The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

"I don't ask for a high salary, I just want to work for the county lieutenant and repay the kindness that has not been repaid in the past..."

Ju was originally a stable clerk in the village. Now he has reached the retirement age and resigned from the village stable. However, he is still in good health, so he hopes to raise cattle and horses for Heifu.

"The county lieutenant is now rich and powerful, with more than a thousand acres of land. He has to buy horses and oxen. I hope you can accept me. I am not bragging, but I am one of the best horse and cattle appraisers in this county!"

As he spoke, he also showed his skills. He immediately walked into the stable, opened the mouths of the cattle and horses, and accurately reported the ages of Heifu's six horses and three cows according to the growth and wear of their teeth. He even knew the breeds.

Ju's eyes were sharp, as if he could see through the skin of cattle and horses, the muscles and even the bones of cattle and horses clearly.

"It was Luling who rescued the girls, not me."

Heifu wanted to refuse, but he couldn't persuade this stubborn old man. Finally, Ju knelt down to Heifu, so he had to agree.

Thinking carefully, what Ju said made sense. His family really needed to buy a lot of livestock. If there were no professionals, it would be easy to be cheated and difficult to raise them well. It would be better to keep him.

Heifu knew Ju's ability. He was not only good at judging horses and cattle, but also raised good horses. The "Chidan" bought from him carried him thousands of miles and was very popular with Heifu.

In addition to Ju, his daughter Yuan, who had married a good family, also hoped to come to Heifu's house to work. Heifu still had an impression of that little girl. If she hadn't run out to ask for help at the home of the head of the blind mountain village, the result of that day might have been very different.

So Heifu hired Ju at the price of four stone of millet per month, and asked him to help manage his cattle and horse stables. His daughter Yuan came to help control the servants and concubines, and gave her two stone of grain per month...

After finalizing this matter, Heifu secretly counted on his fingers: "Ordinary cattle and horses cost tens of thousands of coins, and an adult servant and concubine cost more than four thousand coins, and there are also furniture. From now on, I have to support more than twenty people and more than ten cattle and horses. So, more than one hundred thousand coins are gone!"

Heifu couldn't help but feel a little pain. The 70,000 yuan reward he got in the last war was almost gone. Now he can only rely on the salary of his two brothers and the food in the fields for emergency...

As I said, no matter how much money he has, it is not enough to spend. Heifu now urgently needs a way to make long-term profits. It seems that he has to start the brown sugar industry as soon as possible. This is the only thing he has saved and has not handed over to exchange for titles for himself and his relatives.

…

After dinner, before it got dark, Zhong called Heifu to walk with him to the nearby fields, pointing to the officials busy in the paddy fields and said:

"This was originally the rice field of Yunshi, but now it has become a public field. July is the critical moment for rice to form ears. Not only should we irrigate with enough water, but we should also apply ear fertilizer."

Heifu knew that there were three types of fertilization techniques these days: seed fertilizer and topdressing.

Base fertilizer is spread over the field to increase soil fertility; seed fertilizer is taken when sowing with fertilizer; topdressing is to use silkworm droppings and human feces and urine to apply to the ground when the crops form ears. This is also a new method developed after the invention of composting.

Zhong told Heifu that the composting method has begun to spread in Anlu County.

"But it was only applied to the public fields near the county town, and it could not be promoted to the private fields for the time being."

Although the Qin State abolished the well-field system after Shang Yang's reform and granted state-owned land to each family, there were still many fields directly controlled by the government, also known as public fields.

The public fields used prisoners and slaves as laborers, and the number was large. There were hundreds of people in Anlu alone, and there were more than a thousand farm slaves in Jiangling, and the harvest of the fields also belonged to the government...

Although the composting method was recognized and promoted by the county governor, considering the speed of information dissemination in this era, it was still difficult to promote it comprehensively.

Most counties can only let the county's field stewards and field assistants implement it first in the public fields near the county town. When the autumn harvest this year shows results, the village field officials will publicize it to the people and encourage them to follow suit. This is equivalent to the science and technology going to the countryside activities in later generations...

Therefore, when the county was visited in April, the optimistic estimate of the county magistrate Teng that "the production of grain in Nanjun will increase by 3 million to 4 million shi" may be greatly discounted. According to the ratio of public fields and private fields in each county, it would be good to have 1 million shi.

"In addition to the difficulty of promoting it in remote areas, we have encountered another problem."

Zhong pointed to the officials who were applying fertilizer to the rice fields and said distressedly: "Not enough manure!"

From Zhong's narration, Heifu learned that it used to take at least hundreds of kilograms of manure to fertilize one mu of land, and tens of thousands of kilograms for a hundred mu. If it was less, there would be no significant effect. Before, when people planted a little at home or used the power of a county to supply hundreds of mu of land, this problem was not prominent, but as this method was promoted, manure became scarce.

Faced with this problem, the agricultural officials of Anlu County also thought of many ways, such as putting grass and trees into the manure pit to rot and increase the amount of fertilizer.

