Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 563 New Colonization ([-])

On February 1647, 2, in the hilly area west of the lake.

Since the local Guarani indigenous people were carefully cleaned up last year, the current area of ​​Neukonigsberg and Hekou Township has become much more stable, and the Guarani guerrillas that were once common are now gone.These people are outsiders in the first place, and naturally they can't persist here for a long time without effective supplies.Coupled with the fierce war between the east bank and Spain, many Guarani believers were transferred to the Parana River Basin to resist the offensive of the army on the east bank, which made the security problem that had plagued New Königsberg for a long time almost overnight. It's easy to solve.

With the arrival of 1000 farmers from North Zhili of the Ming Dynasty, the population of Neukönigsberg has exceeded [-], of which more than [-] are strong men.Three veterans who retired due to injuries and seven or eight graduates majoring in administration from the Bingtuanbao supported the local government agencies. Every day, they organized people to build houses, dig water wells, cut down big trees, dig ditches, and grow food. They were very busy. Excited.Thanks to everyone's efforts, Neukönigsberg, which was originally barren, has changed a lot after a year of hard work.

Neat houses built with red bricks, a three-meter-thick city wall, a rippling artificial reservoir (rebuilt from a small pool), and gun towers every few hundred meters outside the city, a lumberyard at the edge of the forest, and freight at the end of Highway 2 The station, in short, here already has what a settlement should look like.

The only thing that may be lacking is the cultivation of agriculture. So far, the food here is still not self-sufficient, and it needs to be transported from Hekou Township along the No. 2 highway by heavy-duty freight wagon.At present, the local residents have only hastily opened up some vegetable and bean fields along the outer edge of the city wall, and the harvest is extremely limited.After the security situation here improves, the next step is to expand outwards and open up arable land.The soil texture here is not bad, whether it is wheat or alfalfa, the harvest will not be bad, it would be a pity not to develop it well.

In this era, especially in the New World where there is a lack of modern fertilizers, pesticides, breeding techniques, and systematic agricultural knowledge, the level of grain harvests really depends on God's face.Of course, people on the east coast are not the kind of old mainland farmers who are content with the status quo. The Ministry of Agriculture has been making great efforts to summarize and summarize agricultural knowledge and improve agricultural technology for more than ten years.They even borrowed weather data from the Navy for more than ten years (mainly temperature, sunshine and rainfall, and humidity is measured by feeling), so that experts from the Ministry of Agriculture can more accurately summarize some technical data. and experience.

For example, they concluded that the humidity should be higher than normal in May before wheat autumn sowing; in autumn and winter (June-August), the temperature should not be too high (no more than 5°C), and the humidity should be kept dry. It is better to have some light snow and no strong wind; there should be no frost after the wheat begins to grow in September and October, with sufficient sunshine and moderate rain; moderate rain and warm but not too high temperature in November and December; no precipitation after flowering in January of the next year ; The mature period in February is sunny, dry and warm.Deviations in any of the above factors will lead to a certain degree of decline in wheat production that year. For this reason, they also roughly made a correlation coefficient table between various weather factors and wheat production through a large amount of data. Infer the grain output of the year in order to formulate various policy measures in advance to maintain the stability of the grain market.

This is true for wheat, and the grape growing industry in Zhenhai County is no exception.The temperature, precipitation in summer and autumn, frost in winter and spring, and the length of light have a significant impact on the yield and quality of grapes.The weather during the brewing season has an extremely important impact on the taste of wine. Regarding this point, the French who immigrated from Provence and Languedoc have long understood this, and the Ministry of Agriculture has transferred their The experience was recorded in a book, and this was confirmed by a large amount of practical data, and then it began to be promoted across the country.

"The first batch of farmers in New Königsberg were all Latvians from the grain-rich Prussian Principality. It is no wonder that this year the township government is determined to reclaim 100 mu of wasteland outside the city in order to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible—although the possibility of this is as small as hitting a rabbit with a flintlock gun [-] meters away.” Wang Youcai, who had just been transferred to the South Yazihu ​​branch of the Northwest Reclamation Bank, stood in the undulating field and joked to the young people who were busy in the field.

Wang Youcai was originally the supervisor of the Northwest Reclamation Bank’s Dongfang County Zhenyuan Township Branch. Last year, he was promoted to Nanyazihu ​​because of his outstanding performance (the branch’s annual profit was 557 yuan and 485 sheep, with a total contract of more than 2000 yuan). Regional branch president positions.Anderson, the son of his late comrade-in-arms who had been following him, also shared some credit and was promoted to the position of supervisor of the newly established Xinkonis Township Branch Office.

Anderson, who just got married a few months ago, moved his family here.His wife is the daughter of a peasant family from Luanzhou, Daming. She is just 17 years old this year.Back then, he and his family were snatched away by Marshal Mo, and after several twists and turns, they were sent to the mainland on the east coast.

