"Junhou is indeed this character, he still had a violent side when he was young, but now he can't see it." Li Yi nodded in approval, her face full of relief.

Kong He, Fu Qian and the others all nodded and smiled, doing things under a lord like Nan Anhou, as long as they were upright and loyal, the future was promising, and there was nothing to be afraid of.

"Let's get back to business...... Xu Zixian said with a smile: "I feel that the mutton is more delicious, the venison is more dry and hard, and there is no too strong fragrance." ”

Li Yi said with a smile: "We northerners still like to eat mutton, and we eat less pork. I originally thought that I couldn't eat good mutton here in Fujian, but I didn't expect that there were more than 100,000 heads in Penghu, and there were sheep herders all over Fujian Road, so I knew that I was a little shallow. ”

Both the northerners and the south of the Yangtze River are addicted to mutton, which is a period when the Chinese diet has not changed to the period of pork-based.

Now pork has learned to be castrated and bloodletted, otherwise pork is extremely fishy, except for the extremely poor and poor, the rich and noble do not eat pork.

From the recipes of the Tang and Song dynasties, it can be seen that the ancient style still exists, the recipes are mainly steamed vegetables and cooking, and there are many dishes of raw food, sashimi is still quite popular at this time, people feast, and they do not know the harm of parasites.

Pork has been popular among the people, after all, it was one of the six animals in ancient times, but when it comes to the banquet of the nobles, after all, mutton is better.

As for geese, chickens, and ducks, they are also quite common meat mainstays, and there is not much difference between nobles and folks.

"For soldiers, having meat to eat is the most important thing, and nothing else matters." Kong He said: "The Eastern Domain is newly established, but the prince stipulates that each person must have two eggs and two taels of meat per day, and if there is too much storage, it will be changed to four taels a day." Fortunately, there are a lot of deer on the island, and recently we began to exchange grain and aborigines for venison, and the day before yesterday we just got more than 10,000 catties of smoked venison, which was distributed to more than 6,000 soldiers, almost two catties per person, enough to eat for ten days. ”

Kong He said: "If we also have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of sheep, I am not worried about the risk of cutting off meat, and I am not afraid that the soldiers will scold my mother." ”

Kong He is still in charge of the logistics of the army, and Xu Zi first planned to set up a special logistics department in the army, but like the combing of the entire military and political system, there is no hurry for the time being.

To put it another way, the talent pool is not enough now, and we have to wait for a while.

Kong He complained again, and everyone present laughed and did not speak.

Soon the Nan'an army will reach the scale of more than 9,000 people, just food per person per day to ensure three catties of staple food, oil four yuan, salt per person per month to half a catty, plus officials are the same standard, as well as the service period of craftsmen and stove men and the service period of each hundred households of strong men, each month salt money alone is hundreds of thousands of dollars, in exchange for only a few hundred guan, it does not seem scary, but plus vegetables, grain, meat, oil, just the cost of food is more than 10,000 per month.

It's pretty scary.

Kong He is a family member, watching the savings less than one day a day, it is impossible not to be in a hurry.

But Kong He has a little advantage, he has always taken care of the capital, the officials are the cornerstone, and the army is the cornerstone. And the distribution of money and salt, oil, and grain to the official immigrants is even more related to the credibility of the Nan'an Hou Mansion.

"Fortunately, I have recently bought sheep from Penghu." Kong He breathed a sigh of relief and said: "The sheep in Penghu are enough to last for a long time, and we have started to herd sheep ourselves, and the ducks we raise are about to lay eggs." ”

There are flocks of ducks everywhere on the seaside and the sides of the streams in the Eastern Domain, this thing eats less feed, the cost is not high, one person can put a large group of ducks, the cost is very low, most of the time the ducks are in the seaside and the river to find their own food, small fish, small shrimp, small crabs, screws, plankton and wild grass and wild vegetables can make the ducks grow fat and strong, and the ducks will begin to lay eggs in a few months, as long as they find out the rules, the duck herders use more thought, and now the huge duck flock can fully afford the egg needs of the officials, ministers, and the army.

All kinds of eggs can supplement protein, and the ancients may not have understood the details, but poultry eggs such as duck eggs and eggs can replenish the body, which is a fact that everyone knows.

Maybe some people in later generations dislike duck eggs do not have a good taste of eggs, and can only be marinated with salt and various spices to eat, in this year to say this kind of thing to be careful of being beaten to death, now people will only feel that duck eggs are bigger than eggs, so it is more cost-effective.

