In addition, there are villagers who rent 40,000 mu of land to the Xue family, most of them have no other fields in their homes, and this rent alone is definitely not enough to feed the family.

Therefore, when the villagers signed the contract, they had a requirement that within five years of the lease of the land to the Xue family, if the Xue family had a need to recruit workers, they must be recruited first.

And if they don't make mistakes themselves, they must ensure how many jobs they can do in a year, so that they can exchange for enough food to at least solve the problem of food and clothing for the family.

Of course, if they do not meet the requirements of the Xue family due to their own reasons, or if they are slack in the process of work, the Xue family naturally has the right not to recruit them.

It is not an exaggeration to say that such a contract is a win-win situation for both parties, which not only ensures that the Xue family has enough manpower, but also ensures that the villagers can have food and clothing, so the Li Zheng of these villages tried their best to facilitate this transaction in the first place.

There are about 12,000 villagers, who are basically the same as the long-term workers, and they can work as a family if they want.

All of them are converted into labor, which is about six thousand.

The long-term workers and these villagers are about 20,000 laborers in total.

So there is at least 40,000 laborers missing.

Fengqing County has a registered population of about 240,000, and after removing the more than 10,000 people whose fields were rented by their own families, there are about 230,000 left.

If it is good to have leisure time, it is easy to recruit 40,000 laborers from 230,000 people, regardless of gender.

But October happens to be the busy farming season, and that's enough.

Fortunately, because digging sweet potatoes and cuttings should be carried out at the same time, the ten days when the two crossed were exactly late October, and at this time the most busy time for the people had been avoided.

For example, Xue Langjing left Liujia Village on October 20, and Liujia Village no longer needed her extra labor.

Therefore, it will be easier to recruit people at this time, otherwise the Xue family really doesn't know where to recruit.

The main farm work is wheat planting, harvesting buds, and the most labor-intensive rice harvesting, which is basically completed by the end of October.

In late October, the villagers' own work was basically only drying buds, drying rice, tying straw, and planting green manure and rapeseed.

Well, well, it seems to be busy.

But in short, this is not the busiest time, 230,000 people are about 40,000 households, and it should still be okay for each household to take a handful of labor.

Therefore, it should not be too much of a problem for the Xue family to recruit enough people.

Ten days is just the minimum amount of time required to dig and plant sweet potatoes, and there are many tasks to follow, such as watering, cleaning up sweet potatoes, etc., and then you will have to hire a few more days.

In this way, just the wages of these ten days, plus food and housing, for the people, the input is more or less than the grain harvest of planting one acre of land, which is naturally cost-effective.

In the past, if there was such a job, the ordinary villagers were afraid that they would rush to do it, and the Xue family was not afraid that they would not want to come.

However, this has to be greeted by the villagers in advance, so that the villagers who are interested in working can arrange their own farm work time.

Therefore, at the beginning of October, Xue Kejing, who was in charge of recruitment, had already discussed with Pavilion Chief Cai to the pavilion chiefs of various towns about recruitment.

For the rich to come to their town to recruit workers, these pavilion chiefs are naturally a hundred willing, and they are quite active in gathering people.

And on the second day after Xue Langjing left home, Jiang Qianyue personally went to Zheng Linchuna to discuss sweet potatoes with him and the things she explained before leaving.

Sure enough, as they thought before, Zheng Linchu did not have any intention of refusing, but praised Jiang Qianyue for her thoughtfulness.

Coincidentally, Zheng Linchu also made plans for this batch of sweet potatoes.

Among them, 70,000 acres of output are used to make sweet potato shreds and sweet potato noodles, another 60,000 acres are used to make sweet potato flour and vermicelli, and the remaining 20,000 acres of sweet potatoes are dried to make dried sweet potatoes and sugar.

As soon as she heard that sweet potatoes were used to make sugar, Jiang Qianyue couldn't help but take a deep breath.

This thing only means one word - expensive!

For example, honey is the cheapest, and it costs 150 yuan a catty.

Sugar is a rare commodity in ordinary people's homes, and they are usually reluctant to eat it, and when she first came to Xue's house, this sugar was only occasionally willing to be used as a seasoning.

Now that he is rich, he eats more sugar at home.

A small piece of starch candy the size of half an adult's thumb costs two cents, which is worth a pound of rice grain.

She only knew that caramel was probably made from wheat, buds and other grains.

And the food consumed to make caramel is huge, and now ordinary people can't solve the problem of food and clothing, so how can they be willing to take out a lot of grain to make caramel candy, so this sugar is becoming more and more expensive.

And even if this sweet potato is just boiled in water, it will taste as sweet as honey, not much worse than caramel sugar, and if it is made into sugar, it will inevitably be sweeter and more popular than the caramel on the market.

She seemed to be able to imagine what a huge profit there was in this, especially through the hands of the Zheng family, selling it to the whole country, which would increase its value.

Although she doesn't know how to make sugar, even a layman knows that the sugar content of sweet potatoes is definitely higher than that of rice, and its cost can be at least several times different.

20,000 acres of sweet potatoes, even if only a part of them is used to make sugar, the yield must be frighteningly high, this Zheng family is afraid that the sugar of the entire Chu country will be rounded!

It can only be said that the Zheng family really deserves to be the only imperial merchant in Dachu.

Jiang Qianyue was shocked, so she saw Zheng Linchu take out the secret recipe for making sweet potatoes and sugar and hand it to her directly.

After taking this secret recipe, she couldn't help but praise in her heart, this person from the Zheng family is really atmospheric! Such a secret recipe is given.

At this time, I heard Zheng Linchu sigh, "When I first tasted that sweet potato, I only felt that it was as sweet as honey, and it belonged to grain, so I thought it should be able to make sugar!" I've searched almost all the codex left by my ancestors, and finally found this method of making sugar, but I'll have to bother you to try how to make it. ”

Jiang Qianyue took a general look at the process of making sugar, and carefully put it away.

"Lin Chu rest assured, I know this, it's just that this method of making sugar is so valuable, naturally it can't be shown to people casually, if you really want to make it, you can only recruit those long-term workers to keep this secret recipe, as for the others, we don't dare to rest assured, so this output..."

"I know this, you just need to make it."

Speaking of this, Zheng Linchu paused before saying, "For sweet potatoes, there are a few precautions that you must pay attention to. ”

"What?"

Zheng Linchu reminded, "The sweet potatoes used to make sweet potato flour and vermicelli must be dug up before the frost falls. And it can't be left for too long, otherwise it will continue to be saccharified, and the yield of this sweet potato flour will be greatly reduced..."