This is the knowledge that farmers have already mastered. In the "Monthly Order" issued by the Qin government to each village, there is "In the last month of summer, the soil is moist and hot, and heavy rains occur from time to time, which is good for killing weeds, just like hot soup, which can fertilize the fields and beautify the land..."

Farmers in this era would collect weeds, leaves, and straw in April, and use the high temperature and rainfall in summer to rot the weeds to make green manure. Now combined with composting, the amount of fertilizer can be doubled.

"But it's still not enough."

Zhong said helplessly: "The manure collected from the cattle and horse stables near the county town, plus the rotten weeds, can at least supply the public fields. By next year, I'm afraid the amount will be less than this year... and the manure in the toilets of each farmer's household is probably only enough to irrigate the vegetable fields, which is not conducive to increasing grain production."

Hei Fu nodded. This is the limitation of the composting method. It is precisely because of this limitation that the increase in production in Nanjun this year will be much lower than what Ye Junshou expected. It would be good to have one million shi, and it may even be as low as 500,000 or 600,000 shi.

"This old fox, no wonder he only gave Zhong a hairpin, instead of directly promoting him to the next rank as he said before..."

Hei Fu thought for a while and asked, "Brother, you said that the compost and manure used in Anlu County this year are mainly manure from the stables?"

"Yes."

Zhong nodded, "Only these places are under the jurisdiction of the government, which is convenient for collecting manure."

Hei Fu felt that they seemed to have made a mistake: "Wait a minute, brother, let me ask you, where are the most people in Anlu?"

Zhong said without hesitation, "Of course it's the county town."

Hei Fu said, "There are more than a thousand households in the county town, and nearly ten thousand people eat, drink, defecate and urinate every day, which can produce 20,000 to 30,000 kilograms of manure, which can be applied to hundreds of acres of land. I heard that the public land near the county town is no more than a hundred hectares, why do you say it's not enough?"

Zhong blinked his eyes: "You don't know, Zhongdi, officials, wealthy families have their own toilets at home, which are used to irrigate their own fields, and there is no way to collect the manure. Most of the poor people in the neighborhood have no toilets at home, so they go to the wild, under trees, and in ditches, and there is no way to collect it..."

"That is to say, most people in the county are still urinating and defecating everywhere!"

Heifu immediately understood that there are two reasons for the lack of manure. One is that the population is too small these days, and each household cannot produce enough farm manure for the fields; the second is that the government did not properly manage the collection and use of farm manure, and the manure produced by a large number of people in the city was wasted...

"Brother Bo's troubles are not difficult to solve."

Heifu suddenly laughed, and when Zhong asked for a solution, he deliberately did not answer, but pointed to the toilet in his own house...

"In five days, more than a thousand garrison soldiers will gather in the county. Taking this opportunity, I have a good idea I learned in the army that can be implemented in Anlu! Not only can it make up for the lack of manure next year, but it can also make Anlu the cleanest and most decent city in the entire Nanjun, even the entire Qin State, and the whole world!"

...

On the tenth day of July, as the heat wave of the late autumn gradually receded, more than a thousand conscripts from Anlu County and three townships came to the southern suburbs of the county to gather.

Under Heifu's arrangement, two hundred county soldiers have built a camp here in advance. In the next month or so, more than a thousand good family boys will be trained here. They are not allowed to leave without permission. They have to eat, drink, defecate and urinate in the camp...

Gongshi Quji from Chaoyangli no longer has the sick look of the past. He and the people in the same village and pavilion formed the "Huyang Pavilion Tun". Their pavilion chief is called "Hua", who was one of the nine people who followed Heifu to Wei and Chu and came back alive.

As an old subordinate of the county lieutenant, Hua went to Huyang Pavilion, where the county lieutenant started his career, to serve in the past six months. Hua felt that his village was one level higher than other villages! It was a direct lineage!

Gongshi Quji was also appointed as a sergeant by Hua because of his relationship with Heifu. The group walked into the camp with great pride. Before they found their own camp, they found that hundreds of people who came first gathered at a building on the edge of the camp, talking and arguing.

Hua and Quji squeezed to the side with fewer people, but found that there was a newly built earth house standing here, covering a large area of half an acre! The top was covered with black tiles, and there were many cross-shaped holes on the adobe wall, which looked like arrow holes in the city wall. There was a door on each side, and soldiers kept going in and out. Those who went in were full of novelty, and those who came out were tying their belts while praising it, saying that they also enjoyed the treatment of officials and rich people...

"What is this house used for?" Quji asked curiously.

"Go to the front and see for yourself. There are words written by the county lieutenant himself."

The merchant's son named Yuan Bai said this unhappily, and then turned around to praise the county lieutenant for his wonderful ideas.

"When I was a night watchman, I lost several thousand dollars to the county lieutenant. It's not unfair!"

In the face of Yuan Bai's words, everyone just said that he was bragging. No one believed him. Who is the county lieutenant? Why would he bet with you?

So the garrison commander Hua and the squad leader Qu Ji could only go around to the front where there were more people. Standing on tiptoe, they found two huge characters written by the Anlu county lieutenant himself on the whitewashed earth wall:

"Public toilet!"