Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 437 Hill District ([-])

Shao Yuanyi's home is at the west end of the village, under a very thick Parana pine tree.Every summer, under the shade of trees is a good place for everyone to enjoy the cool.It is said that when I first came here last year, there were quite a lot of big trees here. Less than a year later, many big trees were cut down and became beams, furniture, doors and windows, farm tools and other items in people's homes.

And because people often come here to enjoy the shade and chat, people from the village office often post some notices on this tree, and sometimes even meetings are held under the tree.Shao Yuanyi glanced casually, only to see that several notices had been added to the tree while he was away from home.

The first notice was issued by the village government.The content is that each household takes turns to send people to inspect the canals and do a good job of irrigating each mu of land.Each person whose turn it is is responsible for cooperating with the people at the water lifting station. When to fetch water, when to stop water, and how high the water level in the field should be. The number clearly states the rotation time of each household in detail.

The second notice was issued by the township government.It roughly means that a technical expert group from the Animal Husbandry Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture will come from the south in a few days. They will demonstrate to the farmers in the village how to artificially inseminate livestock to increase the conception rate of female livestock and rapidly increase the number of livestock.The notice asked everyone to properly arrange the work at hand, and try to go to observe and learn as much as possible.

The third was issued by the Township Armed Forces Department.After the busy farming period, it will be the routine militia training period again. At that time, the directors of the village militia will arrange for all adult men to undergo intensive military training, including queue training, live ammunition shooting, firearm maintenance, battlefield first aid, etc.After a period of training, the militiamen from each village will gather in the villages for parade exercises.Every year after the autumn harvest, the militiamen of the border forts of the East Coast people, under the leadership of the regular army mobilized by the military, will clean up the neighboring indigenous tribes, making sure that they cannot pose a threat to the East Coast people.

The last notice was an arrest warrant issued by the North Ping'an County Police Department.A Mameluco (Portuguese-Indian mixed blood) criminal gang went to Meihe Township, Pingan County to traffic people two months ago. After being discovered by the local militia, two people were shot dead on the spot, and the remaining five escaped by chance.At present, they may have fled to the area of ​​Dafengbao and Mucaoling. The township police station offered a high reward for these people, and a few people's general faces were drawn later.

After silently writing down the contents of the notice, Shao Yuanyi pushed open the courtyard door and walked into his home.There are people walking around in the kitchen at home, and the chimney on the roof is also emitting smoke.His new wife, Natasia, was sitting by the well in the courtyard killing fish. When she heard the sound of someone pushing the door, she looked up and shouted in surprise, "Honey, you're back!"

Shao Yuanyi also nodded with a smile on his face, and then asked, "Anna is cooking?" Anna is Natasia's cousin, who just came to the East Bank from Russia a few months ago, and is currently staying at Shao Yuanyi's home.After finishing her language studies and getting her ID card, she plans to go to Ping'an County in the north to try her luck. The textile factory there has been recruiting workers, and she wants to be a high-income textile worker.However, Shao Yuanyi persuaded her that it is better to go to school. Although she is already too old, going to primary school is not harmful to her.After graduating from elementary school and returning to the village, with the current thirst for talents in Mucaoling, it is not a problem to be a clerk in the township government.Although the income is not as high as that of female textile factory workers, it is better than leisure.However, young girls always yearn for life in a big city and cannot bear the loneliness of the countryside. Anna always has some resistance to going to school.

Shao Yuanyi and Natasia have just been married for a few months.They got married in West Lake Fort. Shao Yuanyi still remembers the scene on the wedding day: halfway through the wedding, a few navy soldiers in sky-blue navy uniforms rushed over a pile of Shao Yuanyi was a little dumbfounded when he saw the gifts: silk clothes, whale oil soap, whale oil candles, high-end leather goods, and a total of nearly [-] yuan in red envelopes.

Later, he asked his wife Natasia and his father-in-law Petrov and found out that these things were sent by comrades and classmates of Petrov's dead son Yuri.Among them, the most valuable is a pair of handmade clocks with dragon and phoenix patterns presented by Major Lu Ming, Commander of the First Fleet of the Navy. When these gifts were delivered, the eyes of some township and village cadres present changed. A person who can climb up to such an unimaginable high-ranking officer as the commander of the First Fleet of the Navy deserves their careful treatment.

Zhaocai, a wolf-green dog raised at home, jumped up happily and wagged its tail around Shao Yuanyi.Shao Yuanyi hugged it and scratched the lower part of its neck, and Zhao Cai narrowed his eyes comfortably.Anna came out of the kitchen, whispered "brother-in-law" in her unproficient Chinese, and then walked out of the yard by the wall like a mouse seeing a cat, and pulled a bundle of firewood from the firewood pile by the wall , and then slipped into the kitchen against the wall again, making Shao Yuanyi amused.

