.

"Why is your pig so fat and not dirty at all?"

It’s completely different from the pigs in my impression that are dirty and even eat shit. They look a little cute.

"The reason why the skin of these pigs is red is because some distiller's grains are added to the pig food every day, and some bran and soybean meal are also added,"

Wujiabao not only farms and breeds, but also has water mills and windmills, as well as breweries and oil pressing mills.The Wu family will purchase the lees from other distilleries. The lees from these rice wines can be distilled into white wine. Although the steamed lees from white wine are useless, they are good for feeding pigs.

Adding a small amount can help fattening.

The Wu family mills grind rice and flour every day, and the Wu family generally purchases a large amount of bran produced, or directly uses the bran to offset the processing costs. These bran and even some ground powder are used to make pig feed, which is also very nutritious. .

Of course, raising pigs cannot just eat grass, nor can they be driven out and completely free-range like sheep. They still need to be fed well and fed, so that they can grow faster, become fatter, and be ready for slaughter faster.

Huaiyu is still very proud of raising pigs, because raising pigs is really profitable these days, especially in the suburbs of Chang'an. There is no need to worry about sales. The Wu family slaughters them themselves and sells them directly in Chang'an, and also supplies some meat to them. Shop, the Wu family not only sells raw meat, but also makes cooked food, mainly pig offal, pig heads and trotters, which are not valuable, and the profits increase greatly after reprocessing.

Then there are the pig skins and bristles, which are quite valuable. It would be good to turn them into leather shoes or bristle brushes.

Wujiabao raises many pigs, including many sows that specialize in giving birth to piglets, and also raises many chickens, ducks and geese. The manure produced by these breedings is fermented and returned to the fields, which can greatly improve fertility and increase yields per mu.
Although Wujiabao now only has one thousand acres of land, it has formed a good ecology. In addition to selling seeds, the rest of the crops grown on the land can be digested by oneself. There are also mills for grain processing, wine making, brush making, and tanning. additional industries,

Not only is the village full of arrangements, it also employs many surrounding people to work all year round, and even drives them to breed and make money.

The annual output of Zhuangzi on this thousand acres of land can be said to be astonishing.

There is even a school built here, with sow care classes, pig breeding classes, veterinary classes, brewing classes, chicken and duck raising classes, etc. They are all very down-to-earth techniques. They recruit young people from the nearby people. Once they learn it, they can work in the Wu family. You can make money by doing things, or you can go home and do your own farming or something.

Now that the summer wheat has not yet been harvested, the grain merchants have already set the price, which is three cents per dou, and some even two cents. The Wu family collects grain from the surrounding areas, including wheat, millet, rice, corn and sorghum, and the prices are slightly higher. Some.

Li Shimin walked around Wujiabao.

He also stayed at Wujiabao in the evening, and Huaiyu personally prepared a dinner.

Braised pork, braised pork ribs with corn, stir-fried shredded pork with green pepper, old hen soup simmered in earthen pot, roasted duck with ginger, stewed goose in iron pot, steamed fish, braised eggplant with potatoes...
Very down-to-earth farm food, not so exquisite, but completely different in style and taste from Yushan.

Li Shimin liked to eat so much that he even had two portions packaged while he was eating. One portion was sent quickly to Queen Changsun of the Lizheng Palace in Chang'an to taste, and the other portion was sent to the East Palace for Prince Qian.
"Ask Cheng Qian to come here tomorrow morning and accompany you."

Wujiapu gave the emperor a very different feeling.

It is very busy here. It is not the traditional kind of men farming and women weaving. The biggest feeling is that Wujia Zhuangzi is not developing itself, but also driving the surrounding areas. It not only hires the surrounding people to do long-term and short-term labor, but also leads them to breed, especially the kind of The model of piglets and chicks is provided for free.

"Is it really cost-effective to exchange piglets for pig manure?" Li Shimin asked. "It's a good deal. Wheat straw and straw are used to line the pig pen, and the pig urine and manure are soaked in them. They are replaced regularly. After accumulation, retting and fermentation, the manure and grass are very fertile in the ground. It is much better than burning the wheat straw directly to ashes."

As for the villagers, they are now following the Wu family, planting some sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn and other miscellaneous grains, adopting four or five piglets from the Wu family, and getting some pigweed. After a year of hard work, they will fatten them up and sell them to the Wu family. The profit is good.

