January 20, 1645, Pasture Ridge, sunny.

A harvester pulled by four horses is busy in the field. The soil is not fertile enough to grow wheat and other food crops, so the technicians at the township agricultural technology station began to instruct the settlers to grow alfalfa, an excellent pasture here. At the same time, vigorously develop animal husbandry in the local area, while increasing farmers' income, it can also provide a large number of fresh skins as primary raw materials for the country, so as to revitalize the national leather industry.

Located five or six kilometers northwest of the later town of Christal, a small castle has been built. As early as March last year, the first settlers were welcomed to the area, where they burned the land and stacked the shallow silt from the dredgers on the surface of the farmland they had carved out. In May, they planted overwintering wheat on the farmland, and it was almost harvest time. Of course, wheat is sown only in the more fertile plains of the Kamakang River, and in the vast rolling hills, alfalfa is planted by the government.

By the end of December last year, a new batch of immigrants from Shandong Province from the Ming Kingdom came to the east coast by boat. After the initial quarantine period, most of these people were assigned to Meilin Port, Chuyi Fort, Qishan Fort, Xia Yihe Fort, Canyon Fort, Ningjin Fort and other places in the Yihe area, and a small number were assigned to Xihu Township, Dafeng Fort and Mucaoling Fort in the Huxi Agricultural Region. Among them, Fort Grassy Ridge, as a newly built fortress - was also the first settlement in the eastern republic to penetrate into the hilly areas, and was allocated a relatively large number of men. About 500 immigrants from Wendeng County, the capital of Dengzhou, were resettled here.

Before their arrival, the Ministry of Civil Affairs had already settled seven or eight batches of more than 300 Estonians and 150 Malay women who had migrated from New China to balance the gender ratio. After the arrival of the 500 immigrants from Wendeng County, the Ministry of Civil Affairs routinely distributed nearly 200 Polish women to the area - also to balance the ratio of men to women.

According to a drunken official from the Ministry of Civil Affairs who came to inspect the area, almost all the money earned by the East Coast government is now spent on these immigrants: building them houses, building them farm tools, building them roads, buying them livestock, and finally buying them daughters-in-law, which is a communist society!

Everyone doesn't quite understand what a communist society is, but the Ming immigrants who came to the local area are grateful to the "masters" for their kindness. When I first came, I divided the house and the land, and after a few days, I divided the cattle and the sheep, and I heard that the daughter-in-law will be divided in the future, why is this like a dream? Therefore. The newcomers were all enthusiastic. At the moment, they are all busy in the field.

Shao Yuanyi got off the wharf with a big bag, and the wharf was full of people, but most of them were inland steamboats transporting supplies. Now the popularity of this place is getting higher and higher, he sighed secretly. Then he crossed the dock with a large bag. Continue towards the front. Immediately off the pier is a small restaurant. Business is booming. Speaking of the owner of this small restaurant, Shao Yuanyi really knew him, and he came to the east coast from Nanzhili with him. Somehow, this guy married an Ottoman widow who had immigrated to the East Coast. It just so happened that the widow was quite wealthy, and now the two opened a small restaurant by the dock, specializing in Turkish lamb pilaf and other special foods. Sailors and technicians who built castles often come here to eat, they have a higher income, and their consumption power is very strong, often a pilaf, a plate of sauce beef, and a pot of milk tea are only a dime, for these people with all kinds of bonuses and travel subsidies The monthly income is close to 10 yuan as long as they don't eat every day is not a problem at all, so their income is quite good.

Hurriedly passing by the small restaurant, Shao Yuanyi, who was a little hungry in his belly, hurriedly walked to his home in the north of the city. Now he has moved to Mucaoling to live, and the Xihu Township Health Center is presided over by a doctor newly sent by the Ministry of Health from the south, and as for Dafengbao, it is temporarily managed by two apprentices led by Shao Yuanyi. This time he went to Dafengbao on a business trip, a senior technician of the harvest agricultural machinery factory had some old physical problems, his two apprentices couldn't get it, and in the end they sent someone to ask him to go over to diagnose, and it was the end after prescribing the medicine.

As for why he moved from the "prosperous place" of Xihu Township to the pasture ridge in the deep hilly and wild area, this has to start with the policy issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs a while ago. In the middle of last year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a policy to encourage old immigrants in China to settle down and pioneer in Mucaoling, in order to help and guide the new immigrants as much as possible, forming a situation in which the old lead the new. Of course, the state will not let these people go in vain, in addition to the normal allocation of a few acres of farmland (up to 30 acres), they are also allowed to redeem an additional 20 acres of sloping land, and the price is quite cheap, only three yuan per mu, almost the same as the gift. Shao Yuanyi was one of the landless people who quit their jobs in the city and moved to Mucaoling with their savings and their families.

