Scholars in the courtyard

Yang Xiaotao went to the yard to find firewood, and Mr. Yang went to pick up a pile of corn husks and start boiling water.

But after waiting for a while, Yang Xiaotao didn't come back. Feeling uneasy, he went out to see the situation.

Then I saw Yang Xiaotao standing in the shed, looking at the corn cobs in his hand, in a daze.

"You kid, what are you looking at, so lost in thought?"

Seeing that Yang Xiaotao was stunned, Mr. Yang asked.

Yang Xiaotao came back to his senses, his thoughts were interrupted, and he relaxed when he saw that it was the master.

"Master, are the corn cobs here so big?"

Yang Xiaotao picked up a palm-sized corn cob and asked.

Mr. Yang looked back and asked, "If it's not this big, how much bigger should it be?"

Yang Xiaotao frowned, "Then the corn in our village is like this?"

Mr. Yang was surprised and put down what he was doing. "Yes, it has been like this for many years since the time of planting corn."

"What's wrong?"

After hearing this, Yang Xiaotao lowered his head and thought deeply. The corn in his hands now was incomparable to the corn in his previous life.

The corn grown in the previous life was not only twice as long as this, but also thicker.

And looking at the marks left on it, it is easy to see that the corn kernels are not very big.

"It's nothing, it's just weird. The corn cob is too small."

After Yang Xiaotao finished speaking, there was nothing new about Mr. Yang.

Children in the city have never seen crops, so it's okay to be curious.

Go back and continue cooking.

After a while, the meal was ready, simple stewed cabbage and steamed buns.

Although Yang Xiaotao brought back a lot of things, the old man was used to being frugal, so he didn't get any preferential treatment during the first month.

Yang Xiaotao had a drink last night. His stomach was empty, but now he was obviously worried, so he ate a steamed bun and went out to find Yang Shitou.

He wanted to carefully verify what the corn of this era looked like.

"Xiao Tao, this is already the biggest one!"

Yang Dazhuang held the corn in his hand. The three corn cobs were longer than the others and were heavier.

"My wife thought it was big and kept it at home to get good luck during the Chinese New Year. Otherwise, the flour would have been ground long ago."

When Yang Dazhuang heard that Yang Xiaotao was looking for corn cobs, he thought he was gaining experience, so he brought the remaining three from home over without much thought.

"Uncle Da Zhuang, did you buy the corn seeds from the supply and marketing cooperative?"

"No, all I buy from the supply and marketing cooperative are vegetable seeds, and I keep all the grain seeds myself!"

Yang Xiaotao nodded. There were still some things he wasn't sure about in this era, so it was time to ask.

"Uncle Da Zhuang, tell me about the situation in the fields!"

"What do you want to know?"

"Well, just how much food can be left in our village every year. Is it enough for the family?"

Yang Xiaotao thought for a while and asked.

After hearing this, Yang Dazhuang found a stone and sat down. Yang Xiaotao took out a cigarette and both of them lit one.

Yang Dazhuang recalled it for a moment, but he couldn't explain it. However, Yang Xiaotao was not an outsider, so he started to explain.

"In our village, just last year, we planted more than 300 acres of wheat and more than 500 acres of corn, not to mention the others."

Yang Xiaotao had done farm work in his hometown and knew that this was winter wheat, so he continued to plant it in the corn field.

It's not that there are 800 acres of land in Yangjiazhuang. It has something to do with crop rotation.

In fact, Yangjiazhuang does not even have 700 acres of land.

Most of them are dry land, and some are on mountains.

There is only a little more than a quarter of the water and land.

"Let's take corn as an example. If the corn harvested in our village last year were divided, the yield per mu would be less than 300 kilograms."

"Less than 400 pounds? So low?"

Yang Xiaotao was surprised. In his mind, corn was a high-yielding crop. Even without chemical fertilizers, it would cost eight to nine hundred pounds.

"Sigh. There's nothing we can do about it. The land is barren and there is no fertilizer. Just relying on the excrement of humans and animals is simply not enough."

"And it also needs people to take care of it. Without good people, how can we have good production?"

Yang Dazhuang is also helpless. The situation across the country is like this. Everyone has no choice but to hope for good years and God's blessing to produce more food.

Yang Xiaotao was silent for a moment and asked again, "How much of these grains can we have left?"

"The rest? Haha!"

Yang Dazhuang shook his head and spit out the smoke, forming a smoke ring in the air, slowly expanding and finally dissipating.

"Let's put it this way, when we cultivate the country's land, we have to pay taxes! In other words, we pay public grain."

"According to national requirements, the standard for grain production per mu is 400 kilograms, and the hand-in ratio is 15%, that is, 60 kilograms per mu. This is for the country and must be handed over!"

"Then there's still more than half left!"

Yang Xiaotao calculated, but Yang Dazhuang shook his head, "That's just public food. You have to sell the remaining food!"

"Selling surplus grain?"

"Well, this is also necessary!"

Yang Dazhuang didn't take it seriously. After all, he had been doing this all these years. Then he looked at Yang Xiaotao with a confused look on his face and started to explain.

In fact, it is selling surplus grain to the country at low prices to support national construction in disguise.

And there is a limit to how much you can sell, and if you don’t have enough, you have to make up for it from rations.

There are nearly 200 households in Yangjiazhuang village, with more than 200 adult workers. Last year, the public surplus grain handed over totaled more than 50,000 kilograms. Among them, there are more than 10,000 kilograms of public grain and more than 30,000 kilograms of surplus grain.

“What about the money from selling the surplus grain?”

"No matter how much it is, there must be some."

