Qin Official

Those bundles of things that Hei Fu placed on the ridge of the field were called "Zhè". They were accidentally discovered in the field a few days ago when Hei Fu went to "Pinghuli" on the bank of Yunmengze to handle a case. .

At first he thought it was a small bamboo forest, but when he took a closer look, he discovered that the stems were like bamboo, each root was as thick as a wrist, had joints, the skin was greenish-yellow, and it was about ten feet high.

Tingzu Yuliang 1 local people, he said to please the people, this thing is called Zhuzhe, it is very common in the wild, fishermen often use it to quench their thirst.

As he said this, Yuliang immediately drew his sword and cut off one and handed it to Heifu. But when he saw that there was white stem meat under the hard skin, it smelled slightly sweet, and when he tasted it, Heifu was immediately happy.

"Isn't this just sugar cane!"

It turns out that the Yunmeng River in Chu State was one of the origins of sugar cane. This sugar cane was once loved by the nobles of Chu State. They once planted it in gardens and squeezed the juice to use it as a summer drink. Song Yu, a native of Chu, said in his "Calling Souls": "There are some turtles and cannons, some of which are pulp..."

In his previous life, Heifu was a person who liked to chew sugar cane. In summer, he often ate it as fruit to quench his thirst. One person could chew two sugar canes! However, the sugar cane he ate mostly had black-purple skin, which was slightly different from the green-yellow "Zhu Zhe" in front of him.

Heifu was greedy for a moment, so he took a Zhuzhe with the skin off in his hand. He ate it in the same way as Gu Kaizhi, eating it from beginning to end, so that he could gradually get better.

I tasted the tip of the stem first, and there was only a faint sweetness. Then I tasted the root of the stem, and found that it was not very sweet, and had some bitterness...

I thought it was just a problem with this one root, but when he cut several branches in the wild, they were all the same. The taste was as light as water, and some of them were even bitter...

Heifu couldn't help but be disappointed. He thought he had found a good raw material for sugar extraction, but he didn't expect that the sugar content of these zhe was so low.

"If sugar cane is not sweet, what is it called sugar cane?" He complained secretly.

But thinking about Heifu, he felt relieved. He was really spoiled. Most of the crops in later generations were actually the result of thousands of years of artificial breeding.

Not only were livestock domesticated, but so were plants. For example, wheat, rice, etc. all started from wild tares and wild grasses, and were slowly domesticated into crops with higher cultivation value. The ancestor of corn is the foxtail grass that can be seen everywhere on the field ridges!

Under the conscious cultivation of farmers, they gradually survive and the fittest are eliminated. The seeds become larger, easier to peel, have higher yields, shorten the growth period, and even taste spicier and better. This is the result of artificial breeding.

Cash crops are no exception. The sugar cane of later generations is also the descendant of sweet cane carefully selected for more than a thousand years. Its sweetness has increased dozens of times. The wild sugar cane in front of us is like a child without a father and a mother. It has thick skin, astringent taste, thin stem, and solid hardness. How can they compare? Heifu remembered that when he was a child in his previous life and watched "Robinson Crusoe", he seemed to have encountered wild sugarcane in it. Because it was wild and not cultivated artificially, it was not very tasty. He didn't understand it at the time, and it seemed that he didn't understand it either. Encountered something similar.

Heifu threw away the half-chewed zhe, but after thinking about it, he asked Yuliang to help him collect all the zhe that could be found near Pinghuli, and hired an ox cart to help him transport it home.

In the last tomb robbery case, thanks to Hei Fu, Yuliang also received a reward of more than a thousand dollars, which improved his family's life a lot. Yuliang now obeys Hei Fu, even though the pavilion chief asked him to It sounded strange to collect worthless wild zhe, but he didn't ask any questions and immediately did it...

In addition to Pinghuli, Heifu also asked everyone in the pavilion to select the sweetest ones from the wild zhes near their homes.

So when Hei Xiumu returned home a few days later, the people in the sunset watched in dumbfounded eyes. Hei Fu pulled a whole cart of Zhe back...

Only then did the scene of Heifu and Brother Zhong standing in the field arguing during spring plowing...

…

Zhong didn't understand that his younger brother had brought back a cart full of zhezi, and said: "These zhezi can be seen everywhere along the Yunmeng Lake. If you want to eat them, you can just pull one out. Why do you have to plant them in the ground..."

Zhong has been doing farm work for so many years, but he has never seen anyone planting zhezi in the fields. In his opinion, these good fields that have been cultivated with great difficulty must of course be planted with millet, rice, etc., which can save lives and pay for rent. If you have enough food, you can at most add some beans and hemp. How can you waste it on wild mulberry trees?

"Brother, I only plant ten acres, ten acres!"

Heifu couldn't explain it clearly for a while, but he finally convinced Zhong to allocate ten acres of land that should have been left fallow this year to let him grow sugar cane.

Heifu knows very well what wonderful uses sugar cane with high sugar content can play. It can be eaten and has become a fruit favored by children at home; it can squeeze sugar, which may be just brown sugar and brown sugar at first, and maybe white sugar and rock sugar in the future; it can even be used to Make wine!

