The busy farming season of summer double robbery passed so plainly. Time has entered July in a blink of an eye, and it has survived the hottest days.

Whether it is the area controlled by the imperial court or the area controlled by the thieves, they all pay attention to the resumption of production without incident, otherwise they will starve to death in a large area in winter.

Chongzhen's thirteen years of thieves have not yet generally shouted the slogan of "King Chuang is coming, and he will not pay for food", not to mention that the fifth battalion of the left is not considered to be Li Zicheng's faction.

They all know that grain must be grown by the people in the areas they occupy, and that they cannot feed so many people by robbing alone, and they cannot feed the war with war.

After more than a month of persuasion by Shen Shuren, the green seedlings in Qizhou, Huangmei and other places are everywhere, lotus roots germinate, and taro also begins to sprout.

Many swampy wetlands that the locals were too lazy to take care of were also made full use of them under the guidance of the Suhu farmers brought by Shen Shuren.

In particular, the lotus pond swamps around Qi County and tended by tenant farmers directly under the Shen family were also put into some Southeast Asian, Indian and even East African fish fry that Shen Shuren had just obtained from Zheng Chenggong a few months ago, plus some foreign chicken and duck varieties from India.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the seafaring trade routes were already very developed, and the European colonizers ran the routes from East Africa to India to Southeast Asia for hundreds of years.

Although the Zheng family doesn't run much, they can find some Hongyi and heavy money for them to navigate, and they can also go around Southeast Asia and India. Therefore, the acquisition of these species is completely logical.

Shen Shuren also paid great attention to the rhythm of project coordination, and arranged the priority of these breeding work to be lower than that of the summer double robbery, and only used the leisure season to arrange it after the end of the farming season.

Breeding animals does not need to consider the seasonal climate like growing crops, and can be raised all year round, so there is no need to miss the agricultural time.

The number of these alien species is still very small, Rao is Zheng Chenggong sent nearly ten sea boats to various places to help Shen Shuren collect, and finally got back alive, but there were only more than 100 live fish of each kind.

Bringing back freshwater fish across continents has always been the most challenging transportation problem in ancient times, because it is necessary to set up a closed cabin in the sea vessel to feed in fresh water, and it is necessary to dock every ten days at most to find a port for fresh water. Changes in water quality may also kill a lot, so they should be taken away and thrown away in time.

In short, Zheng Chenggong should have spent a lot of resources in the past six months, sometimes a large sea boat can carry thousands of fish with fresh water, and in the end, only two or three hundred survived.

Fortunately, these fish will also produce roe on the way, and the roe can be stored in the cabin water for a long time, and some of them can be raised after returning from slowly breeding.

Compared to fish, it is the Indian chickens and ducks that have a much higher survival rate. Those who have been on the sea for months can still live a few percent. When the Zheng merchants were looking for colonists to purchase, the female birds tried to choose the ones that could lay eggs, so that some of the eggs laid on the way back could still retain their hatching activity.

It is precisely because of the scarcity of the number that Shen Shuren did not let the local poor farmers raise them, but first gave all the tenant farmers of the Shen family's lineage, so that they could be carefully raised-

Of course, even if you die, it's not completely hopeless. At least Zheng Chenggong has a heart, and when he asked people to get these varieties back, he had already bred them on his own in Fujian.

So even if all the people of Shen Shuren are raised to death, they can go to Fujian again in a few months to ask for a batch of seeds.

Tilapia from East Africa and pangasius from Southeast Asia, which can survive in freshwater and low-salinity brackish water, soon survived tenaciously in the lotus ponds and taro polders around Qi County.

These two types of fish generally grow faster, produce more meat, and have fewer bones. It is also the most suitable variety that Shen Shuren can get at present.

The rest, such as the dragon fish in South Asia, although the meat quality is better than that of pangasius, can only be raised along the coast, and there is no way to do it in inland fresh water. After Zheng Chenggong got Longli fish, he mainly raised it himself in Fujian, and the part given to Shen Shuren could only be raised in Chongming County, along the coast of Suzhou, and it could not be popularized in Huangzhou.

