Xu Zixian said: "The important thing is that the waterwheel is completed, the channel is also excavated, and there will be water for irrigation when the fields are cultivated." ”

Fu Qian had a look of pride on his face, there was a huge waterwheel not far away, as high as seven or eight zhang, you can see it a few miles away, with elm as a beam, and then rotate with bearings and water buckets, leading water into the ditch, such a waterwheel with the help of water flow, high slope, rotating day and night, without manpower and animal power transfer, keep introducing the river water into the main canal.

Then the main canal several miles long keeps accumulating water, and after the main canal is full, it opens the gate from the branch canal and releases water, and the fields are irrigated and soaked.

However, before that, the acres of land should be deeply cultivated and broken, and then the water should be released, and then the lime should be placed to burn the field.

In this way, by the middle of May, the river mud can be covered again, and once the plough is turned, the acre of the field will basically be ripe.

If you irrigate in time, weed, prevent insects, and continue to fertilize, the crops planted will be harvested.

There are still many large waterwheels of this size, one big waterwheel can irrigate 30,000 or 40,000 acres of land, and 40 million acres of land can be built.

But in fact, it is not possible to irrigate all the acres of land with a water wheel, after all, there are some burned fields near the foot of the hills and mountains, and there are no streams along the way, and the water is too far away to achieve poor results.

It is not difficult to dig deep wells in the middle of these fields, and it is not difficult to dig deep wells, in ancient Rome and other places, there are records of digging wells hundreds of meters deep, and it is not difficult to dig purely by manpower.

The difficulty is the continuous diversion of water, and it saves time and effort.

Fu Qian is worthy of being a master craftsman, who made people dig a deep well, and then use a keel waterwheel with a wheel to turn the donkey to divert water.

Such well water can also be produced day and night, a well can irrigate hundreds of acres of land, dozens of wells, those far away from the water source, can also have water conservancy.

There is no more way to do it, only to go so far.

The water conservancy is sufficient, the land is fertile, the pests are removed, and the official tenant farmers are given better treatment and shares, they will definitely work hard, and the harvest is more, and the Nan'an Hou Mansion will also profit a lot.

The method of horse farming has proven to be quite effective.

There were dozens of fat horses in one place, and from east to west, there were at least a hundred groups of such groups, riding the wind and waves in the wasteland.

Two horses are tied to a place by the yoke, pulling the iron plough forward, the speed of the horse ploughing is much faster than the oxen, in the pre-Qin period, China also used to plough the land with horses, and later changed to ox ploughing, there are many factors here, there is no need to talk about it, but the advantages of horse ploughing are far higher than ox ploughing, which is also an indisputable fact.

Xu Zi was a later generation and a student of the Department of History, and he clearly knew that after the founding of the Republic of China, it was also a large-scale switch to horse farming, but later there were many problems, and cattle farming was still the mainstream.

Later, it was mechanically ploughed, with little manpower and oxen, and cattle fell from the status of labor, and became one of the mainstream of people's meat, as it had before that time.

Even in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, before the currency reform, the value of 1,000 yuan of the renminbi was the image of two horses plowing the fields.

Ploughing with horses, with sufficient manpower assistance, using two-horse ploughs or single-horse ploughs, and people supporting the yoke plough behind them, the efficiency is up to five times that of oxen ploughing, and it is more than ten or twenty times that of manpower.

The hundreds of acres of land in front of him seemed boundless at a glance, but more than 100 horses and hundreds of strong men were ploughed out after half a day, and then the women collected stones and grass roots in the back, and then ploughed again, and the first ploughing was completed.

Then the water was put in, and the lime was put in, and the whole plot boiled, and white smoke rose everywhere.

Along the official road around the island and the road connecting the hundreds of households, there is such a scene everywhere.

In some places, roads are still being built, men drive mules and horses, pull stone grinders more than one person high, and keep ramming the earth road, the drainage ditches on both sides of the road have been dug, and it is rainy in the Eastern Domain, so road drainage is still important.

On both sides of the road, willow elm and other trees are also planted, these trees mark the road, shade in summer, planting trees on both sides of the road is also the tradition of the Han people to build the road, on some centuries-old official roads, the willow trees completely cover the road in the sky, walk in it, as if walking through the willow branches of the road, in the middle of summer, there is a different feeling of the hole.

"In another five days," Lin Jiusi was gray-haired, although he was a master craftsman, he was also very experienced in farming, and he said to Xu Zixian very firmly: "Here is a fertile field, and after sowing, there will be a big harvest." ”

"That's for the best." Xu Zixian said to Fu Qian: "All the craftsmen who participate in the design, finalization, and installation of the waterwheel have their own rewards, and there are precedents, so you can directly draw up the list of rewards and the amount according to the rules, and then report to the cardinal room and give Li Gongfu the right to receive the money." ”

Waterwheels and wells are big projects, there are more than 300 qualified craftsmen in the craftsman department, and the treatment in Nan'an Hou Mansion is not low, this time, the waterwheel project includes the elite of the craftsmen, Fu Qian leads, and the rest of the craftsmen are also making a lot of contributions.

If you don't get a reward, everyone's heart will be slack, but Fu Qian has his own share, and the family has a good wife, never stretch out his hand to ask for anything, the more this is the case, the official is getting bigger and bigger, and the money is getting more and more.