A pot of soup was stewed on the briquette stove at the door of the kitchen, and the tangy aroma made Zhaocai linger beside him, unwilling to leave.Shao Yuanyi lifted the lid of the pot and found that what was stewed was soybean belly lung soup, which was his favorite food and also the favorite food of many Ming people in this village.In fact, at the beginning, some immigrants from France in the village didn’t know that they didn’t eat these things because of religion or other reasons, but the power of the environment is huge. I saw that the Ming people and Estonians in the village were eating very happily and the price was reasonable. After getting cheaper, these French people gradually began to eat, gradually forgetting their original customs.Assimilation, or in other words, changing customs and customs, is achieved bit by bit between these details.

It will take a while for lunch to finish.Shao Yuanyi first went to the pigsty to add some pig food to the pigs in the pen, and then walked through the main room to the back of the house. There was a large grassland at the back of the house until the small river, where Shao Yuanyi built a cowshed with wood , raised four or five cows.In fact, almost every household in this small village surrounded by mountains and rivers is like this. Everyone also planted large tracts of alfalfa on the hills and slopes in front of the village.Alfalfa grows extremely fast, and with the horse-drawn pasture harvester purchased by the village on loan from the loan officer of the Northwest Reclamation Bank, harvesting alfalfa is also very convenient.Therefore, every family in the village more or less raises two cows and more than a dozen sheep. The same is true for Shao Yuanyi's family. The difference is that he does not raise sheep, but only cattle.

Next to the cowshed is the forage room, in which the harvested alfalfa is stored.Some nearby farmers planted a lot of sweet potatoes in front of and behind their houses. Whenever the sweet potato vines grow, they harvest some of them and feed them to pigs, cattle and sheep. It is also very practical.The artificially raised cattle grow faster than the cattle grazing on large pastures, and they are willing to produce meat. They can grow more than 300 kilograms in a year, and they can be slaughtered in two to three years.There are many types of cattle that come down from the top, including beef cattle and dairy cows.The cow adopted by Shao Yuanyi is a Holstein cow. This kind of cow is a meat cow. In addition to growing meat, it can also be milked on a regular basis. Apart from its own consumption, most of the milk is sold to the dairy factory in the village and processed into cheese, milk powder, etc. A variety of food, and then exported to all parts of the country.

A cow in the pen last year gave birth to a calf, now only a few months old.Shao Yuanyi grabbed a handful of corn stalks and sweet potato vines that had been fermented from silage, chopped them up with a guillotine, mixed some alfalfa and soybean meal, and used them as special feed for calves.These feeds are easy to digest and have high nutritional value, making them ideal for growing calves.

Seeing the cows grazing with their heads down in the pen, Shao Yuanyi felt a little depressed.The cow that was just brought back at the beginning of the year was fine, but the bull and two cows raised last year only gave birth to a calf. Such bad luck made Shao Yuanyi very upset.But he is not alone, and many families in the village have not given birth to every cow.From this point of view, the artificial insemination method of livestock mentioned above also has merits. It can increase the conception rate of female livestock and increase the number of livestock. It is indeed a good method.

Shao Yuanyi is not an ignorant person, and he has vaguely heard that this method has been used by the breeding station for a long time.In the past, it was mainly used to breed mares in the military horse farm. After vigorously developing animal husbandry in the hilly area in the west of the lake this time, the superiors finally decided to introduce this method here as well, so as to quickly multiply the domestic livestock population.For this reason, I heard that the Ministry of Agriculture has also organized a lot of manpower to rush to make a lot of covers at the Luocha Leather Factory (the function is known to everyone). The covers are made of whale intestines, which are durable and about the same size. They are very suitable for the needs of the breeding station.

I heard that after using this method at the military horse farm, the pregnancy rate of mares directly increased by more than 30%, which greatly increased the number of horses on the east coast, and effectively guaranteed the demand for national defense, industrial and agricultural horses.Now there are hundreds of cattle raised in one village here, and a 30% increase means one to two hundred cattle a year.If it is applied to the entire township or even the entire agricultural area in the west of Huxi, then it is not a problem to increase more than 2000 cattle a year.This number is huge. Based on the preferential price of beef cattle imported from La Plata, more than 2000 cattle are worth 3 yuan. This does not count the milk production. If these are included, the economic benefits will be even higher.

"Well, it's time to attend lectures and see how the experts from the Ministry of Agriculture do it. If it's really useful, then I'll be satisfied with adding one more cow a year." Shao Yuanyi thought to himself.And at this moment, there was a voice calling him to eat in the front yard.Shao Yuanyi responded loudly, then closed the cowshed, washed his hands by the river, and then walked slowly towards the front yard.

(End of this chapter)