Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1367
However, the villagers did not understand this.In their view, keeping their own seeds is a matter of course.There are very few farmers who purchase silkworm eggs.

At this time, another ship brought "cloth" to everyone in Shen. When the ship was unloaded, everyone found that there was a lot of cloth sent.Ordinary families only raise two or three pets, and as many as five or ten.If the silkworm flowers are good, a piece of silkworm eggs needs almost ten stones of mulberry leaves to support "up the mountain".This is a big risk for sericulture farmers who do not have or have little mulberry land.

Although the size and shape of the "cloths" unloaded by Shen's family from the boat are completely different from those used by everyone, but judging from the quantity, it can be seen that they are far more than ordinary farmers-dozens of cloths are needed.

The master of Shenda is really rich!How many mulberry leaves are needed to feed these "babies".When everyone was dumbfounded, they heard from Duoduo Niang that these cloths were shipped from Guangdong all the way, and they were said to be of "Guangdong species", which was better than the Yuhang and Huzhou varieties here - don't you think so? Big believe.It is better than the local Yuhang variety, maybe this is; but it is better than the Huzhou variety, which is known as the best in the world, that is a fantasy-who doesn't know that the raw silk in Huzhou is the best in the world.The silk and satin used in the palace are all made of Huzhou silk.

Although Wang Siniang also said that if you want to raise Cantonese species, you can buy a few silkworm seeds from her house on credit, and you can return them after you have harvested the cocoons.But most of the sericulture farmers in the village keep their own seeds, so naturally they don't approve of this new thing.No one wants to plant a single seed in Wang Siniang's Guangdong.Shen Da felt relieved when he heard about it.

Because Duoduo's family has a lot of women in the family, there is no shortage of manpower, so he simply became a "busy month" in Wang Si's family. He didn't dare to care about the salary. He only had enough food every day, and he could bring some food back home. The treatment of cold rice made many people jealous.Daqing's daughter-in-law was even more angry, and had to scold her father-in-law from time to time.

Duoduo Niang seems to be very proud of her errand, as usual after returning home every day, she still has to be Wang Siniang's mouthpiece, bragging about her family's preparations for silkworms.Therefore, everyone knows the various ways of raising silkworms in Shen's family.For example, brushing the silkworm room with lime recently is not counted, and the doors and windows of the silkworm room are still closed and the sulfur smoked room is burned-it is said that this is called "disinfection".

This is not a new trick, the latest trick is that the silkworm eggs from Wang Siniang's family will start to green as soon as they arrive, and the greening will not be done manually, but by firepower.

In the process of silkworm rearing, the work of promoting greening is especially important.The so-called greening is to let the silkworm eggs hatch by artificial heating.In the natural environment, silkworm eggs can also hatch by themselves after winter, but under natural conditions, the temperature and humidity are different, the degree of temperature sensitivity of silkworms is different, the hatching is uneven, the body is weak, there are many sick and weak silkworms, and the cocoons are less and the quality is low.Therefore, China has long realized that it is necessary to adopt artificial warming methods to uniformly hatch silkworms.

Soil silkworm breeding depends entirely on artificial acceleration.After the Grain Rain, the “cloth” where the seeds were kept began to turn green gradually—this was a sign that the silkworm eggs were about to hatch.At this time, it is time to start the work of promoting youth.

The artificial acceleration of the native method depends entirely on "hatching".This is the work of women in the countryside. They put cloth on the body and rely on the constant temperature of the human body to promote greenness.

It is really unheard of to use firepower to stimulate young. Shen Kaibao said privately to Daqing Sanqing: "Fire force silkworms—not chickens and ducks. I have lived for more than 50 years and I have never heard of them. Silkworm babies are such delicate objects. Take fire Roast it, don’t you dry the silkworm eggs alive?”

Even if the ant silkworms can be hatched without drying, according to his years of experience, in the years when the rain is particularly rare and dry before and after the Grain Rains, the number of ant silkworms that can be hatched will be much less, and a large number of "sprouts and dried seeds" will be produced. ——Of course, if it’s too wet, it won’t work. The silkworms that come out will be puffy, have poor physique, and the quality of the cocoons will not be good.

Shen Kaibao made another assertion—he said something similar when the Shen family borrowed money to buy Shaoye—"Shen Da and his wife like to make troubles, and this time they will make trouble for themselves again."

"It's his job to do this." Daqing didn't care what happened to everyone in Shen, "It's just that the mulberry leaves in the [-]% of the land at home may not be enough for raising five seeds this time."

The mulberry land of the Shen family that has been mortgaged can only produce less than ten stone leaves.A cloth of silkworm eggs costs about eleven or twelve shi of mulberry leaves, and five sheets of seeds cost at least fifty or sixty shi of mulberry leaves.The gap is too far away, which means that it will have to be bought from the leaf market at that time.

The time when sericulture consumes the most leaves is after three sleeps. At this time, the price of mulberry leaves soars. A load of leaves can be sold for four or five renminbi, and the average cost is about three renminbi.According to this market price, it would cost 12 taels of silver to go to Shen Kaibao's house on mulberry leaves.

