Datang Nongsheng

Chapter 441 Summer Grain Harvest
Ever since they ate cream ice cream in the palace yesterday, Zhang Leqiujin and Shelong could never forget this kind of food that is both delicious and refreshing. Early in the morning, they gestured to the waiter in Wangjianglou After waiting for a long time, they were finally satisfied when they saw what the waiter brought up. It turned out that this thing was called ice cream.

The two of them are not the only ones who like to eat in Wangjiang Tower. The chiefs and leaders of the ethnic minorities in the surrounding areas who were invited by Li Shimin to watch the ceremony all like it, because there are cuisines from all over the country here, including Yumi and Heicha from Lingnan. They were, after a full meal, they found that they were going to the same location as many others, near the 30-mu field between Wannian County and Lantian County.

The early morning in summer is still cool, so the people rushing to the farms all get up very early, and the soldiers in the Longshouyuan camp have already assembled beside the experimental field before dawn. Needless to say, One person has three acres, and before the sun is hot, all are cut. Li Shimin and a group of courtiers take the lead, and they are very motivated.

"It turns out that the emperor of the Tang Dynasty went to the fields to cut wheat." Zhang Leqiujin, who had been King Baizi for several years, looked in Li Shimin's direction very curiously and muttered.

In Yunnan, he was always served by his subordinates. Of course, this was also the reason why his subordinates were not very loyal to him.

Shelong's focus is different from his. What he saw was more than [-] people cutting wheat with the same shape and very sharp sickle in their hands. If all his soldiers had such sickles as weapons, The other few works are probably not their opponents of Mengshezhao, but it is a pity that so many good steels are made into the shape of a sickle to cut wheat, which is a bit of a waste.

He stood in the crowd wearing a general's uniform, a bit conspicuous. Many soldiers, when he approached, cast reverent glances at him. They knew that they had changed into new military uniforms a few months ago. The one with golden ears of wheat and three gold stars on the neckline and shoulders is the top general of the Tang Dynasty. Of course, if you don't look at the collar and epaulettes, just look at the palm-sized gold badge on his chest, and everyone can be sure of him. It's just that the appearance of this general is a bit unfamiliar, not like the general of the Sixteenth Guards.

Yumi and his son and Heicha are not unfamiliar with rice harvesting, so harvesting wheat is actually similar to them. Unlike Shelong, they wandered around with their arms dangling. Under the leadership of Ah Yue, they found Sun Xiangfu asked for a few sickles, cut the wheat not far from Sun Xiangfu, and listened to the chat between Ah Yue and Sun Xiangfu, not to mention, after staying in Guanzhong for a while, they can already understand Some simple words.

"Aren't you tired of cutting the rice in Baiyun Lake? Just this little field, before the sun heats up, everyone will be able to finish it. Just watch from the side." Sun Xiangfu glanced at it and moved quickly Ah Yuedao, who was helping to cut the wheat beside him.

"No! Every time I think of the harvested rice, which will be sent to Chang'an for you to eat, Uncle Sun, I don't feel tired at all."

"Hehe, what a well-behaved child. However, when doing farm work, remember to wear a bamboo hat. Don't tan your face too dark. Be careful that you won't be able to marry when you grow up."

"If you can't get married, you can't get married. Anyway, Xiao Hei and Xiao Ye are with me. You don't know, they are so cute. Every time we plant rice in the whole field, they like to roll mud in the field." Perhaps It's because of different cultures. Ah Yue doesn't blush at all when discussing her marriage with others, but she doesn't seem to have thought about such a problem yet.

"Elephants are like this, similar to buffaloes, they would rather be covered in mud than be bitten by mosquitoes."

"Ah, it turns out that they rolled the mud to prevent mosquitoes! Thankfully, I bring a lot of water to help them wash their bodies clean every time. Next time, I will help them apply toilet water on their bodies, so that no mosquitoes will bite them."

"Don't, toilet water is still quite expensive now. If you put it on them, it will be wasted. Moreover, they will probably sneeze after smelling the scent of toilet water. I don't know what it looks like when an elephant sneezes. Have you ever seen it?" ?"

"It seems that I have never seen..."

Talking and laughing toil, it is not so easy to feel tired. At eight or nine o'clock in the morning, all the wheat in the 30 mu field has been harvested. On the field, stone mills pulled by various oxen and horses began to roll on the grain drying field. There was not enough space, and the surrounding cement roads were also paved. Some people were waving flails, or directly whipping wheat with their hands. The scene was very spectacular.

Li Shimin, who was sweating all over, and several ministers began to set up dozens of large scales next to the drying yard, with 120 kilograms of weight on one end, and a hemp cloth bag containing wheat on the other end. When the pockets of wheat are filled to the horizontal of the balance, it is exactly one stone. At that time, you only need to remember how many pockets there are, and you will be able to know how many stones of wheat were produced in these fields.

Seeing the pile of sacks getting higher and higher, Li Shimin and many ministers were very happy, passed on the order, and the lunch will be settled on the spot. If it is evening, if the meal is not finished, the dinner will be here too solved.

