At the beginning of February, the New Year's assessment will determine the agricultural development strategy for the new year, the potato planting area will be reduced to 1,000 steps, and the corn planting area shall not be less than 20,000 steps, and the winter wheat and summer corn rotation mode will be implemented, the winter wheat growth period is less than nine months, and the summer corn growth period is exactly three months, so that the rotation point is just right.

It just so happened that many wheat seeds were sown in the field last autumn, and the pressure of spring sowing this year is not very large, and the only problem is that the implementation of rice-wheat rotation has encountered new resistance, which is not artificial, but that Echigo rice is a well-known late-maturing variety, and it takes seven months from sowing to harvesting, which adds great difficulty to winter wheat planting.

The specific method is to sow rice seeds in the spring of the first year and harvest rice in autumn, which is a season of rice, and then sprinkle wheat seeds in the autumn of the first year to harvest wheat in the early summer of the second year, which is a season of wheat, replant corn in early summer and harvest corn in autumn, which is a season of corn, and then sow soybeans in the autumn of the second year, and harvest soybeans in the spring of the second year, which is a season of soybeans.

In this way, the first year of planting rice, wheat, the second year of planting corn, soybeans, and then the next cycle, this method is more complicated, the burden on the peasants is also relatively large, the four crops are planted back and forth, the peasants have to be busy all year round, the agricultural leisure time is relatively scattered, and it is likely to affect the burden of military service and general service.

The other is to insist on rice-wheat rotation, the premise is to replace the early maturing rice seeds of Omi to cultivate, in recent years, the Omi capital agricultural research project back up to Echigo, there have been experiments in Echigo several counties to do summer rice, the effect is basically satisfied, Echigo summer temperature 24, 5 degrees. It is a standard season of warm and rainy. By the end of September and the beginning of October, rain began. Then it turns to heavy snow, so summer rice and winter wheat can also be made.

To give up their own "Koshihikari rice" many Echigo people are reluctant, late-maturing rice is particularly sweet, replaced with early-maturing rice is inevitably inferior to their own Echigo rice, after the unified caliber Echigo people put forward a request to resolutely maintain the status of "Koshihikari rice", after the discussion at the evaluation meeting finally adopted.

Next, the followers put forward new requirements, and crop rotation is inevitable and necessary, so let the Echigo people choose the rotation method. The premise is that the rotation system in the area must be considered, and you can't grow corn at home, but rice at other families, so that it is inconvenient for farmers who live in a concentrated area to work and harvest together.

Then there is a big contradiction in the rotation system, insisting on planting late rice after the more can only give up corn and wheat, and plant soybeans, sugar beets or cabbage and other winter vegetables introduced by Li Ding, so as to transform into rice and soybean rotation system, but the yield of soybeans is low, and the highest yield obtained by the experimental field in recent years is a little more than three stones, and the average soybean yield is about two stones and six buckets.

If you take into account the consumption of land fertility by crop rotation, you need to discount it. Considering that various factors such as climate, water source, and land will drop a little, it is likely to swing around two stones. Autumn soybeans grow for up to four months, making them more suitable for late rice, but the Echigo people who are fed their mouths are less fond of growing this crop, even if they can extract oil.

Whether you like it or not is not something that the Chinese people can decide, the rotation of rice, wheat, corn and soybeans is naturally vetoed, and the rotation of early rice and wheat is vetoed, and finally the pros and cons are weighed or accepted by the late rice and soybean rotation method, so that the soybeans planted can be squeezed out of the soybean oil in the mill of the water wheel, and the soybean cake can be harvested, both of which are purchased for a long time.

Soybean oil has many functions, such as the noodle house under the jurisdiction of the biwa house, the sake house is promoting the cooking dishes of the Ming country, and the Ming country cuisine, which abandons the light taste, has been loved by the townspeople with good economic strength as soon as it is introduced.

Soybean cake as the residue left after soybean oil extraction, direct fertilizer application is the most important supplement in addition to compost and manure, which is rich in nutrients, broken and sprinkled into the land can be used as a base fertilizer before sowing, if it is top dressing, it only needs to be fermented at high temperature after emitting high temperature, it can be applied to the soil next to the crop.

