Go back to the Ming Dynasty to be a thousand households

Chapter 76
When entering the hall of the Qixian Guild Hall, Qu Yuanrui's elder brother, Qu Liangwan, greeted him, and said with a smile on his face, "Fourth brother, are you back?"

Qu Yuanrui nodded, seeing his always arrogant elder brother like this, he couldn't help feeling a surge of joy in his heart.And during this period of time, Qu Yuanrui's voice was a lot louder when he was in Qu's house. Whether it was his father, elder brother, second brother, or third brother, they all greeted him with smiles, which made Qu Yuanrui feel a little bit uncomfortable. High spirited feeling.

Some time ago, after hearing about the bumper harvest in Wuzhai Fort, Qu Liangwan immediately rushed to Wuzhai Fort. In the past few days, he can be said to have spent time in the Qixian Guild Hall, and he must give him [-] stones from Qu Yuanrui. The food should be at a very favorable price, for his elder brother's sake, and his father also sent a letter, Qu Yuanrui decided to give Qu Liangwan a batch of food today, and the price is relatively cheap.

After the two sat down, Uncle De brought tea, and Qu Liangwan smiled and said: "Fourth brother, look, what did elder brother tell you about food a few days ago?"

Qu Yuanrui took a sip of tea slowly, and said, "Brother, you know that there are many merchants in Wuzhaibao now, and everyone wants food, and I have no choice but to give you [-] stone grain at most."

After hearing Qu Yuanrui's words, Qu Liangwan still had a bad expression on his face, thinking that Qu Yuanrui was going to reject his request, but unexpectedly, Qu Yuanrui gave him [-] stone grains. He couldn't help smiling, and stood up, He hugged Qu Yuanrui's shoulder affectionately and said: "Fourth brother, you are so kind to big brother, big brother will never forget you."

Qu Yuanrui said: "We are brothers, if the little brother doesn't help you, who will help you?"

At this moment, Uncle De came over, took a look at Qu Liangwan, and said, "Fourth Young Master, how many guests want to see you outside, do you think?"

A trace of jealousy flashed in Qu Liangwan's eyes, and then he said with a smile on his face: "Fourth brother, please be busy if you have something to do, but don't forget what you promised. Eldest brother has something to do, so let's go first." He left with a smile up.

Qu Yuanrui stood up, stretched his waist, and sighed: "Busy, really busy."

Indeed, during this period of time, apart from Huang Laifu, Qu Yuanrui was the busiest shopkeeper in Wuzhai Fort. Every day, he had to meet countless businessmen, except for some businesses that had previously agreed to cooperate, such as the Li family in Pingyao. Jiexiu's Hou's family, Wanrong's Pan's family, Yangcheng's Yang's family, and some small businessmen often come to their door.

This year, the situation in Daming is not good, there is less food and more people, and the supply of food in various places seems to be in short supply. In the bleakness, Wuzhaibao, a new big food source with a sudden bumper harvest, is particularly eye-catching.Especially after hearing that Master Qianhu sold nearly 30 stone grains to Qu Yuanrui, the merchants in the castle became even more crazy. With so much grain, if he could snatch some of it, the profits would be huge.

Food is a good thing right now, as much as there is demand, not to mention anything else, the demand for this food in the military towns on the nine sides is a bottomless pit.Wuzhaibao's hundreds of thousands of stone grain, no matter which military town it is transported to, there will be no big waves, and another one million stones will definitely be easily eaten by all places.

In particular, Wuzhai Fort is close to the town guards on all sides. After buying and transporting grain from here, the road is convenient. Compared with transporting grain from Hanzhong, Jinzhong, or even Jiangnan, how much cost can be saved?Therefore, these days, the flow of people visiting the Qixian Guild Hall on Dadong Street can be said to be in an endless stream.

As for the current situation, the original intention of the Li family, Hou family, Pan family and other big merchants who opened branches in the fort was not to let go of any possible new grain sources. For such a small military fort, they did not have much expectations, but now the performance of Wuzhai Fort is really out of their expectations. Some members of their family have already agreed whether to use Wuzhai Fort as a major source of food for their own business in the future one.

Not to mention that Qu Yuanrui was arguing with various merchants in terms of price and supply share.Of course, businessmen are shrewd, and they will not spend too much time on this aspect.Soon, Qu Yuanrui negotiated a series of transactions with various traders and dealers.It didn't take long for carts and horses carrying grain from Wuzhaibao to start trafficking to border towns in various states and counties.