For the time being, the Qingjiang fish, which originated in the Americas, could not cross the Pacific Ocean and transport the live fish back in fresh water, nor could the Spaniards.

At the same time, the Indian big XIONG chicken, which has some of the paternal genes of the later generations of white-feathered chickens, has also begun to breed in the forests of farmers around Qi County.

(It is a kind of chicken with particularly thick breast and high meat yield, which is close to that of white-feathered chickens in terms of long meat structure.) However, without the rapid growth gene of six weeks of white feather chickens in later generations, it still takes months or even half a year to grow. During the same period, domestic chickens should be raised for one year. ）

Seeing these grotesque-looking chickens, ducks, and live fish, the local officials and squires were skeptical at first. After a month, seeing that Shen Tongzhi could really feed him, and it seemed that the meat grew really fast, he also began to be convinced.

"The talent of the adults to persuade farmers is really no less than that of Xu Ge Lao and Song Changgeng back then. Subordinates admire, this is really capable of anything. Zhao Yunfan and Jiangcheng, the two magistrates, personally visited Shen Shuren's "demonstration farm" and praised it from the bottom of their hearts.

Shen Shuren didn't put on a show, and released kindness very sincerely:

"As a parent, if you can do more for the people, you should do as much as possible, which is your duty. As long as you make it clear to the gentry below, work together with the official to tide over the difficulties, don't stare at the little profits, and you will definitely be happy in the end.

I happen to have a few of the first batch of old hens here, and they can't lay eggs anymore. Just a few days later, I killed and invited the gentry of the surrounding three counties to dinner, so that they could know who cooperated well with the government, and I gave priority to distributing these good varieties to them. ”

Although there are no patents and biological variety protection in this era, eventually these high-quality varieties will be spread to the people for free. But now the number is still small, and there is still a big difference between who gets first and who gets later.

If you can grow high-yield crops and raise high-yielding poultry and fish a year or two earlier, you will be able to make a profit first, and I believe that anyone with a discerning eye knows what to do.

……

The day of Shen Shuren's Hongmen banquet was finally set on July 15 and the Midyear Festival.

The gentry from all counties in Huangzhou were notified five or six days in advance and hurried to Qi County to listen to the instructions of the Tongzhi Lord.

Of course, these gentry would not watch the newcomers do whatever they wanted, seize the wasteland of the fleeing gentry, or forcibly distribute military rations and donations. On the way to the banquet, everyone naturally formed a group and asked each other for news.

On July 13, the wharf of Huangqikou Town at the mouth of the Qishui River.

Several teams of ships from Huangmei, Guangji and other counties in the south came to dock at the wharf one after another, and many well-dressed luxury squires got off the ship one after another and rested in the town, but they were not busy entering Qizhou City.

The city of Qizhou is on the bank of Qishui, about 20 miles upstream from the mouth of Qishui into the Yangtze River. Huangqikou Town is a relatively prosperous trading market town nearby, where rivers and rivers are transshipped to change ships.

If it is an ordinary day, freight merchants will stop at Huangqikou and wait for loading and unloading. Travelers generally go directly into Qizhou City, anyway, it is only twenty miles away, and it is only a few steps to get there, and it is impossible to spend the night in the town.

But today's situation is very different, Yuan Zhongyi, a wealthy gentleman who had just hurried from Jiangxi, took the servants and disembarked at the Huangqikou wharf, and noticed that the inns in the town seemed to be full, and the passing passengers were stranded here, but they were not in a hurry to enter the city.

"It seems that the gentry in all counties of Huangzhou are a little undecided, and they don't dare to go directly to meet the new acquaintance. Are you planning to meet here and unify your rhetoric? ”

After all, Yuan Zhongyi is a big non-tax payer who has been fighting with the government for many years, and he is very experienced in this area. Seeing that the inns in Hekou Town were full, he immediately judged that everyone was hesitant.

He sneered and rode slowly through the town, and before he had taken a few steps, he was immediately surrounded by acquaintances who appeared one after another in the inns on both sides of the street.

