As long as the effort is deep, the iron pestle is sharpened into a needle. Although he did not understand technology and did not have modern machinery and equipment, Zhu Youzhen, with a little common sense, still asked the workers to start digging wells on the wasteland.

They used the simplest way to tell: where the ground is low-lying, and preferably there are some weeds on the ground, then there should be water underneath.

Once the location is chosen, it is a matter of perseverance and deep chisel. If you change to normal, you can't see water when you dig a well, so you have to change places and start over. But Zhu Youzhen doesn't care about that set, three zhang is six zhang without water, and six zhang is sixteen zhang without water, anyway, it is a road to the dark, and he will never stop if he doesn't see water.

In his opinion, sinking a well is like playing mahjong, and in a sense, it also requires a little luck. After the draw, instead of changing cards randomly, it is better to wait for one.

Compared to professional drilling teams, these workers are inexperienced. But they have one advantage, and that is that there are many people! If it weren't for the fact that the working surface of the well was too small, Zhu Youzhen would be eager to let thousands of people dig a well together, and one eye would be one eye!

Even so, each well can still be assigned more than 100 workers. The workers work in four shifts, around the clock; There are more than 20 people in each shift, some are responsible for digging soil on the working face, some are responsible for loading soil into the basket, some are responsible for hanging soil, and some are responsible for transporting the soil that is hoisted up, and the whole process is completed in one go without stopping. When one shift is tired, the other shift immediately tops up, which is called "people don't stop". The work surface is to see that you go down, and you can dig more than a foot deep in less than half an hour.

As the saying goes, "the emperor pays off", and soon, this "violent well sinking method" has paid off. In the first few wells, when digging below the ground, the soil was obviously damp; Dig a little further down, and clear groundwater will bubble up!

With a successful precedent, the workers will have a bottom in their hearts when they start working again. And to be honest, even if they can't get water, they are not in a hurry, anyway, the salary is calculated according to the amount of earthwork excavated. Even if you still don't get out of the water after beating a hundred zhang, how much salary should be paid by the Jingyang merchant gang, no one will be less. This is different from those well-drilling teams, which must ensure that water is produced, otherwise it will be in vain.

However, in seven or eight days, nearly 100 new wells have appeared in the fields of Jingyang County. The well water is sweet and clear, and it can be drunk directly, which is much cleaner than the water of the Jing River, which is full of muddy soup.

With a water source, the rest is easy. The workers leveled the ground according to the old rules, ploughed deeply, watered it once, and fertilized it once, and the wasteland became arable land. It's far from fertile, but at least it's enough to grow crops.

But at this time, it is already a small summer season, even if it is the "Xiaoice River" period, when summer arrives, the weather is still relatively hot. The time to sow cotton has long been missed, and according to the experience of farmers, it is time to plant some mung beans or sesame seeds.

But Zhu Youzhen's choice once again surprised everyone! He announced that all the newly cultivated land north of the Jing River will be planted with trees, and all the land south will be planted with grass!

Now the workers are all stupid. In their opinion, if planting trees can also break branches to burn firewood, or use tree trunks to beat purlin rafters, then planting grass is useless. It is neither edible nor usable, and requires it to be taken care of as if it were a crop; In autumn, it's all yellow, and you won't get anything! I really don't know what this little gang leader thinks, probably either he is full of food, or his head is kicked by the donkey!

But for the sake of wages, they still carried out Zhu Youzhen's orders to the letter. The saplings and grass seeds were bought at a high price by the Jingyang merchants, and although it was not the season to plant trees, Zhu Youzhen still ordered the workers to plant them immediately, and they could live as much as they could.

Planting trees in summer is no better than in spring. Due to the strong sunlight, in order to prevent the water stored in the seedlings from evaporating too quickly, it is necessary to cut off some of the branches and leaves, and the wounds at the cutting area must be carefully bandaged. As a result, the workload is more than 10 times more than planting trees in the spring.

But in Zhu Youzhen's view, no matter how heavy the workload is, this work must also be done. Because the rainy season is coming soon, don't look at the drought in Shaanxi in recent years, but it can be guaranteed that there will be heavy rain this summer. The vegetation of the Loess Plateau is sparse and the soil erosion is serious. In the event of heavy rainfall, it is very prone to geological disasters such as mudslides.

And the root system of trees is of great help in fixing the soil. As long as the tree planting is successful, at least there will be no mudslides on both sides of the Jing River.

Moreover, the forest has an important role, that is, it can block the wind and sand. Strong winds can easily cause crops to lodging, and with the protection of trees, crops have an extra barrier, and a good harvest will increase hope.

If all these places are planted with crops, it is okay if there is no disaster, but if there is a disaster, it will be a heavy loss. The lesson of "deforestation and land reclamation" in his previous life was profound enough, so much so that he had to "return farmland to forest" later, and Zhu Youzhen certainly would not repeat the mistakes of history.

When Zhu Youzhen patiently explained these truths to everyone, the workers understood the good intentions of the helper, and their enthusiasm for planting trees increased a lot.

But Zhu Youzhen did not give any explanation for the purpose of those grasses, and no one was allowed to ask questions. Even after the pasture is planted, it is immediately closed and managed, and idle people are not even allowed to enter.

Only Sun Chuanting, Qi Meifeng and other Zhu Youzhen's most reliable team members know the deep meaning of what he did. It turned out that he wanted to turn these newly cultivated lands into a pasture, one for raising horses, and the other for military training!

It turned out that Zhu Youzhen had been thinking about a question in his heart since he left Liaodong: how to defeat the powerful Jurchen cavalry in the field?

Traditional infantry is obviously not good, and the mobility is simply incomparable. Defending the city is acceptable, but fighting with cavalry in the field is equivalent to sending it to death.

Large-scale firearms units are naturally a sharp weapon for restraining cavalry, and they are also the inevitable direction of development of military reform. However, the slow firing speed of existing firearms, whether bird guns or flintlock pistols, is their fatal weakness. After the cavalry enters the firing range, it can often only fire one round, and before it can fire again, they have already rushed to the front. Therefore, until this technical problem is solved, it is probably unrealistic to expect to eliminate the Jurchen cavalry with firearms.

After thinking about it, Zhu Youzhen thought that the only feasible way was to fight-for-tat and use cavalry to deal with cavalry!

Throughout ancient Chinese history, there have been only a handful of victories over the northern nomads. Looking at these victories, whether it is Huo Quai's northern but Xiongnu, or Li Jing's 3,000 iron armor breaking Jieli, or Yue Fei's Zhu Xianzhen's 800,000 breaking 100,000, until the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Da, Lan Yu and other famous generals, all have an elite cavalry that can compete with their opponents.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen also decided to do the same, and from now on, he will focus on building his own cavalry. And the cavalry troops, of course, must have war horses, and of course there must be pastures for raising war horses. Therefore, the new reclamation land south of the Jing River has been given this important mission.

Looking at the pasture that was still bare before, but now it is green grass, Zhu Youzhen was full of pride. One day, he will lead a large number of cavalry from here and go north to make a general reckoning with the Jurchens who are full of evil!