Near September, merchants gathered in Wuzhai Fort. Grain merchants and rice merchants from all over the world came to Wuzhai Fort one after another.For a while, Wuzhaibao became a new rice market in northern Shanxi, and there were many merchants who bought it and resold it elsewhere.

Of course, after the various merchants purchased grain and rice from Quyuan Ruina, they needed a lot of piles of dilapidated houses and warehouses to store grain, and the warehouses were naturally built in Wuzhai. The inside of the fort is the safest place. After all, this is a relatively well-defended military fort with hundreds of garrisons, and the more than a thousand mighty new banner troops of Master Qianhu make people feel safe at first glance.

However, except for the barracks, most of the places in the fort are the houses of the military households of Wuzhai Fort. To build dilapidated houses and warehouses, we can only discuss with the military households.Therefore, during these periods of time, many merchants bought and rented houses from military households, and many military households with well-located houses made a lot of money.

After the houses were bought and rented, various merchants vigorously built various warehouses.Especially in the area of ​​Dadong Street, the streets are wide, the road surface is good, and the area is prosperous. Therefore, the houses in this area are the key areas that merchants pay attention to.

In fact, starting from June and July, after seeing signs of a bumper harvest in Wuzhaibao, some shrewd merchants began to vigorously open shops along Dadong Street and Niangniangmiao Street, and built collapsed warehouses after the shops.They first dealt in other commodities, and after confirming the bumper harvest in Wuzhaibao, they immediately switched to dealing in grain, oil, rice and noodles.

Now, the area around Dadong Street and Niangniangmiao Street radiates to both sides along the Qixian Guild Hall. In this circle, 24 tooth shops have quickly formed, of which 18 are grain shops, and other retail rice shops Countless, mainly in bulk raw grain transactions such as wheat, soybeans, salt, and rice noodles.Every day, these rice merchants keep coming and going in and out of the grain store, together with the busy guys around them, they form a rather large grain and rice trading center here.

Starting from the grain and rice trading center of Wuzhaibao Dadong Street, after leaving the fort, you can go north to Pianguan, Laoyingbao, and Bajiaosuo.From West to Hequ, Baode.It can reach Kelanzhou in the south.You can go to Shenchi, Ningwu and other places in the east. If you have to go far, you can go to Datong Town in the northeast and Yulin Town in the northwest. The sales of grain and rice are huge.

Of course, not every merchant deals in rice noodles. Some savvy Western merchants, seeing business opportunities, broker goods and bring money here to do business.They brought various goods, such as cotton, salt, cloth, tea, coal, etc. that were not available in Wuzhaibao.They either make a fortune and leave, or they set up shops for a long time, buy land and build houses, and settle down to reproduce.

Merchants came one after another, making the Wuzhaibao market more prosperous.These days, various cloth stores, pharmacies, restaurants, and daily oil, sugar, and groceries opened in various streets in the castle. Nearly September, there were constant sound of firecrackers every day.

And Wuzhai Fort is becoming more and more lively, with businessmen gathering in it, which also attracts many refugees from all over the world. There are also households outside Wuzhai Fort working in Wuzhai Fort. Every grain store and rice shop needs a lot of guys, and It's impossible to bring all these guys by yourself, isn't it necessary to recruit locally in Wuzhaibao?
Soon, the refugees in the fort who were waiting for Huang Laifu to recruit next year, or the householders who came to Wuzhai Fort to look for opportunities, were hired by various businesses.Due to the large number of people needed by the merchants, as long as they are willing to work, there will be jobs. For a while, there is hardly a single person who is idle in Wuzhai Fort.

This also attracted more township and village fort people to come to Wuzhai Fort to look for opportunities.

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Wuzhaibao has a bumper harvest, and the storage of grain is a concern of Huang Laifu. On this day, he led He Fuqianhu, Jiang Baihu, Yang Baihu, Liu Baihu, Wang Qinian and others Inspect the military granary in Wuzhai Fort.

This army granary is also guarded by Huang Ruzhen, the deputy envoy of Wuzhaibao.After the bumper harvest of the grain in each farm of Wuzhai Fort, it is temporarily stored in the warehouses of each farm in Wuzhai Fort, and then the wheat is sorted by specialized personnel, treated with impurities, and then slowly transported into Wuzhai Store them in the granary in the fort, which is safer.

However, due to too much food, there was also a problem, that is, the original military granaries in Wuzhaibao were not enough, and several more military granaries needed to be built.Since the 16th, various new military granaries have been vigorously built in Wuzhai Fort.Today, Huang Laifu came to inspect, mainly concerned about this issue.