"Yuan Gongzi! You can count it, this year I heard that the newcomer Shen Tongzhi is going to expropriate the grange left by the fleeing squires and rent it for the tenant farmers left behind, how to deal with this matter, everyone is counting on your horses! ”

"That's it, Yuan Gongzi is righteous, if it weren't for your family last year, it was against the Yan Governor's Mansion. Our fields have long been planted by those mud-legged people, you have to help us call the shots. What you say, we do, it's up to you to make up your mind. ”

It turned out that this Yuan Zhongyi Yuan Gongzi was a person from Jiujiang Mansion in Jiangxi Province on the other side, and the local noble clan, in the three prefectures at the junction of Huguang, Jiangxi, and Nanzhili, all had a grange quota that used the family's fame to be tax-free, and the total area added up was definitely more than the imperial court.

Of course, if there were just a few jinshi and people, and the family was rich in land, then the Yuan family would not be so favored by the gentry in Huangzhou, and his family obviously had other backgrounds.

This Yuan Zhongyi has a distant uncle named Yuan Jixian.

Two years ago, when Xiong Wencan appeased the thieves, Yuan Jixian was in charge of the defense of Xiangyang, De'an, and Huangzhou.

The big cake that the officials painted for Shen Shuren is that if he can eliminate Liu Xiyao and Lin Chengcheng, he can make his Huangzhou Tongzhi become the prefect, and he will be appointed as a military officer in Hubei. So this position happens to be on Shen Shuren's future ascending channel, and he is very powerful in the local area.

The current government of Huangzhou Prefecture in Huanggang County was built during Yuan Jixian's tenure, and Yuan Jixian also defeated Ma Shouying, the most powerful in the fifth battalion of the Revolution at that time, in Huanggang.

After Zhang Xianzhong rebelled and Xiong Wencan was imprisoned last year, Yuan Jixian was also implicated at first.

Fortunately, after Yang Sichang arrived, he realized that Yuan Jixian's talents were available, so he was transferred to the Western Front and was in charge of the Yunyang and Xiangyang defense areas, which led to the emptiness of De'an and Huangzhou, and the new Yan Zhifu, who had only been working for more than half a year and was killed by thieves, took over as the seat of Huangzhou.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the imperial examination families in Jiangxi were very powerful, because there were many Jinshi and Juren from Jiangxi, and they were also very experienced in occupying tax-free fields.

This Yuan Zhongyi is not only a gentleman after the Jiujiang imperial examination, but also a distant uncle who had just been a senior official in Huangzhou and De'an two years ago.

After Yuan Zhongyi read everyone's statement, he was also relieved and assured: "Rest assured, no matter what the origin of this new acquaintance is, he must not be allowed to ruin the law of the court and the dignity of the gentry."

We don't pit the court, but the court law has promised us, and we definitely have a lot to get! Otherwise, any foreign official will come in the future, and they will think that our Jiangxi gentry are easy to bully! ”

"Yuan Gongzi is mighty!" The crowd saw that he was generous, and they instantly had a backbone.

All of a sudden, the gentry either helped Yuan Zhongyi lead the horse, or invited him to drink, let go of the best guest room in the town to invite him to stay, and carefully discussed countermeasures together.

Of course, it must be clarified here that what this Yuan Zhongyi did was not clear to his distant uncle Yuan Jixian. According to the "History of the Ming Dynasty", Yuan Jixian was a loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty.

At the end of history, when Zuo Liangyu rebelled, he was also sent by the Southern Ming court to persuade Zuo Liangyu to surrender, but in the end, Zuo Liangyu died of illness, and his son Zuo Mengeng surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and Yuan Jixian was killed by Dolgon if he did not surrender.

It can only be said that many ministers with integrity in the late Ming Dynasty had no choice but to be greedy for money, and almost everyone was greedy at that time. According to the Ming Dynasty, if there is no other legal source of income, it is impossible to support a large family without greed.

Zhu Dadian also has integrity, but in the end, "greedy for millions" is also a fact. Yuan Jixian himself did not clearly prove that he was greedy, but those Jiangxi imperial examinations wanted the great cause of the clan, and the clansmen did all kinds of blessings and coercions, at least they cheated taxes and resisted tax looting, and they couldn't control it at all.