Xu Zixian said: "What happened to the waterwheel forging armor and the hydraulic oil press?" ”

"Hydraulic forging armor, still groping." Fu Qian said: "Hydraulic oil extraction is not a difficult thing, the principle is very simple, but it costs a lot of money, and the budget is 5,000 yuan. ”

"Kong Xuanping is making trouble again?"

"It's not that he ...... trouble" Fu Qian smiled and said: "In the past half month, there have been more than 6,000 new immigrants, and they have to build and settle down in the village again. In terms of grain, now all the official households and civilian households are immigrant soldiers, a total of more than 60,000 people, and the daily consumption of grain is several hundred stones, and now Lingyi, Linger, Fusan, and dozens of big sentinel ships are going to Fuzhou every day to buy grain, according to Kong Xuanping, because we buy too much grain, the price of grain in Fuzhou has risen a lot. If you don't save some money, I'm afraid you won't be able to survive the day when you collect cotton and weave cloth and sell it. ”

Xu Zixian sighed, although there are hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, but the owner knows that firewood and rice are expensive, the waterwheel digs wells and burns the wasteland to open the fields, and the manpower and material resources used are astronomical.

You must know that these official households do their work, although the labor is folded in the labor of the Hou Mansion, but the food they eat is provided for free.

Coupled with large-scale construction, ship repair, and shipbuilding, these things have not stopped, and there is too much money going out every day, and the money is simply carried out like mud and sand.

Distress is only an emotional thing, but if you get the financial inadequacy, then the person in charge is to blame for being careless, or even insensitive.

Because of this, even Fu Qian, a great engineer, can understand Kong He's painstaking work, if it is not urgent, such as the waterwheel oil extraction and forging machine, although they all know that it is a good thing, it also includes the steelmaking furnace in the planning, and Xu Zixian proposed that Fu Qian is designing and researching the boring machine, which is used to make the spring of the crossbow machine, but if it is not urgent, it can only be postponed.

Now that the daily income of the Hou Mansion is too small and the expenditure is too much, Kong He must also be extra cautious.

What people are waiting for is the harvest of cotton fields between August and September, if more than 100,000 acres of cotton fields produce a lot, with 300 catties to 400 catties of seed cotton per mu to calculate, you can get more than 100 catties of lint, each mu can get three or four horses of coarse cloth, each piece of cloth is sold in the territory of Dawei for about five or six yuan, and it can be worth more than ten guan overseas, excluding the part to be distributed to the Changwen Marquis's Mansion, each mu can still make a profit of nearly ten guan, and more than 100,000 mu of cotton fields is the income of one million guan.

Of course, this is the part that counts the debts of the official households, otherwise, there should not be such a big profit.

If it is three years later, more than 100,000 acres of cotton fields can get 300,000 or 400,000 yuan, and the profits are still quite rich.

In fact, before this, the Nan'an Hou Mansion borrowed debts to the official households, which is equivalent to not exempting the taxes when the wasteland was opened, and the houses, farm tools, and grain were all owed to the official households on credit, and the official households had no doubts about this, after all, the things were too good, and they couldn't do it with their own skills in Fujian Road.

A few years later, when the debts were paid off, the Nan'an Hou Mansion began to levy taxes on the official households in the territory, unifying the so-called official salaries and Jinfeng money into two taxes in summer and autumn, imitating the Tang Dynasty system to levy rents, and forty days of hard labor, in addition, all miscellaneous taxes were exempted.

In this way, the Nan'an Hou Mansion can tax 10,000 official households and 10,000 or 20,000 households according to the acres of land, and the income is not expensive, and it can also levy sericulture tax to expand the income of raw silk.

And the simple and frugal ones are almost not levied, and Xu Yingbin, the Hou of Nan'an, was such a style.

The Nan'an Hou Mansion has a very good reputation, which is also one of the important reasons why many people are willing to be its official household.

After that, it was changed to tax and forced labor, and the formation of a system would also be reassuring and a solemn promise.

In fact, at the beginning of the Wei Dynasty, only industrial and commercial taxes and land rents were levied, and the less miscellaneous taxes were collected, the more the state used them, and the fiscal revenue reached 160 million guan at the most, which was a huge amount of revenue, even if it was a big country like Tianfang, it was far from it.

Since then, the rule of officials has become worse and worse, the rich have hidden taxes and small people, more and more taxes, the court has broken its word and become fat, the tax amount is stronger than a year, but the income is falling year by year, and in the Chongde years, the income has only been 100 million yuan, and even insufficient.

If the income from cotton fields becomes the norm, and the land that has been cultivated on a large scale also has income, and the income of Nan'anhou Mansion reaches more than two million yuan a year, Kong He is afraid that he can really breathe a sigh of relief.

In the cognition of Kong He and others, the prince Xu Zixian is too capable of tossing, and he is afraid that tens of millions of dollars are not enough, but he always has to increase his income, far above the expenditure, which can make people feel at ease.

"It's ...... to open up new sources of wealth" Xu Zixian sighed and said to Fu Qian: "You must have a small capital and see profits quickly, so that you can catch up with the current capital." ”