In addition, soybean cake is also the favorite food of war horses, and there is only a few kinds of food such as grain, hay and bean cake if there is a lack of enough alfalfa fresh grass in winter, which is to ensure the quality of the cavalry of the Kira family and the Nagao family.

At the beginning of the year, more than 100 carefully selected female Kiso horses, Oshu horses, Holstein horses, and Trekna horses were arranged, and now these mares are pregnant, and the original breeding mares that gave birth to foals before are also slowly recovering after the foal is weaned, and it is expected that they will continue to breed this spring.

The evaluation meeting for the new year was held for a very long time, from February 2nd to February 5th, and Toraya Soyi was invited to Kasuga Mountain Castle for the first time, and he was still very helpless as the vice minister of the temple shrine, but now he is the only monk who can be used by the Kira family, and it is not surprising that he was invited to be the vice minister of diplomacy.

As a newly established temple and shrine, it is responsible for the entry of monks and land management of internal and external religious affairs, such as Gochi Kokubunji Temple, Echigo Zenko-ji Temple, and small temples such as Ryashisenji Temple and Lengyanji Temple.

Diplomacy is responsible for internal and external diplomatic liaison, the advantage of Asama Hitoshi is to be able to speak well, or to be good at fooling, a fierce appearance is good to cover up the nature of treacherous, as a monk as a diplomat has a natural advantage, the daimyo people are still very respectful of diplomatic monks, using him as a diplomatic envoy can reduce many dangers.

It is also a helpless move to let these two monks take charge of the practice, because of the seniority problem, they are not directly in charge, but they do not have the jurisdiction of the chief official at their heads, and they are also equipped with auxiliary vice-ministers below, and the vice-minister of Toraya Soyi is Kawada Shigekin, that is, Kawada Iwazurumaru's uncle, who joined the Kira family as a member of the council four years ago, and has handled a lot of affairs in the past few years, and there is no shortage of experience and qualifications.

The vice-official of Asayama Hisaka is the Shinyu kinzuna, and the Shinyu clan has been the banner of the Echigo Uesugi family for generations, and his grandfather, Shinyu Masana generation, has been the miscellaneous head of the Echigo Uesugi family in Kyoto, and he has been responsible for diplomatic affairs. To the time of his father, Yu Mizuna, followed the long tail as the scene. Now he is in charge of diplomacy as the flag of the Nagao family.

Today, Echigo's politics, economy, and military affairs are all in the hands of the Kira family. Shinyu Kintsuna was also transferred to the Kira family's commission system, and Kyoto had another Kira family's commission system, so he was transferred back to Echigo to serve as the vice-minister of the Asayama Hisaka.

After the three-day assessment meeting, Kira Yoshitoki was busy inspecting the spring sowing situation, which was the first time that Echigo had uniformly deployed a grain planting decree, and under the premise of fully respecting the land ownership of the lords of the country, the choice of grain planting must be subject to the dispatch of the people, and large-scale planting can give full play to the advantages of management. The goal of producing more food with less labour is also a goal that has been pursued by all.

At the beginning of March, Kira Yoshitoki traveled to the northwestern part of Kasuga Yamanica to inspect the Tetsupao Town, which is located in a relatively remote location, the nearest is the valley where the Copper House is located, where the Tepunpao Town was established and protected by the garrison, and the population of the town is the original crew of Kuniyu Village and the watchmaker Kronberg.

The tall and strong Kronberg had white hair, a ruddy complexion, and looked good, and when he saw the arrival of Kirayoshi, he greeted him with a smile on his face and said, "Honorable Lord Joseph. The books you brought last time were very useful, it turns out that my compatriots have long mastered the technique of hydraulic hammers. And I don't know anything about it, it's my mistake. ”

As a German, after a few years of study, he was able to stumble and speak some common Japanese and English, and although it was inevitable to emphasize that strange words were not accurate, Kira did not mind listening to foreign accents, and it was good to come and listen to Kronberg's new research, go to the horse farm to talk to John about the cute foal, or ride a horse around the pasture a few times.

"If I'm not mistaken, those books are written in Italian, but I didn't expect you to understand Italian?" Kira Yoshishi looked at him in amazement, he hadn't forgotten to collect Nanban's books in the past few years, and he hadn't thought about what use these books could be.