"We still have a dozen pig pens." Xu Zixian said with a smile: "The agricultural officer and the veterinary officer personally take care of it, and burn the ground with lime once in a while to disinfect and sterilize, and if the food is good, the pigs will be slaughtered soon." ”

More than 2,000 pigs are raised in more than a dozen large pig pens, and more pig pens will be opened and more pigs will be raised.

Although raising pigs consumes more feed, and there is a special person to be responsible, which is quite expensive, but on the whole, it is definitely more cost-effective to raise pigs. Sheep have to be stocked for a long time, although it takes a year for pigs and sheep to grow into a year, but a sheep will only be thirty or forty pounds to remove the bones, and even this pound is not weighed.

And as long as a pig is carefully raised, it can produce 100 catties of meat, or even more.

In these years, it is impossible to raise the kind of white pigs weighing hundreds of catties that will be slaughtered in a few months, but they can also produce more than 100 catties of meat, and sheep naturally can't compare, and horses and cattle can't compare.

Horses, cattle, donkeys, and mules have a longer growing period and are more useful, and it is simply inconceivable to kill meat and eat it, and of course there are laws in the Eastern Domain, prohibiting beef and horse meat, and those who slaughter or kill livestock without permission must be punished quite severely.

In addition, there are a large number of chicken coops, and like pigs, they will also be raised on a large scale after trying to raise them after the experience of exploring large-scale group breeding.

Li Yi has always been focusing on this aspect, including the ranch.

There are now more than 500 horses in the ranch, in addition to more than 300 Tianfang horses, more than 200 horses are also the choice of the moment, the best of the best.

Xu Zixian wrote a special letter to Wang Zhi, asking this old friend to help buy high-quality horses from the northern military town in the north.

To be above five feet, the number of mouths in the young age, and the high-quality war horses that have been strictly trained, ordinary horses cannot enter Xu Zixian's eyes.

This kind of purchase is very slow, because the north is planning the Northern Expedition, there have been small-scale border battles, and the generals also have the same demand for war horses, so they only buy a few dozen horses at a time, and they will not buy on a large scale again after the autumn, when the dust has largely settled on the Northern Expedition, and the Nan'an Hou Mansion has more money to take out and use.

Xu Zixian has already played the two mansions, which is also a kind of feedback for his official position of managing Ma Zheng, and it is also an illusion to all parties.

As for whether King Zhao and others believe it or not, it is up to them to do their own thing, anyway, to digest the interior of Fujian Road, King Zhao will have to work hard for a few years.

It was Wang Yue of Jianzhou that year, and King Zhao also took several years to succeed.

"I know these things, too." Xu Zixian glanced at Kong He with a smile and said: "Xuanping, before the cotton grows, we still have to manufacture a large number of hydraulic looms and spinning machines, but fortunately, there are already successful prototypes, and it is not difficult to manufacture." It is also necessary to train thousands of workers, which are selected from among the women of the official households, and some men are also required to take care of the machines, change the spindles, and carry the cloth, which is impossible without men. If successful, a large share of the collection will come in by October. The other is the tea mountain, I have already asked people to start preparing, and from next spring to summer, there will be a large amount of income. Mulberry trees have been planted on a large scale, and this is slow, and in a few years, mulberry trees will not grow into big trees in places like the Eastern Domain. ”

Kong He said: "At least five years." ”

Now the mulberry trees are still mostly seedlings, more than 1,000 plants can be planted per acre, and then planted in the spring of tomorrow, cut the branches, and wait for them to grow.

Mulberry trees are most popular in a natural environment with a warm climate, such as the Eastern Domain, which likes humidity and grows very quickly in hot environments, and stops growing when the temperature drops below 12 degrees Celsius.

There are hardly any times when the temperature drops below this in the Eastern Domain, and there are not a few days of the year.

Therefore, everyone has confidence in planting mulberry and raising silkworms, Fujian Road is the largest raw silk production base in Dawei, which is much more than Jiangnan, the main reason is that the climate of Fujian Road is more suitable for planting mulberry and silkworms.

In the Eastern Domain, this condition was certainly more suitable.

Mulberry planting will form a boom next year, and each official household will receive at least 30 mulberry trees to plant in front of and behind their houses, and then they can start to try to raise silkworms in the next year, and the number will not be large at first, because the trees are still small, the leaves are not large and dense enough, and people have no experience in raising silkworms.

