At the end of January, the Duck Lake basin has entered the grain harvest season. In New Cornish Township, the Anderson family prepares to harvest grain from the field. Since his family has only one agricultural hukou, they have only 30 acres of arable land, of which 20 acres are planted with wheat and the other 10 acres of fallow land are planted with alfalfa -- several stubbles have been cut since the beginning of this year, and the eight lean cattle he bought have been raised to be fat and strong.

Since there was only one horse-drawn wheat harvester in the village, which was purchased by the villagers with raised funds, and the land of the families of the military martyrs had to be harvested first, Anderson saw that the weather was not very good in the past two days, so he discussed with his wife and simply hired three Italian wheat customers introduced by the famous labor broker Sorendino, and hired them for three days at a salary of two dimes a day and food and lodging. Over the course of three days, the Anderson couple will work with the three wheat customers to harvest the wheat with a sickle, and then threshing, raising the grain, and exposing it to the sun.

The devil knows when the harvester will come to his field to harvest, the weather is gloomy and not very good, in order to save his crops from the possible bad weather, Anderson decided to hire a few black workers to do it himself. Anyway, it only costs one yuan and eight dimes for three days to hire three people, and at most it costs a little money to buy some beef and whale meat in the village, and the total cost will not exceed three yuan. But if the bad weather arrives and the wheat in the field is not harvested in time, it is difficult to say how much damage will be made. Now is the time to race against the clock, and you can't afford to lose the big with the small.

The Anderson family is not alone, in fact, there is still a considerable shortage of agricultural machinery on the East Coast today. We are all kinds of products from the Xihu County Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory. Such as: Mara wheat harvester, Mara corn harvester, Mara soybean harvester, Thresher, Grain Lifter, etc. Among them, there is more than one version of the thresher and the grain lifter. Because the powertrain is different. There are hand-cranked versions, animal-powered versions (horses or donkeys), and of course steam versions.

These agricultural machinery are like miracles for the mud-legged people in the village, whether they are from Livonia or from the Ming Dynasty. They are not fools, and of course they can see the benefits of such machinery, but these agricultural machines are also undoubtedly quite expensive. In the case of a horse-drawn wheat harvester, for example, it costs more than 100 yuan – because two of the harvesters are made by hand – a price that is astronomical for farmers who are now in debt.

The harvester in Anderson's village was purchased by a large group of people, and two veterans who had been on the battlefield contributed the most, raising a total of more than 30 yuan. The rest of the villagers also made up forty or fifty yuan for you and me, and then the village financial subsidy was ten yuan, and the Ministry of Agriculture's "special action for agricultural machinery to go to the countryside" subsidy fund was twenty yuan.

To be honest, working with agricultural machinery and without agricultural machinery are definitely two concepts, and a horse-drawn wheat harvester is worth dozens of strong laborers. And as long as there is no problem with the machine and the horse is replaced in time, it can continue to work without sleep, and the efficiency is much higher than that of people who have to rest. But the high price is the most important factor to prevent the spread of this kind of machinery that is loved by farmers to the countryside, after all, although the Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is a state-owned enterprise, but now it has to break even. The production cost of the horse-drawn wheat harvester is evenly spread over the R&D costs in the early stage. The cost is almost 80 yuan, plus a batch of parts, lubricating oil and transportation costs. It is not uncommon for a unit to cost hundreds of yuan, and the actual profit margin of Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Factory is actually only about 10%, which is not high.

This is the first time that wheat has been planted on a large scale in New Cornish Township, and much of the land in it is also the first year of raw land, and the local farmers have also carried a large amount of mortgage loans for their houses, slave girls, and their small savings to buy more land in the future, so the villagers, who are not very optimistic about this year's harvest, are really unwilling and unable to spend huge sums of money on those expensive agricultural machinery.

In fact, not to mention them, even in the mature agricultural areas in the south, the villagers have a lot of concerns about raising funds to buy agricultural machinery, which mainly lies in the contradictions in the right to use, property rights and other aspects. In addition, a family has a maximum of 60 acres of cultivated land (30 acres per person), of which one-third is still fallow, and they really can't buy a horse-drawn wheat harvester that costs more than 100 yuan for their own 40 acres of wheat field. That is, the cap imposed by the state on the ownership of land by individuals restricts their impulse to buy agricultural machinery.

At present, in the southern capital and Xihu County in the north and other agricultural mature areas, these relatively wealthy farmers, that is, three or five friends or trusted people, jointly buy a horse-drawn wheat harvester, horse-drawn soybean harvester, horse-drawn alfalfa harvester and other professional harvesting machinery. In addition, if there is some surplus in the economy, they may also buy some machinery such as threshers and grain lifters - hand-cranked or animal-powered versions, of course.

