1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 310 Farming
Early in the morning, Yang Guirong rode a horse from Yongxing Fort (now the small town of Adelaide River in northern Australia) to a pasture outside the city, and came to change shifts with his night-time partners.

Yongxing Fort is located in the transition zone of the forest. There are large meadows in the nearby sparse forest, and the Yongxing River (Adelaide River) passes through it, making this area lush with water and grass, and it is a good pasture.

For this reason, the Hanzhou people's government deliberately moved some horses, cattle and sheep here to take advantage of the superior geographical environment here to cultivate more large livestock and provide due animal power and more meat for Hanzhou agriculture.

"What's the matter?" Yang Guirong asked curiously when he saw Ge Zhenjin who was on duty at night with disheveled hair and a dumbfounding expression on his face.

"Look!" Ge Zhenjin pointed to the pile of cow dung not far outside the cowshed, and said angrily, "Last night, I don't know who the goddamn thieves gave the pile of manure that was made of cow dung. Steal half of it!"

Yang Guirong took a closer look, isn't it.Someone dug up a small half of the three to four meter square pile of manure, and I felt both annoyed and amused.Ordinary thieves either steal gold and silver, or steal chickens and dogs, but now there are "thieves" who come to steal the manure, and they come to steal the cow dung before it has accumulated for a long time.

Presumably, it must have been the nearby farmer who had allotted land. In the middle of the night, taking advantage of the fact that the guards on the ranch were all focused on cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock, he secretly dug up dozens of baskets of manure.

"Report to Lord Mu Guan." Yang Guirong said helplessly, "I don't know if we can catch those thieves who steal cow dung?"

"How can you catch it? It will take a while, maybe all the stolen cow dung will be buried in the ground." Ge Zhenjin said gloomily: "Besides, even if he is caught, so what. We Yongxing Lord Liu of the Fort, can you still punish him for this?"

Starting from March this year, according to the instructions of the officials of the Agricultural Affairs Department of the Civilian Government, the counties, towns, and townships of Hanzhou no longer directly apply human and animal feces directly to the farmland, but must follow the guidance of agricultural officials and subordinate officials in various places. Next, accumulate manure in order to fertilize the field more efficiently and scientifically.

Fertilization can be carried out throughout the year, and in Daming, the average farmer usually completes it in winter.But in the northern part of Hanzhou, the climate is hot and humid, and there is no obvious seasonal division, so composting can be done in all seasons.

Rural households stack crop stalks, human and animal manure, soil miscellaneous fertilizers, etc. in the farmland in layers according to the height of each palm, and spread each layer evenly into the raw soil. After the composting is completed, they are covered with straw to keep moisture. Heat preservation, a certain high temperature can be generated during the composting fermentation process, which can kill pathogenic bacteria, insect eggs and grass seeds in the fertilizer.

This method of manure accumulation actually existed in the pre-Qin period. In the Northern Wei Dynasty Jia Sixie's "Qi Min Yao Shu" there is an explanation and record of manure accumulation, "its beauty is the same as silkworm arrows and cooked dung".

Moreover, this kind of manure is the biological bacterial fertilizer produced by accumulating all corrodible and fermentable substances together, and then corroded, fermented and other measures, which can provide all plants with the nutrients needed for growth.

All immigrants who have lived in Hanzhou for two years know that the farmland in Hanzhou is poor, and the grain yield per mu is much lower than that of Ming Dynasty.Therefore, those farmers who have divided their fields will try their best to increase the fertility of their own farmland and increase the output of the farmland.

In the past, some farmers had quarrels and even fights over latrines, pigpens, cows and horses and other manure, which caused headaches for officials and stewards in counties, towns and villages.Today, according to the regulations of the Agricultural Affairs Office of the civil government, the manure in government-run sites in various places must be composted in a centralized manner, and will be distributed uniformly to farmers in accordance with the planting plans of various places.

But all of this, it is still inevitable that there will be persistent farmers who try their best to get some manure. Not only the incident of stealing manure happened in Yongxingbao Ranch, but also pig farms, chicken farms, duck pens, cattle and horses in counties and towns all over the country. There will be such sporadic feces stealing in every shed.

Officials from all over the country basically turn a blind eye to this kind of thing.Anyway, this kind of farmers' behavior of actively improving the soil fertility of the local farmland is not a big mistake, and the crop yield of their farmland is high, which will naturally be counted as their political achievements.

However, as a farmer, he is naturally afraid of officials. After doing such a thing, he will still be worried.If he was discovered, he would not be caught by the patrol police, but he was also afraid of being made things difficult by the village officials and the village chief.

Qi Tian once thought about sending a ship to the South Pacific to find the guano island——Nauru, and cover the farmland in the northern part of Hanzhou with a layer, which can improve the fertility of the farmland and promote agricultural development.However, exploring the unknown islands in the vast sea is not something that can be discovered in a short period of time.Moreover, even if the guano islands were discovered, the dozen or so boats in Hanzhou do not have the capacity to complete this matter.

Later, as the food production of Xinxiangbao on Timor Island increased, it could gradually feed back the needs of the local part of Hanzhou.As a result, Qi Tiancai decided to increase support for Xinxiangbao and expand in Timor Island.Not only should this island be turned into a defensive outpost for the mainland of Hanzhou, but it should also be turned into a supply place for grain and other agricultural products in the northern part of Hanzhou.