Thanks to the efforts of the Tunting people, the construction of new granaries is still fast.But Huang Laifu discovered another problem.It is the problem of various pests in the granary.Insect pests have always been the enemy of every granary. Generally speaking, there is nothing to do at this time. We can only use bamboo brooms to kill moth pests such as wheat moths that like to climb on the grain surface when they mate and lay eggs.

However, this method is too slow. Huang Laifu remembered a little knowledge of agriculture in his computer, and there are some folk methods of pest control in later generations.

That is to spread two layers of clean paper on the wheat grain first, stick the paper close to the four walls of the container, then fill the paper with an appropriate amount of dry plant ash, lime, etc., and then cover and seal it. This method can keep the wheat grain stored for more than half a year without deterioration. Worms.Another way is to fill some large-mouthed bottles with white wine, tie the mouth of the bottles tightly with gauze, put them at the bottom of a cleaned grain storage container, put the dried wheat grains in, and seal the caps to prevent insects. .
Huang Laifu explained these two methods, and Huang Ruzhen hurriedly memorized them carefully.

Huang Laifu ordered Huang Ruzhen to take good care of the granary, and then took He Fuqianhu and Wang Qinian to the outside of the fort.

Walking on the street of Wuzhai Fort, seeing the bustling market and merchants gathering, a small Wuzhai Fort is crowded, everyone is very happy, of course Huang Laifu is also the same.All of this in front of him also proves his point of view, as long as agriculture develops and there are more items and raw materials for exchange, commerce will naturally prosper, and agriculture is the foundation of everything.

When passing through Dadong Street, he saw the grain shops gathering here and the rice merchants coming in and out. Huang Laifu keenly discovered that due to the prosperity of Wuzhaibao grain shops, it also led to the development of other side industries, such as processing. Rice mill shop.

Wheat with husks is naturally inedible. Wheat must be shelled and processed into rice noodles, which requires Chunmi.In the past, Huang Laifu also saw the Chunmi process of the military households in Wuzhaibao occasionally, huh, that was simply too tiring.

The specific method of Chunmi is to find a stone mortar, hold a wooden stick with one end of iron teeth, and the other end is made of stone, put the wheat in the stone mortar, pound it once and for all, and you will be exhausted to separate the wheat bran. , Get some rice noodles to eat.

After these merchants came to Wuzhai Fort, they also brought some "advanced technological culture" to some extent. The mill is one. So far, there have been five mills in Wuzhai Fort, jointly established by some grain banks.

The houses where these mills are located are relatively large, and there is a mill pool inside, and a stone roll is placed on top of the mill pool. A cow is blindfolded and drags the stone roll along the mill pool endlessly. Finished processing.

Of course, this cow-pulled mill is much more convenient and quicker than artificial chunmi, but Huang Laifu remembered the chunmi waterwheel of later generations. Huang Laifu had seen this kind of waterwheel in his hometown when he was a child. Not exactly high tech.

This kind of Chunmi waterwheel is naturally much better than a cow-pulled mill.Anyway, Wuzhaibao is rich in water resources, and it happens to be able to build a Chunmi waterwheel along the Qinglian River.Huang Laifu planned to go back and check the computer to see if there was a blueprint of this kind of waterwheel in the computer.If there is, tell Liu Zongqi and the others to make it.

Of course, after the rice has been prepared by the bull mill, the rice bran is still mixed together and cannot be eaten.

Rice bran needs to be separated. Generally, in the north at this time, a method of raising valleys is used.It is to throw rice grains into the air, preferably when there is a strong wind, so that the chaff is blown away and the grains fall to the ground.Or use the dustpan method, find a dustpan, and shake the wrist rhythmically to separate the chaff from the heavy rice grains.

When Huang Laifu saw this cumbersome method, he couldn't help but shake his head. He remembered that there was a kind of car in later generations, commonly known as a rotary fan car, which could easily separate the chaff, and at least 17 barrels of rice bran could be processed a day.It was not until the beginning of the 18th century that the West learned this kind of chariot from my country.

The important thing is that this kind of cart was already used in our country in the 2nd century BC, and it was originally invented in the north to remove the husks of wheat and millet.After several centuries, it spread to the south, but in the north, due to various reasons, this kind of farm tool was forgotten.Many farmers have returned to the traditional methods of plucking, winnowing and sieving.