Even the miscellaneous grains that are grown have a very high conversion efficiency, and if these grains are diversified, they can save a lot of rations when combined with the staple food.

For the Wu family, the increase in grain production brought by the agreed pig manure has long exceeded that of the piglets. What's more, the farm piglets still have to be sold to the Wu family after they are raised. After the Wu family slaughters, sells and processes, there can even be more. Make a fortune or two.

Let these farmers help make money, and they can also gain a good reputation of being kind and helpful to the villagers for the sake of wealth.

Compared with the simple lending and borrowing of grain by landlords and gentry in the past, it is much smarter.

The pigs currently raised by the Wu family are also black, but they are better than most pig breeds. The profits from these pigs are very considerable. The head of the village even directly calls these pigs Wujin.

It grows quickly and has good meat quality. It can be put into the market in one year and can grow to a very large size. Compared with the pigs of the Wei family, it can be called a giant pig.

In the Tang Dynasty, when it was illegal to kill cattle and mutton was too expensive, there was indeed a huge market for pork.

"Now farmers from nearby villages come to Wujiabao to pick up piglets to raise. If they can raise four to six piglets, plus some chickens and ducks, the breeding income after one year can give them some real money. "

Cultivated land is mainly used to grow food, pay land rent, grow mulberry, flax, and raise silkworms. In addition to interbreeding silk, they also spin and weave cloth to make clothes for the family. In addition to self-sufficiency in food and cloth, if there is any surplus, use it to exchange for money. , it would be good to buy some farm tools, needlework, salt and tea.

Most of the time, farmers' hands are tight. These are farmers who have some self-cultivated land. If they rely solely on tenant land, it will basically be difficult to feed and clothe themselves.

But now the surrounding farmers are following the Wu family in breeding, especially with this cooperation model. It costs nothing to get started, but the profits after one year are good, which can give tight hands more money.

Grow crops for food, grow mulberry and hemp for clothing, and raise pigs and chickens and ducks to have some extra money.

"Chang'an is the imperial capital of the capital, and the population is increasing. According to this trend, it is inevitable that there will be a daily eclipse of ten thousand pigs in the future. Mutton is too expensive, and the people in the city cannot afford mutton, so they can only eat pork.

In the future, when the world is peaceful and people's lives are getting better, they will definitely want to eat well after having enough to eat. The demand for meat is huge,"

Li Shimin was surprised to hear Huaiyu say that Chang'an could eat [-] pigs a day in the future. The palace's meat consumption was mainly mutton, and then geese. Chickens and ducks were rarely eaten, let alone pork, which was regarded as cheap meat.

But for ordinary people, how can they afford mutton?

"How many pigs are raised in Wujiabao now?"

"Three hundred sows, and three thousand pigs, and twenty boars."

Sows have at least two litters a year, and each litter contains more than ten pigs. As long as they are carefully cared for and raised, most of them can survive. More than a month of lactation is enough, and the pregnancy period is only about half a month before they can be bred again.

Three hundred sows can produce five to six thousand piglets a year. The Wu family raises [-] piglets themselves, and the rest are cooperatively raised by surrounding farmers.

One boar can mate twenty sows. The Wu family raises twenty boars, which can mate more than [-] sows, and they can also take orders from outside.

Wujiabao's pig breeding is still expanding, and the self-raised ones cannot be improved for the time being. However, the number of piglets needed for cooperative breeding in the surrounding areas has increased, and sow breeding is still expanding.

In addition to Shenheyuan Wujiapu, many villages of the Wu family in the suburbs of Beijing are raising pigs. It seems that raising pigs is not very impressive, but Jingzhao Weishi is the largest pig raiser in Guanzhong, and there are really many benefits here. big.

Li Tai, the king of Wei, was deeply favored by the emperor. Not only was he given a mansion of more than 200 acres in Chang'an, but he was also given [-] acres of swampland on the outskirts of Beijing for Li Tai to raise pigs.

The prince's family has three hundred acres of pig swamps, which shows that raising pigs is very profitable.

However, Wu Huaiyu's pig farming model is obviously different from that of the Wei family and the Wei family. Their pig farming is mainly free-range, which is called herding pigs. It is the same as herding sheep. It is slow to slaughter and requires large pig marshes, which is similar to raising sheep. The same pasture.