Pu Tianbao is a farmer from Xiangshui Village, Yongxingbao. Seeing their village chief leading two people who looked like officials from the county town towards his field, he felt a little flustered.

Last night, he picked up wooden baskets and secretly dug up at least a dozen baskets from the manure piled up in the pasture. Then, when the sky was light, without taking a break, he scattered all the manure into the corn field that had just been harvested .Coincidentally, the village head led the officials above, maybe because of what happened last night, they found him on the head.

Seeing that there is still a large area of ​​manure scattered on the ground, which has not been covered with soil, I can't help but panic.

"Tianbao, these are the adults from the County Farming Department, come to see your fields." The village chief Chang Yonghuan shouted loudly.

"What's there to see." Pu Tianbao hurried up to meet them, trying to prevent them from entering his field. If he found so much manure in the field, he would think that he was the one who stole the manure from the pasture last night.

"You idiot!" Chang Yonghuan, the village head, pushed him away, and said dissatisfiedly: "The adults from the agricultural affairs department came to inspect the farmland and want to arrange crop rotation. What are you blocking!"

"Crop rotation?" Pu Tianbao was stunned, then grabbed Chang Yonghuan, the village chief, and said anxiously: "I can plant whatever I want in my own field. Why, the officials above have to take care of it." These?"

"We didn't want to care about what you farmers planted, but the adults of the civil government want us to explain to you clearly the benefits of crop rotation. In case of time, the fertility of your fields will decrease year by year, and even the pests and weeds will increase. It's a mistake. Your own money and food!" said an official from the Yongxingbao Agricultural Department.

"I know that crops need to be rotated." Pu Tianbao said, "I don't plan to try to grow wheat in the corn field after a while, so as to get some grain."

"Do you want to grow wheat?" A subordinate official from the Agricultural Affairs Department frowned, and then said softly, "You operate like this, but it's not... that scientific. Let's not say that our geographical climate in Hanzhou is not suitable for growing wheat , let’s say that you have planted corn and wheat before and after, but it will seriously damage the land.”

"Ah?" Pu Tianbao's eyes widened in surprise, "I just thought that the field is idle anyway, and I can always harvest some crops by planting something. What's wrong, planting wheat after planting corn will Does it reduce the fertility of the field?"

In the past, Pu Tianbao was just a member of the vast number of tenant farmers in Huaibei of the Ming Dynasty. Apart from planting wheat and sorghum, he never planted other crops at all.

As an official and subordinate of the Agricultural Affairs Department of the Civilian Government, Daming had conducted systematic training in related agricultural planting, water conservancy construction, breeding and selection of seedlings in the Jianye City Civil Affairs Training School.

The training materials are mainly based on the summarization of the farming experience of some old farmers in Hanzhou, and are compared with agricultural books such as "Book of Fansheng", "Essentials of Qi Min", and "Complete Book of Agricultural Policy".

"The corn you planted last season, it's best to plant some soybeans next season. In this way, it not only conforms to the climate and geographical environment of our place, but also relieves the fatigue of the soil." The agricultural department official smiled. Said.

According to the summary of agricultural planting experience in the past dynasties, corn and soybean are the most ideal cooperative partners. Planting cereal crops absorb more nitrogen and silicon, but less calcium; leguminous crops absorb a large amount of calcium, and The amount of absorbed silicon is extremely small.Corn and soybean rotation can ensure the balanced use of soil nutrients and avoid their one-sided consumption.

In "Qi Min Yao Shu", there are "grain fields must be changed at the age of one year", "if you want to get good land, you don't need the old market", "in all valley fields, the bottom of mung bean and small bean is the top, followed by hemp, millet and old hemp, turnip and soybean "For the next" and other records have pointed out the necessity of crop rotation and described the sequence of crop rotation at that time.

For a long time, in China's drylands, cereals are the main crops or the rotation of cereal crops, economic crops and bean crops, or the rotation with green manure crops has been adopted. Some paddy fields are planted in rotation with upland crops. .

Reasonable crop rotation has high ecological and economic benefits. It can not only prevent and control diseases, insects, and weeds, but also an important way to comprehensively control weeds. It can also use soil nutrients in a balanced manner, adjust soil fertility, and avoid soil fertility loss.

Since the beginning of this year, the Agricultural Affairs Office of the Hanzhou People's Government has comprehensively cleaned up the farmlands in various parts of Jianye Prefecture, and plans to fully implement crop rotation on all farmlands after spring (October), and to plant sugar cane and other severely damaged cultivated land. Leave the fields fallow, or plant green manure crops to support soil fertility.

In view of this, officials from the Agricultural Affairs Office suggested that if land-distributing farmers fall fallow, their agricultural output may be affected, and they may then resist this policy.Can the civil government consider increasing the number of land granted to farmers, no longer limited to [-] mu?

Pan Qifeng also agrees with this, but he dare not make a decision on the matter of increasing land grants for all the farmers in Hanzhou. He still has to wait for Qi Tian to return to Jianye City before making a decision.However, this kind of policy that is beneficial to the people's livelihood in Hanzhou will most likely be supported by the chief executive.

To this end, Pan Qifeng ordered the Agricultural Affairs Office to screen and count the cultivated land within its jurisdiction on the basis of promoting farmland rotation, and make preparations for increasing land grants.

(End of this chapter)