After the fourth year, when the trees grow and flourish, people will try to grow them on a large scale.

So the estimation of those here is four years, not five years for Kong and conservative.

"Hmm." Xu Zixian nodded and said, "So all the contradictions lie here. We want to be big, if not more, but we also have a lot to do, and the amount of money and food we spend is staggering. So before that, we have to find a way to make money, in silkworms, tea, cotton cloth and soybean oil to make money, first have a solid bulk income, which is very important. ”

"What the prince said is very true." Kong He's eyes were blazing and he said, "But where is our way to make money now?" ”

Xu Zixian smiled and said, "Invest 1,000 guan now, earn 100,000 guan in a month, and then stabilize at 1.5 million to 2 million guan a year, Xuanping, what do you think?" ”

Kong He said expressionlessly: "The prince said that he was laughing, right?" This is not called trading, this is called looting, we are not pirates. ”

"In fact, it's faster than grabbing." Xu Zixian had thought about this a long time ago, invested a thousand yuan, and earned more than 100,000 yuan a month, which is more powerful than drug trafficking in later generations, this kind of business, normal people must not believe it, because this business is really not only robbing, it is much more powerful than robbing.

At this moment, everyone was interested, Fang Shaoqun's eyes flickered, obviously he had already guessed what business Xu Zi was going to do first, because a lot had already been revealed.

Franchise patents, licensed development rights, Xu Zixian has mentioned these words before, if you can't guess it, it would be too stupid.

It's just that whether it's salt, wine, or tea, it takes a time cycle.

Sake requires a lot of grain to brew, and although the profit is high, the competition is also fierce.

The government-run restaurant is to levy the good and good-tasting wine made by the people to the transfer envoy, and give the original owner some shares, and the majority is held by the government, and then the sales channel is controlled by the government, and the people have to pay taxes if they buy wine.

Of course, this is a huge profit, but the cycle is very long, but the government is not in a hurry, anyway, the benefits are all from the imperial court, and the officials just do things according to the rules and regulations.

And Nan'an Houfu wants to make wine, from buying grain to mixing the taste of wine, and then entering the official sales channel, which takes a long cycle, and the cost is not small.

If you boil salt, it is very convenient to be by the sea, and in this era, except for the large natural salt fields in Qinghai, all the salt is boiled.

Well salt is, sea salt is also, including those large salt farms in Huaidong, those brine brine wells are all to be boiled out of salt, the largest salt production area of the imperial court is in Huaidong, that is, the area of Huai'an Yangzhou in the later Yancheng.

Boiling salt is quite complicated and the process is also very long, which does not meet the characteristics of short cycle, quick effect, low investment and high profit as Xu Zixian said.

Yancheng got its name mainly because it has a large area of salt-producing areas in the local area, and it is also the most important place for the Great Wei Dynasty to make profits.

The monopoly of salt, iron, tea and wine has its own profits, including all kinds of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and of course, the most important thing is the income from land rent and sea trade.

But the most stable and consistent income of Great Wei is the income from the sale of salt.

It is about 10 million yuan a year, accounting for one-tenth of the overall income of Dawei.

Sometimes it's a little higher, but it's never low.

As the national strength is getting weaker and weaker, there are more and more places to use money, and the price of salt is also rising, from one catty and four wen in the Renzong period to one catty and forty wen in the Chongde period, the price of salt has risen tenfold, but the profit is still tens of millions.

What does this mean, it can only show that the people's salt intake is getting lower and lower, and at the same time, there is a large amount of private salt.

The imperial court's treatment of smuggler salt dealers is quite severe, more than one stone is a sentence, almost no smuggler will be below this number, so the salt barons are basically gathering a lot of outlaws, and when they encounter the private army of the transfer department, they are often fighting for their lives, because they are caught, except for those who are under sixteen, they are almost all bound to be beheaded, and there is no possibility of being forgiven.

Even so, because illicit salt is profitable, there are more and more salt dealers who sell illicit salt, and the prohibition continues, and even becomes more and more intense.

Even if it is illegal salt, it is necessary to boil it into salt, and then sell it by all means, and those who are killed and arrested need to settle in, and the price of illegal salt is about half of that of official salt, and the cost is not low.

Fang Shaoqun couldn't figure it out for a while, so he could only look at Xu Zixian again.