Huang Laifu didn't pay attention to it before, but now that he thinks about it, he has to go back and check the production of this kind of car.

There is a habit of eating noodles in the north. After the rice and bran are separated, the rice needs to be ground into flour.Generally speaking, there is a stone mill in the mill, and the stone mill is made of granite. Similarly, cattle or donkeys are brought in, blindfolded, and let them circle endlessly along the stone mill. After milling and pressing, flour is obtained.

For Huang Laifu, this kind of flour grinding also takes a lot of time. There is a kind of hydraulic mill in later generations, which may be built for use.

This hydraulic mill is easy to use. In addition to grinding flour, it can also be used to extract oil, or to pound wool, or to forge iron and sharpen knives, or to crush bark or leather, and even make gunpowder and grind saltpeter, etc. to save manpower.

For a "high-tech" enthusiast like Huang Laifu, there is a hydraulic mill available, so he doesn't need to use manpower or animal power mills.

After leaving the fort, Huang Laifu went to inspect various livestock farms in Wuzhai Fort.

The various farms in Wuzhaibao have achieved a bumper harvest. Right now, what Huang Laifu is concerned about is how much harvest the major livestock farms and some cash crops can get.

Most of the fields in Wuzhaibao are planted with spring wheat. In addition, some fields, and some farm fields, are also planted with soybeans, alfalfa and turnips.

As early as the end of July, alfalfa and turnips were harvested, and they all achieved good results. The feed made from these crops is excellent, which has a good effect on the pig breeding and other breeding industries in Wuzhaibao. Increased the reproductive rate and fattening rate of various livestock.

Now, the soybeans everywhere have reached the mature stage, all the cotyledons will fall off, the stems will be bright, and the beans will be full and round. After entering September, they should be able to start harvesting.

Huang Laifu figured out what to do with these soybeans.

Well, first of all, these soybean stalks are good fodder, can be used to feed sheep, pigs, etc.In addition, soybeans can be used to make tofu, and then processed into various soy products, such as soy milk, tofu skin, yuba, tofu, dried tofu, fennel, bean sprouts, etc., which can be eaten and oiled.It can also be used to make various fermented products, such as tempeh, soybean juice, yellow sauce, various fermented bean curd, bean paste, etc. The economic prospect is promising.

Also, bean curd residue can also be fed to pigs.Speaking of pigs, I have seen various livestock farms. There were [-] piglets raised at the beginning of the year, and now they have grown up. In September, it seems that they can be slaughtered on a large scale.Well, what to do with the pork then?In addition to canned food, it may be possible to make all kinds of bacon, bacon, ham, and Western-style bacon.

There are also chickens and ducks raised at the beginning of the year, and now they have grown up, and many chickens and ducks have begun to lay eggs.Now in Daming, eggs are not easy to keep fresh. What to do with so many eggs, well, eggs are made into salted eggs, and duck eggs are made into preserved eggs, which can be preserved for a long time.In addition to eating by yourself, you can also sell them to outsiders.Also, the [-] sheep in the horseshoe slope sheep farm have also grown up, and related cashmere products can also be started.

It seems that after entering September, some related agricultural and sideline industry processing factories can start to be built. These agricultural and sideline industries can form a one-stop pattern of production, processing, and sales.Another great source of income.

Huang Laifu was full of enthusiasm, and felt that there was nothing to make money from. Even when he saw the wheat straw in the field in front of him, Huang Laifu also thought that besides being used as fuel, it would also be good to chop up and burn the wheat straw and return it to the field.If not, it can be used to feed cattle.There are few cattle in Wuzhaibao, so let's feed the sheep.If not, it is also good to use wheat straw to produce edible mushrooms, or to retting biogas.It seems that in later generations, mushrooms are the main economic pillar industry of Wuzhaibao.

And looking at everything in front of him, Wang Qinian, Qian Shi, He Fuqianhu, Jiang Baihu and others behind Huang Laifu were also fascinated. He Fuqianhu congratulated Huang Laifu. Looking at the scene in front of him, Huang Laifu laughed loudly and said: "Old He, this is just the beginning, and our life will only get better and better in the future."

Everyone laughed, full of hope for the future life.

After laughing, for Huang Laifu, he still has to go back to the fort to be busy with training and formation, and after September, he will be even busier.He Fuqianhu and others will be more relaxed, but what everyone doesn't know is how much reaction the Wuzhai Fort's bumper harvest will cause when it spreads to the hinterland of Daming and the capital.

(End of this chapter)