Not long after, a lot of sour plum soup was boiled in the fire room of the military camp. Everyone drank it refreshingly. The only food for lunch was cold noodles. Each person was given a bowl and a pair of chopsticks. I mix it by myself, maybe it is the reason why the consumption is relatively large after labor, everyone's appetite is surprisingly good.

There is nothing wrong with the saying that there is great strength in numbers in an agricultural society. Therefore, it took only three or four hours for more than [-] people to thresh the wheat, and then they had to turn on the lamps and weigh them overnight.

Now, no one is thinking about dinner anymore, because, from the counting side, you can see that the sackcloth pockets have already used more than 100 million, that is to say, only about half of them have been weighed, and they have already exceeded 100 million Shi, if it is apportioned to 30 mu of land, the yield per mu has already exceeded three shi. However, there is no scaled wheat in the sun-drying field, and it is still as high as a mountain.

Could it be that the wheat production here can really exceed Wushi?
After eating the delicious cold noodles in the afternoon, Shelong has not said anything. They also grow some wheat in Yunnan, but the gap with here is so big!Datang grows so much wheat, aren't they afraid that there will be too much to eat and it will rot?

"Your Majesty, it's over 140 million bales."

Even though Wang De used his voice to read some imperial decree documents in the court hall every day, he had already cultivated it, but at this time, he was trembling a little. He still remembered that Li Shimin and Sun Xiangfu had a fight that year It was a bet, and then, Li Shimin lost, and he lost very happily.

But now, the output of these fields may far exceed that of the past, because Wang had to use his eyes to estimate that the remaining wheat could be filled with hundreds of thousands of bags.

Outside the valley field, a string of lanterns approached this way. It was the courtiers such as Changsun Wuji who were in charge of harvesting and taxation in other places.

"After returning to the city, I heard that His Majesty has not yet returned to the palace, so I made an appointment to come over to have a look."

"Auxiliary machine, Xuan Cheng, tell me first, how is the situation on your side?"

Asked by Li Shimin, although the two looked tired, their eyes revealed joy.

"Your Majesty, according to the preliminary statistics collected by the minister, the yield per mu should be more than four and a half shi, and in the fields of some better farmers, it even reached five shi."

"It's about the same on the subject's side."

This year, the imperial court calculates the tax by weight, and the tax is one for thirty. Moreover, it has just been harvested, and the tax is calculated directly by wet weight. If one family has 370 acres of Yongye farmland, if it is calculated based on four and a half stones to nearly five stones, it is almost enough. If you collect more than 390 and eight shi, then the imperial court can receive about twelve or three shi of grain from each household, and even Changsun Wuji has received more than thirteen shi of tax and grain, because they have [-] mu of land. The output exceeded [-] shi of grain.

Then, based on the calculation of 100 million self-cultivating farmers in Guanzhong, each with 200 mu of permanent land, the imperial court can collect more than [-] million shi of grain just by collecting grain taxes.

How much food does an officer consume every month?
Even if the soldiers eat three meals a day, and each meal eats one catty, it is only 150 catties a month, which is only three for one stone, so let's count it as five for one stone!An army of 200 would consume no more than 30 million shi of food a year. Counting all the soldiers on all fronts of the Tang Dynasty, about 600 people would consume [-] million shi of food a year.

In other words, in the Guanzhong area alone, this season's tax and food can provide for the sergeants of the Eastern Expedition for two years.

Moreover, these grains are only one-thirtieth of the grains in the hands of the common people.

The output suddenly tripled compared to before. This kind of great happiness made Li Shimin a little dizzy. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the population was small and the fields were too large. When the output exploded again, it made people feel so happy that they couldn't get dizzy!
"Sun, where is Sun Zhengming! Let him come to see me."

Ordinarily, Sun Xiangfu, the grain grower, should be the most active person on this big day of harvesting grain. However, since the harvest was over, everyone has not seen him anymore. Not much to worry about.

In the village in the center of the experimental field, Sun Xiangfu sifted a sack of wheat through sieves with holes of different sizes. , lit a lot of candles, carefully looked at the epidermis and bud glands of the wheat grains with a telescope, and muttered to himself, "I thought that the good seeds bred under the three-year three-field system were genetically stable. It seems that the technological conditions are insufficient, and the things produced still have some small defects. The size and fullness of these wheat grains have several levels of differentiation. It should be because the genetics of the seeds are not perfect enough. If you want to improve again, We have to go through another round, or several rounds of cultivation..."

As a guard who only practiced martial arts, Zhang Ke couldn't understand his words at all. He was already hungry and his stomach was growling. After eating a lot of snacks, Ah Yue, who was watching from the sidelines, couldn't understand even more. Therefore, When the servants Li Shimin sent to find someone came over, they decisively interrupted Sun Xiangfu's thinking.

"Captain, Your Majesty summoned you to go there, it should be because the output has come out!"

(End of this chapter)