He received from the fleets of the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Dutch many books of paper and parchment, some of which were very old and some of which were religious prints of recent years, on which he could not understand the text and grammar, and the difference between the Middle and the modern scripts was still very great, and these useless books were stuffed by him into Kronberg.

"Yes, when I was younger, I spent a few years in Italy, where I learned the advanced techniques of watchmaking, so I could read books in Italian and barely read parts of Spanish." Cronberg shrugged and seemed reluctant to mention his past.

"Then let's talk about this hydraulic hammer!"

"Well, the prototype of the hydraulic hammer appeared two centuries ago, in 1368, in Yorkshire, England, there was a pedal hammer, and in 1467 Sije Grande invented the hydraulic drive hammer mode, the specific structure is that the shaft of the water wheel is parallel to the hammer bar, and the end is a cam, so that the hammer rod is raised between the fulcrum and the hammer head...... After nearly a hundred years of renovation, the hydraulic hammer has gradually improved into many versions, judging from the introduction in the books, the recent Italian development of a forging hammer that can lift 550 pounds, forging 200 times per minute, with a maximum stroke of about two feet. ”

"A five-hundred-and-fifty-pound hammer, forging two hundred times a minute, wouldn't this be for plate armor?"

Kronberg smiled and nodded, "Yes!" This is the new type of hammer for making plate armor, please follow me to the test workshop on Sekigawa, where a new type of hydraulic hammer is in operation, which is much better than the traditional hammer I used to design, and I can only do 400 pounds of hammer at 120 times per minute, and I believe that in the near future it will be improved to be comparable to that of Italian craftsmen. ”

Kira Yoshishi patted him on the shoulder speechlessly: "Making armor can be used as your side job, and you can study it slowly in the future......"

"In fact, this set of hydraulic forging hammer is used to create a standard barrel, there is this set of equipment can effectively solve the problem of mass production of flintlock muskets, the efficiency of the traditional barrel is too low, the yield rate is also very low, there is a hydraulic forging hammer as long as the processing of a similar mold can produce a qualified barrel."

"What? Can this thing still make a barrel? Kira Yoshitoki was taken aback.

Kronberg smiled mysteriously: "And the barrel." ”

“…… Don't scare me! Kira Yoshishi was shocked.

"Just kidding!" Kronberg smiled, and then beckoned into a little boy who seemed to be the child of the iron cannon craftsman family in Guoyou Village. Thick eyebrows and big eyes are quite energetic. Holding a delicate flintlock musket in his hand, he respectfully handed it to him.

This is a musket with a new and beautiful shape. There is no annoying arquebus, and it does not look short and clumsy, the slender wooden body is painted in oily red, and the silver-white bolt is very attractive, and Kira Yoshitoki looked at it carefully for a long time and asked: "This gun is not heavy, it looks like it is only about nine pounds!" What material is it made of? ”

"The body and stock are walnut, which is a very high-quality hardwood, with excellent performance in terms of vibration resistance, wear resistance, and some resistance to bending and corrosion. This flintlock musket casting is brass casting, which is formed at one time by using a hydraulic forging hammer to save the quality hidden dangers caused by welding. ”

Whether arquebus or flintlock musket, from the selection of materials to the production, processing and assembly is a very sophisticated and complex process, this flintlock musket has a breakthrough innovation, is to establish the standard mass production standards, from raw materials to processing processes have strict regulations, saving the traditional iron cannon craftsmen to hammer out the trouble of hammering out parts, but also reduce the difference in artificial casting level, welding process differences caused by the quality of muskets.

"Brass is money. It takes more than 50 years for a walnut tree to grow, and it seems that the cost of this flintlock musket is not cheap! Kira smacked his lips. After a little calculation, it is estimated that the cost price of this musket will cost 100 guan wen at least, and most of the manpower and material resources saved by using hydraulic forging hammers will not be able to take 200 guan wen.

