The Rise of the European Emperor

Marin was also taken aback by the October rain. Because, if there is no wheat samarium this year, the harvest speed will be much faster, and this year's autumn harvest in the northwestern part of Beihai will also be affected a lot.

However, he couldn't guarantee that Beihai would be able to escape the rain disaster during the autumn harvest every year. Therefore, after thinking about it, he decided to use the method of drying dehydrated vegetables to build multi-storey drying rooms in various towns. Each layer uses a large iron plate, puts grain in it, and dries in a room with dozens of degrees. In the event of autumn harvest rain disaster, while organizing rush harvesting, the harvested wheat will be dried at medium temperature for a long time in the drying room. It should be noted that the temperature should not be too high. Otherwise, the grain will be cooked.

In addition, ordinary people can also build heated kangs in their homes, and use them to dry wet grain. Therefore, after the autumn harvest, Marin promoted the replacement of the original dilapidated wooden houses with grass-reinforced adobe houses, and built heated kangs in the bedrooms of each adobe house.

There are many vegetation in the countryside, and firewood can be seen everywhere. Therefore, the adobe houses promoted in the countryside all have Chinese-style clay stoves with chimneys, and they are firewood-saving stoves with thick walls.

The reason for this is that in addition to using firewood in the countryside, which is cheaper than coal, the ash left over from burning fires in earthen stoves is also an important fertilizer. In order to prevent the ash from being wasted, Marin ordered every farmer to build a latrine behind the house to collect excrement. And the plant ash left over from the fire every day must also be piled up in a small room that does not leak. This small house can be a mud hut or a grass house. In short, it doesn't leak rain. After all, once plant ash meets water, the potassium salt will be dissolved and washed away with water.

Then, every few days, a special organization in the town will send people down to collect the manure and plant ash from various villages and bring them back to be processed into fertilizer.

In other words, Marin's promotion of the use of earthen stoves in the countryside is actually to collect plant ash. Although he now has the potash mines in the Harz Mountains, God knows when the salt mines will be exhausted. Therefore, collecting some plant ash and extracting potassium salt is just a matter of incident. After all, he is also collecting feces now, collecting and utilizing plant ash is just a matter of convenience.

It's funny to say, but Europeans have long discovered that they mixed plant ash with lime water and reacted with oil to obtain soap. However, they just didn't know how to use plant ash as fertilizer.

Of course, modern chemistry has not yet emerged, and Europeans do not understand the principles of it. They just accidentally discovered that soap can be made in this way, and they do not understand the principles at all.

Marin is different. His middle school chemistry was not in vain. Therefore, after he collected plant ash, he soaked the water directly in the pond, then filtered it, and extracted the less potassium carbonate. In this way, most of the plant ash is useless, so as not to take up space. When fertilization is needed, the potassium carbonate solution is directly mixed into the main fertilizer.

In fact, potassium carbonate is the "gray frost" in ancient Chinese legends, which was extracted from plant ash by ancient Chinese alchemists. An important function of gray frost is to purify saltpeter. If there are magnesium ions and calcium ions in saltpeter, it will easily absorb water molecules in the air to make it damp. After the gray frost is added, carbonate ions, magnesium ions and calcium ions form precipitates. And the potassium ions in it, and the nitrate radicals originally combined with magnesium ions or calcium ions, form new potassium nitrate, which further improves the purity of saltpeter...

In addition, the work of feeding earthworms with manure in Beihai has also made great progress, and multiple earthworms that like to eat manure have been selected. At present, the artisans under Marin who like to study are calculating the conversion rate of feces and earthworms, that is, how much feces earthworms eat,

The ratio of how much black vermicompost is discharged.

However, the current research on feeding earthworms with manure is still at the stage of horse, cattle and sheep manure. Human manure has not yet been successfully used to feed earthworms. Because horses, cattle and sheep eat grass, the manure is rich in cellulose, and it is not as burning as human manure. Earthworms have adapted to eating cow dung, sheep dung and horse dung. But people eat whole grains and meat, which has a high salt content, and the excrement environment is very unfriendly. Earthworms are very uncomfortable after eating them, and even get sick, so they need to be processed.

But at the moment, there are no professional scientists in Beihai, so it is a bit difficult to transform human feces in a gentle way so that earthworms can eat them. Therefore, now Marin is adding vermicompost transformed from cattle and sheep manure into the fertilizer, and there are also a lot of extremely light-smelling "black soil" made by drying human manure for several months.

And once the research on the treatment of human feces is successful, the main part of the fertilizer in Beihai will become earthy vermicompost, even if it is stolen by foreign spies, it will never be recognized.

...

In fact, because it is still the age of animal power, Beihai has a lot of cattle and horses. In addition, the number of sheep is also very large. Therefore, although the total amount of animal excrement is less than that of human excrement, it is not much less.

So, the actual situation at the moment is that the scale of feeding earthworms with the excrement of horses, cattle and sheep is very large, and it has reached a huge scale of millions of pounds. And the vermicompost obtained reached 20 to 30 million pounds, and the amount of vermicompost transformed every day was 300,000 pounds. Currently, the breeding center is collecting various earthworms, including American earthworms, for data comparison to select the most suitable species for transforming manure.

Recently, those unprofessional researchers under Marin suddenly discovered that it seems that pig manure is also a good feed for raising earthworms. That is to say, most of the feces of domestic animals can be used to raise earthworms. Only human feces probably have high salt content and other factors cannot be directly used to raise earthworms.

This research result is very important, because the number of newly introduced Taihu pig populations in Beihai has expanded very rapidly. There are more than a dozen in one birth, and they grow up fast. As long as the feed is sufficient, the manure is absolutely sufficient. At that time, vermicompost will definitely be enough.

...

And, recent earthworm raises chicken and also obtained significant result. The famous laying hen introduced from the Ming Dynasty, the reed hen, after eating the earthworms that were boiled and sterilized in hot water, has a greatly improved egg production rate, laying eggs once every two days on average. In this day and age, it is definitely a miracle. But ordinary chickens usually only lay eggs once every few days. Moreover, after laying eggs, they also like to squat on the eggs to hatch by themselves.

Marin established a chicken farm near the city of Aurich and built professional chicken coops. While restricting the movement of reed chickens, they also did not feed earthworms less. Moreover, a special cloth will be used to block the hen's sight, and then take the opportunity to take away the eggs. And after the eggs are taken away, the reed hen will be very confused. Then, continue to eat, drink and lay eggs. In this way, this professional chicken farm provided enough grass eggs for Marin's palace. Every morning, Caesar, Robert, Ma Yun, and Ma Li ate eggs and milk for breakfast. As for William, because he is too young, he has not been weaned and cannot eat eggs...

Now, as long as enough fertilized reed chicken eggs are hatched in the kang house, and more reed chickens are hatched, there will be no shortage of eggs in the future in Beihai. Although it can't keep up with the efficiency of laying hens in later generations, laying eggs once every two days is definitely a high yield.

However, eggs are still expensive these days. A dozen eggs (12 pieces) are actually priced at 1 pfennig, which is half a day's wages for ordinary people, which is equivalent to fifty yuan in later generations. In other words, today's eggs are equivalent to more than 4 yuan in later generations, which is really expensive. In future generations, you can buy a catty of eggs. However, considering the current food prices in Europe, it is not surprising...