The Wu family raises pigs in confinement and is let out every day. There is no need for additional pig marsh pastures. They are mainly raised with pig grass and grains. The breeds are different. They are all black pigs, but they grow quickly and have good meat quality, especially the piglets. After both males and females were castrated shortly after birth, they no longer have that obvious odor when they grow up.

Of course, what's more important is that the Wu family's pig raising also drives the surrounding people to make money and become rich. This aspect is the biggest difference from other noble and powerful families raising pigs.

Li Shimin ate the farm banquet cooked by Wu Huaiyu himself. He lamented that Wu Huaiyu's cooking skills had improved, and he also lamented the Wu family's new manor economic model.

There are a thousand acres of fertile farmland in Wujiapu, but as Wu Huaiyu said, even though the price of grain has dropped to two or three dollars per bucket of rice, it has nothing to do with him, because only a small part of the grain grown by the Wu family is used as rations for villagers, and the rest is They used it to feed pigs and chickens, press oil, or grow some medicinal materials and vegetables for sale. They did not grow mulberry and hemp, but instead planted some cotton to weave extremely expensive white cloth.

In addition to being self-sufficient in food, this Zhuangzi makes money through breeding and processing. It can even bring surrounding farmers to cooperate in breeding and make money. Wujiabao currently produces [-] pigs a year. Although it is not much for Chang'an, Wujiabao makes more profits. , Chang'an market also increased the supply of pork.

For two or three dollars per bucket of rice, if the common people still work in the traditional way of men farming and women weaving, it will really hurt the farmers.The Wu family's model can indeed better resist this situation of low grain and harming farmers.

"Huaiyu, do you plan to run the two newly acquired villages and [-] acres of land in this way?"

"Well, if you want to develop the manor economy, you have to diversify it, and you can't just grow grain. I plan to grow part of the rations in the two farms, and the rest will grow cotton, and then I plan to build a cotton textile factory. Get some textile machines, recruit some female workers to weave, and let the nearby women take them home for processing, grow cotton and process white cloth. I think the prospects are very good,"

"Don't you raise pigs?"

"Raise, but mainly sows,"

One acre of sweet potatoes can raise three pigs. If you raise a lot of pigs, you need land. Wu Huaiyu plans to grow cotton in the newly acquired village and a small amount of rations. Then there will be no extra land to grow sweet potatoes and corn to raise pigs. He will raise some sows. It would be better to sell piglets or cooperate with nearby people to raise them.

The villagers raise three or six pigs at home, and use one or two acres of land to grow sweet potato grains to feed the pigs. The transformation benefits are quite good.

In the past, there were wars and famines, and people had no choice but to eat. From the imperial court to the common people, everyone thought about how to grow more land so that they could have food and clothing. But now that the world is stable, and a fight of rice costs two or three cents, everyone from the emperor to the common people began to think about how to dig out the fields. More income will come, otherwise it will be too painful to pay two or three dollars for a bucket of rice.

The Wu family's breeding and processing model is indeed a more advanced manor economic model, but it is not suitable for ordinary people. However, it is good for manor breeding and processing to drive the surrounding people.

Midnight,

Li Shimin asked Wu Huaiyu to sleep on the same bed.

On a summer night, although the Wu family's courtyard was not a cave dwelling, it was still very cool. The thick loess rammed walls kept the room from being hot.

The emperor was chatting with Wu Huaiyu, looking a little excited and not sleepy at all.

"Twenty-three yuan for a fight of rice, as Ma Zhou said, really hurts the farmers. The yield of many fields in Guanzhong is only one stone per mu, and the price is only twenty or thirty yuan. In Chang'an city, you can only buy one pound of mutton. If you have land, The people in the country are okay, but many landless tenants have to pay rent for the land they farm, and they don’t have much money left. It’s difficult to sell the surplus grain to pay off debts, buy some farm tools, or buy an ox to start a plow. Yes,
Not to mention buying a dowry when marrying a daughter-in-law. If there is a disaster, it will be even more impossible to resist."

"Let Chang Pingcang increase the price of rice, and it will cost at least five yuan to fight rice," the emperor thought for a while. He never thought that one day he would actually worry because the food was too cheap.

This may be the trouble of happiness.

(End of this chapter)