"Tell me about the new technology of this musket? I'm interested in this new flintlock live gun. ”

Kronberg smiled, admiring the employer's generosity and dedication, and coughed lightly and said: "In recent years, we have been working hard to create a new type of flintlock musket, inspired by the experience and vision of Mr. Kuniyubei, many designs have also been successfully made after the completion of the hydraulic forging hammer, such as the design of the arrester iron in the bolt machine, and the design of a trigger linkage safety latch, the core technology of this flintlock musket is to add screw locking bolt technology. ”

After the hammer, the modified large safety latch was installed, and the bolt was fixed with three screws, these improvements were because there was a serious problem with the flintlock musket designed and used a few years ago, that is, the iron arresting device used in the doglock bolt would have the risk of misfiring when waiting to be fired, so the new flintlock musket abolished the iron arrester, modified a large safety lock to firmly hold the hammer, and the trigger linkage released the safety buckle when firing, which was more safe and reliable than the original design.

"How powerful is this flintlock musket?"

"Just try it." Kronberg summoned Kuniyu and Saemon, and the second-term governor of Kunitomo followed Kronberg with a new flintlock musket and followed the team to a shooting range outside the village.

The distance of the gun target was about 70 meters away, Kuniyu and Saemon quickly loaded lead bullet and gunpowder, and in just a few seconds completed the original complicated process, raised the flintlock musket and pulled the trigger, and suddenly the fire flashed, and a loud sound like thunder came into the ears, and then thick smoke sprayed out from the barrel, covering everything in front of them.

"The gunfire and smoke seemed to be stronger, and my ears were ringing." Ji Liang Yi was shocked by the sound of his teeth and grinned, as a family governor, he had to take care of decency, so everyone covered their ears, so he could only stand with a smile.

"I forgot to mention that there are cowhide earplugs here, which the gunners wear when they try guns." Cronberg pulled out a pair of earbuds and handed them over, giving Kira a muffled grunt.

After a long time they walked to the other side of the shooting range to check the target, and each humanoid wooden rake was either missing a human head or half of its body, and there were more than a dozen support points for the target, and the broken wood chips that were hit were scattered all over the ground.

Several of the elementary school apprentices who followed Kronberg were all children of the village of Kunitome Village, and they were naturally happy to see the shrine of the governor, and the reputation of Kunitome and Saemon was still quite big, and the people of Echigo went to the iron cannon house to order the traditional Kunitome iron cannon, and asked this to perform a few times, as long as it was an iron cannon produced by the Kuninomo family, he could make the gun hit the bull's-eye, and he could also make suggestions for use according to the standard of each gun, and the fame gradually spread throughout Echigo with the word of mouth of the country.

Nowadays, the production of Kokutomo Village is exported to Kinai, and in Echigo, it is not limited to buy three or five, or ten or twenty, as long as it is bought from the pipaya, some maintenance services will be done, and the non-man-made damage of the Kokutomo iron cannon promises to return the goods within one month and the warranty within half a year.

More than half a year can also be paid for maintenance according to the problem of iron cannons, scrapped iron cannons and low-cost recycling business, etc., in recent years, the days of Kokutomo Village have been getting better and better, more moisturizing than the days in Omi, Kokutomo and Saemon married a wife and gave birth to a daughter last year, and the days and beauty are indeed not like the sad life before.

Kronberg raised his cane and poked at the broken wooden rake, and the hardwood up to five centimeters thick was shattered, and when he saw this result, he said with satisfaction: "This is the power of the standard flintlock musket, if you get closer to the protection that can penetrate the plate armor, ordinary wooden shields can't stop his lethality." ”

"The power is not small, is there any other data?"

"Yes! After a total of 5,000 shots from 10 new guns, the maximum range was 180 meters, the effective maximum range was 135 meters, the best range was 70 to 90 meters, and the maximum lethality was 30 meters, which could easily penetrate the protection of any steel armor, as well as the five-inch-thick oak bunker. ”

Kira Yoshishi looked at the debris all over the ground with unfinished thinking, as if he had been born for a while, and then turned his head and asked, "What a great power!" How long will it take to equip my army? ”

"At any time, the inventory is about more than 230 pieces, and it only takes one month to work day and night."

"Have you decided on a name?"

"I named this new flintlock musket military flintlock pistol, and I don't think it will be a time to surpass his work, not even in my native country...... Not! It's time to work, sorry! I can only lose my company! Kronberg nodded at Kirayoshi, and called a group of his attendants to clean up the debris on the ground, and slowly left with his cane. (To be continued......)