Everyone looked at it, and it finally rained on the tenth day of March.

Although the land did not receive enough rain to nourish itself, the farmers planted the seeds with trepidation and anticipation.

At that time, Ming Xu had already moved to the newly bought house with his family and the young men who lived in their house, and the price of grain in Fuxing County had also risen by two percent.

The peasant households who had not heeded the warnings of the county officials, the Lizheng, and the village elders had begun to regret that they had sold a lot of grain, not because they had no grain now, but because they were afraid that the grain output would be reduced in the autumn.

As for the harvest, many people subconsciously chose not to consider such a terrible thing.

The Ming family and the Yu family have also entered the spring ploughing stage, but unlike the vast majority of families in Fuxing County, the land under their names is basically irrigated with water.

In addition to the original wells and ponds on Zhuangzi, Mingyue and Yu Jiayan also found people to go to different places and made more than a dozen waterwheels for them to divert water for irrigation.

The villagers of Wulitun were stained with the light of the Ming family, and the spring plowing had just begun, and the Ming family donated one of their water wheels to the village.

Of course, the Ming family also received the special benefit of being the first to use river water for irrigation.

Although it is inevitable that there are insatiable villagers who say sour things, the vast majority of people in the village are still very grateful to the Ming family, after all, using a water wheel is much easier than carrying water manually.

In addition to the village where her family is located, Mingyue also sent a waterwheel to the Wang family, the Tao family, the Zheng family, and the Chen family.

These people didn't live in Wulitun, so Mingyue asked Changping to take the craftsmen invited by Yu Jiayan to go directly to their villages and towns.

Except for the places where these people who are related to them live and live, Mingyue and Yu Jiayan in other places did not take the initiative to interfere.

They just sent another group of craftsmen with a larger number to Gu Zhi County, and of course, along with the craftsmen, there was also a fee for making a waterwheel, and the subordinates sent by the Yu family to cook for the craftsmen.

With Sun Yaren maneuvering around, Mingyue and Yu Jiayan, who wanted to do something practical for the people of Fuxing County, successfully hired the best craftsmen at the lowest price.

Gu Zhixian is not the kind of person who is afraid that others will snatch his credit, he is very happy to accept the craftsmen brought by Yu Jiayan, and because the "public funds" of the county government are not so easy to use, he did not refuse Yu Jiayan to hire those craftsmen out of his own pocket.

With the government's unified deployment, those craftsmen soon began to build waterwheels near the rivers and lakes with the most farmland.

Yu Jiayan paid enough wages, prepared a large amount of delicious meals, and cleaned up the living places clean and comfortable, those craftsmen worked very hard, and the waterwheels that might not be able to be done in ten days and a half in ordinary times were now made within ten days.

At the beginning, the chief Sui sent by Gu Zhixian to supervise the work was worried that the quality of the waterwheels was not up to standard, but he inspected all the waterwheels one after another, but he couldn't find any faults.

As for the ditch to divert water, the eyes of the farmers on both sides of the river were green, and there was no need for the people from the county government to go around to publicize and recruit people, and these villagers consciously came to cooperate with the government to dig a ditch to divert water.

Of course, there will inevitably be a few rat droppings in any place.

While the vast majority of peasants have voluntarily dug ditches to divert water, there are also a small number of peasant households who think they are smart and refuse to take the lead at all.

They thought it was quite beautiful, and thought that if the ditch was dug well, they would definitely be able to use the water.

Unexpectedly, Gu Zhi County guarded against them, and all the officials he sent out, as well as all the Lizheng under the rule of Fuxing County, were all resolutely implementing the basic principle of "whoever contributes the most will use water first".

Those who want to sit back and enjoy the success, as well as those who have a lot of land at home, and obviously have a lot of money to customize the water wheel, but they have to compete with the poor people in the vicinity for the public water wheel, in the end, they can only watch as other families water the land and plant first.

As for those officials and Lizheng who want to show favoritism for various reasons, they have a thief's heart, but the problem is that they don't have the courage to be thieves.

Gu Zhi County specially sent people to bang the gong to publicize it in Shili Eight Townships, at the moment of the catastrophe, if anyone dares to show favoritism, as long as someone reports it and verifies it is true, then this person will wait to go home and eat himself.

Gu Zhixian has been a parent official in Fuxing County for two years, and even the county magistrate who always wanted to sing against him before has been cleaned up by him and closed his mouth "Adult is wise", and others can only be honest and behave.

Of course, Gu Zhixian didn't dare to breathe when they were in charge, on the contrary, he knew very well what it meant to be clear and there were no fish.

As long as no one takes advantage of his position to be a traitor, eat and take cards, and oppress the people, which touches his principles and bottom line, he is usually quite lenient with these big and small officials in the yamen.

For example, the tea fees that the people under his rule voluntarily stuffed to the handlers when handling the red deeds, and the hard work fees that the shopkeepers and proprietors occasionally stuffed to the street patrol officials, he basically turned a blind eye to these and made a small fortune by them.

This also leads to the fact that the big and small officials in the yamen and the "village officials" such as Li Zheng don't dare to pick up the tiger whiskers of the county adults at all - they are not tired of being crooked and don't want to do it.

The big guys have the ambition to "serve the country and the people", and everyone hates to write "I am a clean official and a good official" in the largest font on their clothes.

In desperation, they had to pay a higher price to find a craftsman to order a waterwheel.

It's just that in this way, the fields under their names still delay the time for planting.

One step late, one step later, although the ten or so days late will not have much impact on spring ploughing, but in the autumn, the harvest of those fields under their name will definitely be reduced.

Not to mention how depressed they were, anyway, Mingyue just wanted to give them two big words - they deserved it!

It's not that the family can't come up with the money to order a waterwheel, but they have to calculate everywhere and take advantage of it.

However, what makes her more relieved is that there are only five or six such families in the entire Fuxing County.

The vast majority of the remaining squires and wealthy households, even if they are not like the Yu family, who have contributed money and people to help the county government improve the irrigation conditions of farmland in Fuxing County, at least they will not even rely on others for their own fields.

As a result, there are more fields in Fuxing County that can be poured with river water, lake water, and well water.