As for the lofty version of steam, the high price is definitely not affordable by ordinary people, and now this kind of powerful and domineering equipment can only be seen in some state-owned farms in the capital Dongfang County. The equipment is generally fixed, and the farm workers transport the harvested wheat (already bundled) to the steam thresher machine, and then blow off the wheat grains in front of the threshing machine, and then blow off the wheat, deflated grain, grass seeds, dust and other debris in front of the threshing machine, and then the remaining pure wheat grains are taken to the drying field to be dried - this process is extremely labor-intensive, even if it is assisted by organic qì. The threshed wheat stalks are stacked to be used as fuel for cooking rice and water, and of course, the burned plant ash has to be sprinkled into the fields to maintain the fertility of the soil.

In addition to the high price of the machinery itself, the scarcity of domestic horses on the east coast is also a very important reason for the obstacles to the purchase of agricultural machinery. Compared with the price of 10 yuan for a cow (a low-priced war bonus cow), the price of a horse can easily cost hundreds of yuan to make most people daunted. And this price is still those horses, if it is a good horse, the price is probably even more expensive. What's more, this horse is not worry-free at all, and the cost is also very high, especially in the busy farming season, the beans must be fed every day, otherwise the fat will fall out of the work.

In such a situation, it is not surprising that the number of agricultural machinery in rural areas is growing slowly, and the cost is too high. Nowadays, in many rural areas, some wounded veterans who have just returned from the battlefield have purchased some agricultural machinery in joint ventures, and then leased them to villagers in urgent need of machinery in the same village or even in neighboring villages. The rental price was quite reasonable, and the farmers were full of praise for using it, and these wounded veterans on the one hand improved their status in the village, and on the other hand, they also found a way to make money for themselves.

After all, many of them were injured on the battlefield and were not in good health as before, and they were all simple peasants, and most of them did not know how to manage the large amount of money they received, so they returned to their hometowns to do some agriculture-related work under the establishment of the soldiers' committee. For example, the current purchase of agricultural machinery and then leasing it out is an example, which is definitely a long-term and stable income at a time when the grain planting area on the east coast is expanding every year.

Three days later, the Anderson family, who were drying wheat in the drying yard in front of their house, finally had the good news: the harvester would drive into his field tomorrow to harvest. Upon hearing the news, Anderson immediately sent his wife back to the village to buy some cured meats and beer, and tonight he had to treat the harvester driver (a veteran) to dinner, so that he could be careful when he worked, so that a large amount of wheat would not be lost in the field, which would be a loss. In addition, since the harvester harvests grain for everyone free of charge, it is customary to prepare not only the driver's rations but also the rations of the two horses (in rotation) - alfalfa and beans.

And the results of the grain harvest in the previous days are almost counted. After the grain of the first few households is dried and put into storage, the yield per mu is about 70-90 catties. The wheat fields in New Konish Township were opened up at the beginning of the 46th year, when after the reclamation was completed, everyone planted some beans, vegetables, corn, sweet potatoes and other miscellaneous grains in the field, and in the autumn after the harvest, under the unified call of the township government, all wheat seeds were transported from the Tongguò No. 2 road in Hekou Township, Zhenhai County. Therefore, in the strict sense of the word, it is not surprising that these wheat fields in New Cornish are almost half-grown in the first year, and the yield is so dismal.

You know, the peasants in this township are either from the Ming Dynasty or from the Duchy of Prussia in Livonia, and even a few immigrants from England, where agricultural technology is more advanced, and the Ministry of Agriculture has also specially allocated a certain quota of Andalusian black cattle here to sell (there is more organic fertilizer on farmland), so if it is cooked land, it will not be done like this. The harvest of cooked land should be one hundred and fifty or sixty catties per mu, and this is mostly the case in Xihu County. Not only is the land more fertile, the cattle are more abundant than here, and the irrigation system is much higher than that of New Konis, which is mostly dryland, so that the grain yield is twice as high as here.

Anderson compared the situation of those farmers, well, everyone does take care of the fields more diligently, but his family has eight beef cows, and those people are some poor eggs who have not been here for a long time, and it is already a fluke to have one or two cows, how can the amount of manure be compared with his own family? He estimated that the yield of his family's 20 acres of wheat field should be more than 100 catties, and if he was lucky, he might even reach about 110 catties.

15 catties of seeds per acre of land (the soil is not fertile enough, you can't sprinkle too many seeds, otherwise the number of deflated grains will increase greatly, and it is easier to be overwhelmed by weeds during the growth process, which actually shows that the wide planting and thin harvest is a very unreliable thing), the harvest is 100-110 catties, and the seed harvest ratio is 1:7, which is quite not low. It is believed that with the implementation of the three-crop rotation system for a longer period of time, this sub-harvest ratio will continue to rise. (To be continued......)