Yang Dazhuang lowered his voice, "Last year our team sold a total of 37,500 kilograms of surplus grain. Wheat was 8 cents per catty and corn was 5 cents per catty. The total sold was 2,057.6 yuan."

"It's a lot of money, but in our hands, it's not much."

Yang Xiaotao listened on the sidelines, and Yang Dazhuang talked about the "three mentions and five unifications" that had just been implemented.

The so-called three withdrawals refer to the three withdrawals from production in the village.

It is divided into provident fund, public welfare fund and management fee, which are managed by the production team.

To put it bluntly, it means distributing living expenses to provide assistance to the elderly and those with limited mobility.

Wutong refers to the education surcharge, family planning fee, special care fee, militia training fee and private government support fee in villages and towns.

Regardless of whether these things are done or not, the money required for these three mentions and five unifications is quite a lot, and they all need to be paid out of this money, so naturally there is not much left.

Even if it is distributed equally to each household, it will only cost a few yuan per household.

This is still good. If the money from the sale is not enough, you have to collect some from the people below to make up for it.

"After all this hard work, if each family removes the remaining grain, life will be tight for every family!"

Hearing Yang Dazhuang's rather helpless sigh, Yang Xiaotao let out a sigh of relief, knowing that farmers in this era are not suffering anymore.

I have to face the loess and turn my back to the sky all day long, barely able to eat with the harvested food, and sometimes I have to rely on wild vegetables to fill my stomach. I am not hungry to death, but I am not full.

No wonder rural people yearn for life in the city.

Yang Xiaotao knew that Yang Dazhuang still had a lot to say, so he didn't ask and just brought the topic back to corn.

"Uncle Big Strong, when you harvest, are these ones much bigger?"

Yang Dazhuang regained his composure. For him, being able to eat was already a big deal. Compared with when he was a child and watched several brothers starve to death, he was already much luckier.

After hearing Yang Xiaotao's words, he thought for a while, "It doesn't seem like too much."

"There are only a few, and the big guys don't care. Anyway, they are all dried and sent to the grain station. The rest are ground into coarse grains by ourselves."

Yang Shitou was talking next to him. He followed Yang Xiaotao for most of the day and vaguely felt that Yang Xiaotao was not joking.

As for what he was doing, he didn't know.

"Um."

"Brother Da Zhuang, I've used these three."

"Take it away, it's not important."

Yang Xiaotao nodded, and finally took a few short corn cobs before returning home.

Back home, Yang Xiaotao was not in a hurry to start, but asked Xiaowei to try the difference of these corns first.

Xiaowei had been very happy these past two days. She spent the night in the woods south of the village. If she hadn't been able to feel her, she would have thought she was lost.

Yang Xiaotao called, and Xiaowei quickly flew in from the window.

咻咻

After calling twice, Xiaowei got into the collar of Yang Xiaotao's clothes, and instantly a warm warmth spread throughout her body, dispelling the coldness in winter.

The originally cold fingers also became warm.

"Try these."

Yang Xiaotao communicated with his mind, and Xiaowei quickly moved around the corn pile. After a layer of green light, she returned to Yang Xiaotao.

"really."

Xiaowei's judgment came to mind. The corn in front of her, the thick and grown corn, had more energy than the small corn.

However, the corn kernels on the same corn cob are also stronger and weaker. Obviously, these corns have changed during the growth process.

To use the knowledge of past lives, it is genetic recombination.

What Yang Xiaotao wants to do is to find this excellent genetic recombination.

As the saying goes, it's hybridization.

Crossbreeding.

"We can't always embarrass the time-travelers."

Yang Xiaotao finally found a 'business' for himself.

After confirming the feasibility, Yang Xiaotao asked Xiaowei to play with him, and then started picking corn by himself.

Yang Xiaotao picked it carefully, for fear of damaging the corn and affecting its growth.

Outside the door, Mr. Yang walked in and looked at Yang Xiaotao carefully picking corn, and he suddenly laughed.

"Boy, that's not how corn is picked."

As he spoke, Mr. Yang stretched out his dry palm and prepared to teach, but was quickly stopped by Yang Xiaotao.

"Master, no need, I can do it myself."

"You don't know how, how long can you continue to peel corn like this? When peeling corn, you have to use force and follow the grain."

Yang Xiaotao put down the corn, "Master, I can chop it, but this one is different?"

"It's different? Why is it different?"

Yang Xiaotao asked him to sit down, then organized his thoughts and started talking.

"Master, look, these are corns grown in the same field. Why are some big and some small?"

Yang Xiaotao asked a question, and Mr. Yang smiled heartily, "Of course the care is different."

"This one will grow bigger if it is fertilized, and this one will grow smaller if it needs less water. Is there anything strange about it?"

Yang Xiaotao nodded after hearing this, but disagreed.

"Master, you are talking about external factors."

"It is true that the level of care of a piece of land can determine the yield of crops, but if the roots are so small, no matter how much fertilizer they use, they won't grow!"

Mr. Yang suddenly discovered that Yang Xiaotao at this time actually seemed like a cultured person, and he began to listen to him carefully.

"Master, look, if we grow all this kind of corn, how much more can we harvest from one acre of land?"

Yang Xiaotao asked seriously while holding a long corn cob.

Mr. Yang didn't even think about it, "If they all look like this, one acre of land is worth two acres."

"Yeah, then why not plant something like this?"

"Yeah, why are you here?"

Mr. Yang was deep in thought, and suddenly slapped his thigh for a long time, "Oh, why did I forget this?"

Yang Xiaotao quickly cast a questioning look, and Mr. Yang spoke seriously.