His home was about three or four miles north of the city, and there was a typical east-bank village: a standard east-bank dwelling facing north and south, with a large fishpond dug at the head of the village, a small river and irrigation cistern behind the village, and a few oak or paraná pines planted in front of the door. Seven or eight bear children were playing around, and a few hounds followed them with their tails wagging and flatteringly.

When he walked into the village, someone greeted him, and Shao Yuanyi responded one by one with a smile. In front of the village is a smooth gravel road, and on the north side of the road is a sunlit irrigation canal about one meter wide, covered with wooden planks, and below the planks is the river flowing forward. A steam water pumping station was built at the head of the village, which was jointly managed by the village and the agricultural technology station, and the pumping machine worked day and night to continuously extract water from the Kamakang River into the canal and then irrigate the farmland.

The East Coast government's investment in farmland and water conservancy is huge. Every winter, a large number of people are organized to dig rivers, dig canals, repair reservoirs, and build water lifting stations, and the manpower and material resources consumed are unknown. But the results are also huge, as evidenced by the cobweb-like rural irrigation network, which will bring huge food production to local farmers.

"The merit is in the contemporary, and the benefit is in the future, which is much stronger than the so-called bullshit court of the Ming Dynasty." Shao Yuanyi sighed every time he saw these things. Now he is more and more influenced by the people of the East Coast, and his prejudice against Da Ming is getting deeper and deeper. Compared with the officials and masters of the Ming Dynasty who sit in the official office all day long and recite poems and paint, the officials and masters on the east coast are much better, they are all doers, and Shao Yuanyi has seen them wandering around factories, construction sites and fields more than once. The social atmosphere on the entire east coast is very good, and everyone is willing to talk less and do more, and some big cadres from the south have even taken off their leather boots and rolled up their trousers to go down to the fields to demonstrate how to plant rice. If such a country still does not prosper, then there is no heavenly reason.

All kinds of horse-drawn corn harvesters, horse-drawn wheat harvesters, horse-drawn forage harvesters and other equipment produced by the harvest agricultural machinery factory are very popular in the vast rural areas, but their high prices are enough to make people sigh. However, this did not bother the vast number of farmers on the east coast, who organized by the village chief of their village to raise funds, buy the equipment back, and then put on their own horses to carry out the harvesting work. For some families with a small number of people, the village will also organize people to help them harvest, thresh, and dry the grain in the field. The atmosphere in the countryside is very simple, and the prestige of the government at the grassroots level is accumulated little by little.

Last year, all the farmland in the village was planted with overwintering wheat, and by the end of January, the busy season for grain harvest had basically passed. Most of the wheat in the fields has been harvested, and only a very small part of the fields are still in the final harvest. Some of the anxious farmers had even finished plowing the wheat harvest, carrying baskets and scattering the rice seeds in the fields as they went. Nowadays, there is a shortage of manpower, but the sowing area is not small, so there is no seedling planting or throwing on this side of the pasture ridge. The traditional method of sowing rice is still used, in which rice seeds are evenly spread in the cultivated field, and then the ridges of the irrigation canals are dug to allow the river water from the canals to enter the fields. And when the seeds are soaked in water for a day, they will almost germinate.

Of course, this method is not as productive as cultivating seedlings in advance, but it is also not a good way to do it on the eastern coast, where the rural labor force has always been insufficient. In fact, in the 21st century, rural farmers in some areas of China are not very enthusiastic about farming, and they adopt this method, instead of the kind of laborious rice planting and throwing seedlings. Two crops are planted every year, one season of wheat and one season of rice, wheat is harvested in summer grain, and rice is harvested in autumn grain.

These farmers from Shandong planted broad beans from the agricultural technology station on the ridges, and planted some taro on both sides of the canal, almost not even an inch of open space was wasted, which made people look amazing. Compared with the extensive large-scale farm agriculture of North America in later generations, the Huxi agricultural area in front of him is a model of real finesse. The American way of planting is very damaging to the shallow soil suitable for planting, and the thickness of the soil suitable for cultivation will become lower and lower over time, and the East Coasters will not repeat their mistakes.

Some children played around the canals and rice paddies, occasionally screaming and catching a fish. Smoke rose from every house in the village not far away, and from time to time a few rural women stood at the door of the house and shouted a few words in a loud voice, and then a child who played like a mud monkey ran home to lunch. Some children who had too much fun were grabbed by their parents and beaten their buttocks a few times, and suddenly burst into tears.

Shao Yuanyi looked at the children who were crying while staring at the braised mutton on the stove and drooling, shook his head and smiled, this is called life. (To be continued......)