Of course, this last item is illegal, but the Qin State banned alcohol because they were afraid of wasting food by making wine. What if wine with a higher alcohol content could be brewed without consuming food?

Although those things are exciting to think about, they are still far away. What Heifu has to do now is to complete the first artificial selection.

He had to plant the sugarcane, which still tasted a little sweet, into the ground. Maybe if he fertilized and cared for it carefully, they would grow sweeter? After a few breedings, he might be able to get the real sugarcane he wants.

Maybe, maybe... Agriculture is such a pain in the ass. Unless you use the science and technology of later generations, you will always be lucky. But the high-quality food that future generations eat in their mouths is not always the good luck of generations of farmers. Was it planted?

This is the greatness of agriculture. Hard-working hands, planting in spring and harvesting in autumn, silently change the world. Based on this, human civilization can advance step by step.

According to the scene of sugar cane planting in the village in later generations, Heifu asked Jing Jing to help him and cut the zhe into pieces of one foot. After soaking in water for half a day, he placed the sugar cane seedlings horizontally in the ground with the muddy water in the ditch of the field. Then bury half of it with soil... Repeat this process, like sowing seeds, scattering the ox cart's zhe on ten acres of land...

While they were busy here, Zhong was still driving the yellow-haired plow ox newly bought by Hei Fu, using the plow to plow the family's plots of land one by one.

Speaking of which, as Heifu became Shangzao and Citron became public official, they were all given new land. Since Citron and Ajie had moved to the county town, the family's land was taken care of. As a result, the family's land quadrupled to more than 400 acres.

Zhong is a good farmer in the family. He can grow grains well and drive cattle well. But Heifu was afraid that his eldest brother would be tired, so he still paid for it and hired four mediocre cultivators in Benliluzuo. He paid one-third of the harvest and asked them to help him work for a year.

It's a pity that there is no one named "Chen She" in it.

Others originally suggested that their family buy a few concubines, but Hei Fu couldn't accept it. His mother was also kind-hearted and felt that her family really didn't need slaves.

"Fortunately, we bought cattle. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to cultivate so much land by people."

While Zhong was resting, he couldn't help but lament that his family used to have a cow, but later he died of illness.

Heifu carefully inquired about Zhonghe's neighbors and found out that there were very few oxen plows in Anlu County, and the people there had never even seen a plow. It was not until the Qin State ruled Anlu that it gradually became popular.

This is also the terrifying thing about the Qin State. It attaches great importance to farming, so that the government will do its best to promote advanced technology. The power of officialdom is always much faster than subtle dissemination.

But only the State of Qin could do it, not the six countries. It is said that some officials in the State of Zhao did not want to fight the Changping War with Qin. One of the reasons was that Qin used oxen to plow the fields and doubled the grain, but the State of Zhao did not have such conditions...

Because only the Qin State could extend the tentacles of government to the township and li level. In countries such as Zhao and Chu, the countryside is still controlled by the feudal nobles and is extremely closed to water.

The same is true for the pestles and mortars made by Heifu and the others. In just one month, the Anlu county warehouse has replaced all the pestles and mortars with treadmills. Not only the ministers and concubines were happy because their work became easier, but also the rice they produced was There are a lot more.

"Perhaps in a few years, Tadi will spread throughout the north and reach Bashu, just like the Qin State promoted farming to Nanjun."

Thinking like this, Heifu felt in his heart that he seemed to have done something great. Not only did he improve productivity in the matter of pounding grains, but he also indirectly liberated half of the people of Qin...

Chatting in the fields always goes by quickly, and the farm men soon have to get up and continue working.

He said sincerely that Heifu had already planted the zhes in the ground, so he couldn't just leave them alone and had to take good care of them. With that said, Hei Fu and Jing were asked to shovel the dung from their cattle in the past few days.

As early as more than a hundred years ago, using animal dung for fertilization has become something that every farmer knows. Mencius said: "In bad years, the fields will be short of dung." A field with a lot of manure is a land for farmers and common people.”

But what Hei Fu saw was that he used a wooden shovel to scoop up a little bit of the fresh cow dung and put it next to the newly buried sugar cane seedlings. He looked back at his neighbor's fields, which were also fertilized with fresh cow, horse and human dung.

So Hei Fu called out to him and said, "Brother, are you fertilizing like this?"

"If the dung field is not like this, what else can it do?" Zhong looked at his younger brother with a strange face, wondering if he was used to being a pavilion chief these days and couldn't even do farm work.

"I heard a merchant from the north talk about a method of fertilizing the land in Guanzhong. I heard that it can increase the yield per mu a lot!"

Heifu smiled and said, "Brother, do you want to try it?"

"The method you learned from Guanzhong? Tell me about it." Zhong immediately became interested. Guanzhong is a famous granary of the Qin State, and its productivity per mu is two or three times that of Nanjun.

"It's very simple."

Heifu pointed to the black fresh cow dung in the shovel and said, "Compost!"