Hope always comes in spring, winter is gone, spring is coming, the warm wind blowing from the lower reaches of the grass river blows the snow, blows the river, blows the green leaves, and wakes up the summer city. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The spring of a year ago was also spring, but it was not like this, as if the times had changed, from the dim cave to the bright city, the people in the city will always remember the changes of a year ago, and they don't know what the summer city will become this year.

The wheat sprouts begin to turn green, the first break of spring is postponed, and people rush to the fields in earthen baskets carrying strits of strobs and fermented dung.

Muma was not annoyed by the postponement of the first day of retirement, because the land outside the city that was about to belong to him had been surrounded by lime.

He always felt that something was going to happen this year, what were the cattle traps and stones that Ji Xia collected in the winter for? What did those slaves do when they cut down trees for the winter? Will the people of Echeng and the Acropolis come to the festival in May this year?

Even when topdressing the regreening wheat seedlings, he always looks back at the grass river, and always feels that this spring not only takes away the winter, but also seems to take away a lot of old things, as if last spring took away the gathering and hunting brought about the city planting, what will this spring bring?

The river of grass behind him had been civilized, and the wood that the slaves had cut down for the winter floated down the river to the vicinity of the wharf, and the slaves on the wharf were driven by leather whips to jump into the icy water, and pulled the logs to the shore in rows, taking turns roasting the fire.

Mountains of timber covered the riverbank, and the people of Xia Cheng were discussing what these logs were going to do, and they always felt that the city seemed to be about to undergo large-scale construction, but they didn't know that this construction was a levy for conscription? Or use slaves? Or hire with money?

At the end of the wheat field topdressing, the people of Xiacheng saw the clue that the city was really going to be built on a large scale.

Every day, Ji Xia in their eyes took a few people to patrol a flat hillside outside Xia City, and sometimes set up some wooden sticks to measure.

It was a flat valley with low mounds on both sides, and most of the timber harvested in the winter was piled up there.

Because the land has not yet been completely dissolved, construction has not started for a long time, and no one knows what exactly is going to be built there.

After more than ten days of measurement, the tribesmen were distracted by another matter, which was more relevant to them than the aimless speculation, and attracted their attention.

After the land along the Grass River had melted out of the frozen soil, it was speculated that a winter's combination of wood and stone and cattle traps appeared on a fertile land that had not yet been pitted.

The curved and strange stone plough appeared for the first time in the eyes of the people of Xiacheng, a cow pulling a bronze plow, Mu Ma saw that the cow sleeve he had cut down in winter was put on the neck of the ox, the sturdy gelding lowered its head, the meat on its neck was piled up, and the rope was tied to the neck as if it was going to suffocate to death, and it was panting with its mouth open.

The rope that passed through the ox lass stretched backwards and was pulled under the curved wooden plow, behind which Chen Jian held the wooden plow with one hand and waved a long whip with his right hand, whipping the gelding in front of him vigorously.

Occasionally stop, lift the wooden plough and knock the dirt off it, or pull the bronze ploughshare up and clamp it with a wooden wedge to adjust the depth of the plough.

The red fish led the ox in front of it, walking straight along the white-gray line drawn, and the rope through the ox's nose pulled the gelding, which had never pulled the ploughshare, and although it was heavy, the gelding was more willing to go forward than the pain in the nose.

The gelding is very obedient, will not stand up to people, and loses the courage of the bull, but in the eyes of people, the bull with courage is not a good bull, even if it is a cow or a horse, it also deviates from the laws of nature, whether it is good or bad, it is no longer decided by nature, but declared by man.

How much can a person plow in a day?

The record of the people of Xiacheng is three and a half acres, and the winner gets a pig's tooth dagger that symbolizes honor, and the price is that after the planing, he was tired and diarrhea and lay on the kang for five days, which is both a legend and a joke.

How much land can a cow plow in a day?

I can't dig a penny.

How much land can a person and a cow plough?

The people of Xia Cheng have not seen it, and Mu Ma has never seen it, so in the first ten days of spring, thousands of people in Xia City stood on the bank of the river, and Mu Ma did not even mop the mud of his house, and he saw the noon meal from the morning sun came out.

The greenish, yellowish earth had left two long black wounds, the smell of freshly ploughed earth wafted around the people with the slightly fishy smell of spring, and a few black long-tailed finches stood on the freshly turned dirt looking for the insects that had woken up, and taunted the cows resting on the ground with their free wings, still carrying cows and ropes.

Chen Jian and Hongyu were drinking water in the field, and Yu Qian'er led a few younger brothers and sisters to measure the land ploughed in the morning with the standard acre rope of the city.

The onlookers watched as the ropes stretched out, and in the middle of the land they were rolled up and straightened again, their eyes widened.

When Yu Qian'er dragged the rope and ran back, before she could say it, the people next to her shouted in unison: "Four acres of land!" ”

The man who had been rewarded for plowing the land and was the first to taste the stir-fried vegetables in Echeng felt out the pig's tooth pendant hanging around his neck, ran to the old cow's side, hung the pendant on the cow sleeve with a pious and jealous mood, and looked at his palms full of calluses because of ploughing, and choked speechlessly.

The newly turned ground is deep and straight. Chen Jian, who had ploughed four acres of land, was not tired and diarrhea, drank a can of water, wiped his sweat, and joked with a few people next to him.