Twelve taels of silver is the annual expenditure of a middle-aged family in the city, which is an extremely considerable figure for a family like Shen Kaibao.But if the silkworm flowers were good in the past, one piece of cloth could harvest one stone cocoon, and the reeled silk would weigh more than ten catties, and five pieces of cloth would weigh fifty catties, and in general, one could earn three to forty taels of silver.Excluding taxes, debt principal and interest, and various expenses, there is still a dozen or so taels of silver.It is several times more profitable than simply farming.

"Mulberry leaves must be bought..." Shen Kaibao said.

This is the same as not saying anything, because Daqing asked where the money came from.The few silver coins left at home can't buy many mulberry leaves

"If it doesn't work, I can only borrow it from Master Cao." Shen Kaibao said this sentence he didn't want to say helplessly.

"Master Cao may not be willing to—"

"Why do you say these discouraging words?" Shen Kaibao finally lost his temper, "Go and ask for it when the time comes, the folks in the village will always be sympathetic to our farmers..." In fact, he himself is not very sure that Master Cao is willing to borrow this. For a sum of money, his land has already been mortgaged to Mr. Cao. Although there are benefits after harvesting the silkworm cocoons, it is hard to say whether he will be willing-although the time for raising silkworms is not long, it is the same as farming, and there may be some benefits. It is not uncommon for some natural disasters to fail.

Daqing didn't argue again, but there was a disapproving expression on his face.

Shen Kaibao's family passed day by day amidst doubts about the future. Fortunately, spring is the busy season, and everyone is so busy that they don't have time to think about it.Seeing that after the Grain Rain, the silkworm eggs of each family began to turn green, and the women of each household began to turn green.

Every year at this time, every household closes its doors and refuses to accept customers, regardless of neighbors, relatives and friends, and even the vicious servants in the county government are gone.At night, married women never share the same bed with their husbands. Not only do they have different beds at this time, but also the husband and wife sleep in separate rooms during the entire sericulture period.

Duoduo Niang was still working at Wang Siniang's house for a month, and Wang Siniang also wanted to win her over, so she asked her to move to his own home to help, and promised her to pay one tael of silver for a month.It just states that silkworms cannot go home until they are in the cluster.Duoduo Niang readily agreed: her family has two unmarried sisters-in-law, and the eldest daughter is in her teens to help.There are many people in the family.Quite a few of her.

The sericulture of Wang Siniang’s family really opened her eyes: She has been helping the family raise silkworms since she was a child, and it has been almost 30 years since she was a child, and she has never seen such a young one!

The house used by Cui Qing is big and bright, with the walls and ceiling painted white.When urging the greens, the requirements for the light are very high, and the light and shade must be orderly, that is, it cannot be always bright or always bright, otherwise the silkworm eggs will not hatch uniformly.So the windows open wide.Allows for sufficient light penetration.At night, straw curtains are provided so as not to be disturbed by natural light.There is an earth fire dragon against the wall in the greening room——she only found out about this after asking Wang Siniang. During the greening, someone would regularly light a fire outside the house every day to gradually increase the room temperature.

Although there is a ground fire dragon, the house is not dry at all: there is a shallow copper basin on the ground fire dragon mountain, and wet cloths are hung along the wall.One of the main tasks of Duoduo Niang's chores is to add water to the copper basin and re-wet the dry wet cloth.

Hanging on the wall of the room is a glass thing roughly longer than chopsticks, with many horizontal lines engraved on it, and there is a symbol every few lines.There is another red line in the glass tube, this red line is really strange, sometimes it is long, sometimes it is short.In addition to this thing, there is another glass vessel, which is inlaid on a wooden board and also hung on the wall. There is also a ball of cotton-like thing inside, and there is also a thread that can move by itself, pointing up and down. Unknown symbols.

In Wang Siniang's house, there was a servant girl who would look at these things every one or two hours, write something in the booklet, and then instruct Duoduo Niang to add water, soak the cloth or add firewood, and sometimes do it in reverse: Remove the basin and remove the fire.Take the trouble.

Every morning, this servant girl would come to Cuiqing City, carefully take away a few silkworm eggs, put them on paper, and take them to a small room in the backyard.An hour later, Duoduo Niang will be busy doing this set of work again according to her instructions.In the afternoon, she had to open the windows to let the air in according to her instructions.

It's so mysterious, it's very mysterious.Duoduo Niang never knew what was going on.In fact, the silkworm industry association of Jixian Village adopts the method of smoothing the temperature,
This maid is actually a student of Hangzhou station that Li Yaoer personally trained. Her name is Lizheng. She comes to pick up the silkworm eggs every morning at [-] o'clock. to adjust the daily temperature and humidity.

Compared with the silkworm farmer's method of letting the silkworms turn green by themselves, and then adding artificial incubation, this method of accelerating the greens is not only faster, but also can hatch neatly, with a high hatching rate, and the ant silkworms have good physique and strong resistance.Therefore, before the silkworm eggs in the whole village turned green, the silkworm eggs of Wang Siniang's family had already been moved from the greening room to the silkworm breeding room, waiting for the final hatching.

(End of this chapter)