His father-in-law was a small landlord with dozens of acres of land in Daming, but he was said to be a landlord, but his life was actually quite poor.Let’s not talk about the world where there are wars and horses, and taxes are as heavy as mountains. Just say that the seventy or eighty acres of land can’t be kept busy by their family. They can’t find people even if they rent it to others. The family of four picked the fatter half of the land and planted wheat.In this way, the yield per mu is often only [-] to [-] catties by the time of harvest, and the seeds are still not deducted, which is really frustrating to the extreme.

This kind of grain production is really only enough for the whole family after excluding seeds and taxes.Well, I usually have to buy some wild vegetables mixed with bran to eat, otherwise it might not be enough.After coming to the east bank, their family of four adults has been working in the southern Rocha leather factory. At the beginning of this year, Neukönigsberg recruited some old citizens to cultivate land, and the family signed up here as soon as they were heartless.No matter what barbarians attack him, as long as the land is given to me, I don't care!

This year, the New Königsberg Township Government plans to reclaim 500 mu of farmland, and there are only more than 30 local people. After removing some government, business, and military personnel and their families, each pioneering farmer will be allocated [-] mu of wasteland on average. It has reached the upper limit set by the government on individual ownership of arable land (forest land and slope land are not included).

It is naturally impossible for an adult to cultivate thirty acres of land.However, considering that there are a large number of animal-powered agricultural machinery on the east coast, and the harvesting speed is dozens of times faster than before, all this seems to be a little more possible.But in this way, intensive farming is naturally impossible, and the care of the farmland is naturally not as meticulous as in Daming's hometown.

Hearing what Wang Youcai said, Anderson, who was binding alfalfa in the field, smiled and said, "Reclaiming [-] mu of wasteland is an arduous project, but the subsequent farming activities are even several times more difficult than the reclamation itself. But The comforting thing is that although there are so many cultivated areas, in fact, everyone's cultivated area has not become too large this year, because a new farming system has been introduced - the three-crop rotation system. That is to say, We only need to cultivate [-] acres of land each year and leave the other [-] acres fallow, which of course is still a lot of physical labor.”

The so-called three-crop crop rotation system refers to the system that divides the cultivated land into three parts, and each part falls fallow for one year within three years, so as to preserve the fertility of the cultivated land so that it will not be overdrawn.Grain (usually wheat) is planted on the normally cultivated land (two parts), and there is no regulation on what to plant on the fallow land (one part), and the villagers can choose freely.However, in order to facilitate unified mechanized harvesting, the fallow land in a village should generally be planted with the same crop as much as possible.The Ministry of Agriculture recommends that you plant alfalfa or leguminous crops, because these two crops can increase the nitrogen content in the soil to quickly replenish the nutrients lost in the previous year in the cultivated land, and at the same time can obtain a large amount of feed for livestock.

This farming system has a famous name in later generations, called "Norfolk crop rotation system".This system is of great significance for ensuring the fertility of cultivated land and increasing grain production.The general process is as follows: winter wheat is planted on the normally cultivated land, and short-term crops such as potatoes or sweet potatoes are planted immediately after harvest; at this time, alfalfa is uniformly planted on the fallow land, and the fallow land of a village can generally be planned in the same area. At this time, pens can be set up around the fallow field, and this piece of fallow land can be used as a pasture to support livestock (usually vegetable cattle or dairy cows). The pasture can last until the end of May or early June of the following year, which lasts nine to ten days. moon.If the weather is beautiful and the sunshine, temperature and precipitation are suitable during this period, the starch content in the pasture should be very high, which is also of great significance for promoting the fattening of livestock.

"When the autumn sowing starts, 30 acres of the 20 acres will be planted with wheat, and the other [-] acres will continue to be planted with alfalfa. A while ago I bought six vegetable cows and two dairy cows, um, from La Plata The yield of these ten acres of alfalfa will definitely not be too high in the first year, but with those potatoes and sweet potatoes, it is almost enough to feed.” Anderson skillfully bundled up the pasture, like a rambling farmer.

In fact, he is a supervisor of a branch office of a local bank and has a non-agricultural account, so he is not eligible for land allocation.The [-] mu of land he is currently working on actually belongs to his wife, that is, the little Ming girl from Luanzhou.It’s just that Neue Königsberg has only been built for a year, so how can there be so much loan business to do?Therefore, he usually helps out in the field at home, and let his wife cut grass and feed the livestock at home. After all, these tasks are easier.Anyway, if someone wants a loan, they basically know where to find him, and they can't miss it.

After tying the last bundle of grass, Anderson, with the help of Wang Youcai, drove a flatbed carriage to his home at the head of the village.

(End of this chapter)