farming female castellan

Chapter 24 Meeting Li Zheng
The carriage left the south city gate.Chen Fan raised the curtain.

Outside the window is a vast expanse of fields.The water in the paddy fields shimmered, and the seedlings were basically planted, green and swaying gently in the breeze, showing the hope of Xinxin.There is a village in the distance, with white walls and black tiles, and gray walls and gray tiles, which is the style of Jiangnan folk houses she likes.In the fields, in the villages, and along the official roads, you can see big trees with verdant branches and leaves everywhere, covered with golden plums or orange-yellow and reddish apricots.Many people in the fields are busy with farm work, and some are picking fruits.

The suburbs are full of green and the original apricots are fat, which is what life in the countryside here looks like.

One mountain, two cities, the difference between the two sides is so huge.

Chen Fan sighed and said: "Guard Li, it's really lucky that there was no disaster here. It's all done outside the North City Gate."

Manager Li shook his head: "It's also been dry here for several months, and the ditches and rivers have almost bottomed out. Fortunately, the fields have survived. Later, it rained a few times during the Xiaoman season, and the ditches and rivers were full again. The summer harvest and summer planting can be regarded as a busy one. The water storage and drainage of the waterways here are very good. The former two county magistrates used most of the corvees to renovate the riverways. But there are places in other counties. It's flooding."

Chen Fan sat down in the front room and lifted the curtain.

"How about the river in Pingzhou?"

"Pingzhou? Pingzhou's river course is much worse than here. The water conservancy in Yuzhou, Xizhou and Huaizhou is not very good. The governor of Huaizhou was beheaded the year before last. He was greedy for the repair money of the river embankment, and it flooded during the spring flood. several counties."

……

After traveling south for a few miles, the carriage turned a corner, and continued westward, parallel to Xitou Mountain.Sitting by the window, Chen Fan can enjoy the scenery of the distant mountains.

The Wangjiadun they were going to trotted for half an hour in a carriage.Chen Fan made a rough calculation in his mind: the traveling speed of the carriage is about ten to fifteen kilometers in half an hour.For these ten kilometers, the common people can walk for three or four hours if they are slow, and if they run fast, they will lose their breath and legs.

Yuanfeng County is indeed rich in water resources. There are many ditches and rivers along the way, and there are many large and small ponds. The lotus in the ponds is in full bloom.

The carriage approached a village, and Chen Fan saw two wide roads at a glance.Can't help but say: "The road in this village is really good."

Li Guanshi took over the conversation: "That's right. The front and east of the village are official roads, and the two roads in the middle and west are built by the villagers themselves. They are also very wide and smooth."

The carriage was traveling on the road in the village.People hurrying along the road watched curiously, but they didn't show the expression of seeing a carriage for the first time.The children watched for a longer time and did not run after the carriage.

The carriage stopped in front of a yard, and the three got out of the carriage.This family is probably in the center of the village, and the eaves overlap within the courtyard wall.

Li Guanshi knocked on the courtyard door, and after a while, a middle-aged woman came and opened the courtyard door.Li Guanshi said she was Li Zheng's wife, Yang's.Chen Fan called Mrs. Wang.

Yang led them into the house.Sitting in the room was a man in his 40s, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and a square face.After Li Guanshi greeted that person, he introduced to Chen Fan that it was Wang Lizheng from Wangjiadun.Chen Fan saluted him.

Wang Lizheng said: "Guangshi Li told me about your situation yesterday. Ms. Chen is lucky. I can still get a homestead after I settle down and pay taxes. Every family of three can get up to one mu of homestead. The new policy is to buy a house. Homestead, maybe it will be implemented someday. You are an orphan girl, with a population of less than three, so you should only get a part of the homestead. However, considering that you have established a household as the head of the household, there is a possibility of recruiting extraneous children, so it is still granted. You have an acre of homestead."

Chen Fan expressed his gratitude to Li Zheng for taking care of her.

"But you can no longer buy a homestead." Li Zheng said, "If your family grows in size in the future, you can still buy it according to the standard of no more than one mu of land for three people. If you divide an acre of homestead, you have to pay Household tax, because you are responsible for the area of ​​a family of three. If you want to fight for the preferential treatment of household tax exemption for widows and orphans, the homestead should be smaller. Girl, what do you think?"

Chen Fan thought that she thanked her too early, and she didn't get preferential treatment at all, but she could accept it.Li Zheng saw that she was not allowed to enjoy any preferential benefits, but the stakes were clearly explained to her.If one day a villager quarrels with her and accuses her of why she can live on a one-acre house, she can still go back confidently and say that she has paid taxes and why she can't live in it.

She told Lizheng that she was willing to pay one person's household tax.

One acre of homestead, she can really have an acre of homestead now, the house, garden, vegetable garden, stables, chicken house and duck coop can all be arranged.No matter how many square meters an acre of land is in this era, it is still a very tempting figure for Chen Fan.She didn't want the big yard to shrink into a small garden as soon as she imagined it.

"I can tell the girl about paying taxes. How old is the girl?"

Chen Fan replied 12 years old.

Li Zheng said: "If you are 12 years old or less than 15 years old, you can register as a young girl." Then, Li Zheng told Chen Fan about the tax payment items that Mr. Liu had mentioned before.Chen Fan nodded, indicating that he understood.

"The fields have to be bought, and now there is no need to divide the fields." Lizheng said again.

Chen Fan nodded again.

Fields can be bought and sold freely, so how many fields you can own depends on each person's ability?
"Now I'll take you to see the homestead and the fields that can be bought." As Li was speaking, he picked up a bundle of rope and a bundle of wooden sticks and walked out, and Chen Fan and the others followed.

A group of people walked through the middle of the village and walked to the north of the village.Chen Fan found that although the houses of each family were uneven and scattered, once the courtyard walls were enclosed, the rows were quite neat, and the paths between the rows of houses were relatively straight.She told Li Zheng about her discovery.

Li Zheng looked very proud: "Our village has been building houses like this for decades. The homesteads of each family are all the same shape, neatly arranged, and the spacing between each row is also specified. They can build houses however they like. The distance between two neighboring houses is also relatively random, it doesn’t matter if they are close to each other or far away, as long as they don’t build to the side of the official road.

She thought of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty, the magnificent 100 squares.With more than [-] villages like this, it probably looks like Chang'an.

They went all the way to the northernmost part of the village.There was a large open space where some weeds grew sparsely.The ground looks very hard, and there are still stones exposed in many places.

It seems that this piece of land can only be used to build houses.Looking at the area, it is enough for many families to build houses.

There is a canal tens of meters away, which separates the village from the fields. The village is to the south of the canal, and the fields are to the north of the canal.

Strangely, there are two different scenery among the vast seedling fields in Qubei.

(End of this chapter)