The clansmen stood on the ground, and the sound of the drums of the city's lunch could not bring them back to their senses until they were driven back to eat by Chen Jian.

After lunch, two horse-drawn heavy ploughs appeared on the land that had been planed last year and was ready to break the top of the ridge and turn it into a furrow this year, and planned to plant corn.

This is a cultivated land, not open land, and the already soft land only needs to turn the convex ridge top into a concave, which is more amazing to the tribesmen than in the morning.

When the sun set, the onlookers counted loudly, as if they were cheering for Jian Chen, but Jian Chen was not tired, it was only the horse that was tired, but the horse couldn't understand.

"Eighteen!"

"There is one more round trip before the mountain falls, and that is twenty!"

"My God, twenty acres of land? It's better than turning it with a hoe, you see, it takes a lot of effort to turn the hoe so deep, and some people just cut a layer shallowly in order to save effort......"

"If that's the case, how much land can one person plant?"

"A hundred acres?"

"Give me the cow, I can plant a hundred acres, absolutely a hundred acres!"

"I can't use this year's spring ploughing, so tired!"

The people next to him were talking, Mu Ma stared at the cow on the back of the cow in the distance, and suddenly figured it out in his heart.

The ox cover was made of his own, and the ploughshare, though bronze, was very similar to the stones that had been polished in winter, and the bent wood......

One winter, everyone was speculating about what those things were for, and now there is finally an answer.

On the first night after knowing the answer, many people did not sleep well, and even dreamed that they were walking on a straight ground with a wooden plow.

Seem...... In the dream, there was also a woman, a woman who only slept with herself, pulling the rope on the cow's nose in front of the cow, but she couldn't see it clearly, but she was always a woman.

The next day was not a mid-year break, and they still had to work, but many people didn't get up when the drums sounded in the morning, and they talked for too long last night, and their dreams were so beautiful that they didn't want to get up.

When everyone was called, there were two more rules in the city that they didn't have before.

Before yesterday, these two rules were incredible, and even if the people accepted them, they did not understand them; But after yesterday, those two rules became logical and natural.

"It is strictly forbidden for any clan or individual to kill cattle and horses for meat. If the ox dies, it needs to be reported to the city, and the city will inspect it before it can be sure that it will eat meat, otherwise it will be fined. ”

"In the future, when ancestors were sacrificed, cattle replaced pigs and sheep as the most important sacrifices."

It was a day when the historical status of pigs and sheep declined, but everyone felt that it should be so, until much later, there was even another unwritten rule or custom: every year before the spring ploughing in April, the cows would eat vegetarian dumplings. There are even children who make up nursery rhymes: a thousand beatings, thousands of scolding, just for the spring ploughing of this meal.

Oxen, which were originally used only for meat and occasionally pulled carts, began to become the most important supporting role in the life of the agrarian people, and the important thing was no longer meat and milk, but the strong physique and diligent labor.

There are not too many cattle in the city, but more than 100 of them have been exchanged for Echeng, and the grain mortgaged by Taobei has been ground into powder and transported to Echeng, and a new batch of cattle is on the way.

Except for the stallions and mares, only one hundred and fifty war horses remained, and all the rest became steals and ploughing horses because of various unqualified conditions.

A large number of stone ploughs and wooden ploughs are still being made, but the city strictly manages the technology and strictly prohibits leakage, and most of the cattle and horses are also in the public property of the city.

And because of the appearance of the wooden plough, the value of cattle has increased a lot, a large number of shell coins are no longer only used in exchange for food and daily necessities, Chen Jian does not have to worry about credit bankruptcy, even if there is no grain, the ploughing cattle can also support the credit of those shell coins.

At the citizens' assembly in the city, Chen Jian proposed the use of ploughing oxen and wooden ploughs, which were provided to the various tribes, but the tribes who used them had to pay one-fifteenth of the grain every year, and these ploughing oxen and horses could completely replace the people who worked by hand.

The clan leader and the clansmen just discussed it for a while, and then gladly accepted this clause, although with the addition of the fifteen taxes that should have been paid, the tax in Xia Cheng had reached eight to one, but the clan leader could only accept it.

With oxen and stone ploughs, they can cultivate more land, and they have carefully calculated that they only need to cultivate one-fifteenth more land this year to be the same as last year, and if they have one-fifteenth more, they will be considered to have earned themselves.

No matter how you look at it, these ploughing oxen and wooden ploughs could not have only one-fifteenth more land, and the choice is obvious, but they ignore that the newly cultivated land also needs one-eighth of the tax.

For a whole decade, the people of the various clans learned how to hold the plough and how to wade the ground, and quietly went to the cowshed run by the wolf's skin to check on the cattle and horses they liked and considered the most capable, hoping that they would be divided into the hands of their tribe.

The rules of the city were very strict, and the divided cattle and horses required the clan to prepare forage, and if they were hungry and thin, they would not only be fined grain, but also confiscate a part of the land and take back the cultivated cattle, which was a severe punishment that had never been severe.

There are strict rules on how much bean feed is needed each year, including coarse salt for cattle is also distributed among the tribes, with half of the cow dung going to the cities and the other half to the clans.

For the whole month, Mu Ma was also learning how to help the plow, but in the evening, he would find the eleven of his companions and discuss their future.

"With cattle farming, four hundred catties of grain a year for one person, I think we can get it."

On the day before the break, when several of the people who had returned from the plough had gathered with him, he confidently came to the above conclusion. (To be continued.) )