Xu Yuan did not disclose what kind of weapon the new weapon is, but he only said that he would know it for a while.

After the seamless steel pipes, processing machine tools, potassium nitrate, sugar and other equipment and raw materials purchased by him from the modern society all arrived, he could gather a group of craftsmen to carry out the next step.

Before that.

The recruitment of the Zhuang team members can be carried out, the recruitment quota of 1,000 people is selected within the range of 11 manors, the good family is preferred, the honest and honest are preferred, and the family is preferred, and the treatment of at least 10 silver dollars per month for the Zhuang team is not afraid of not being able to recruit people.

"It's the owner of the village, I'll recruit all the people first, conduct three months of basic training, and when the new weapons are in place, the combat effectiveness will soon be formed."

Zhao Yang nodded and saluted.

……

The inspection of the Police Training Service has been completed.

Arrange the recruitment of 1,000 new guardians.

Once these transactions have been processed.

For the next period of time.

Xu Yuan's work focused on the spring plowing work of each manor, personally participated in the deployment, and invested all available resources before May to strive to complete the spring sowing of all land.

Because food is the life of the people, the issue of food security is above all other issues.

As long as there is enough food, there will be enough to feed a large enough population.

There is surplus grain to raise a large number of poultry and livestock, so as to obtain enough meat, eggs and milk.

It can also feed a large number of workers, off-duty troops and management personnel, thereby improving the overall production efficiency, having higher combat effectiveness, and better organization and mobilization capabilities.

On April 20, Xujiazhuang's spring sowing was the first to be completed.

In order to support the spring ploughing work of other estates, Xujiazhuang's 30 ploughing and seeding machines were divided into three teams to support the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 new estates closest to Xujiazhuang to speed up the spring sowing progress of these estates.

Booming loud noise.

The tiller spits black exhaust fumes.

Under the horrified gaze of countless peasants, in the flat fields, their work began.

Estate No. 3.

Zhang Gufeng, an ordinary farmer, is 38 years old this year, not only has become a grandfather, but he has been planting the land for most of his life, he is an old cropper, and few people in the village can plant better land than him.

Taking rice as an example, other people's fields can harvest at most 300 catties of millet per acre, and his field can produce at least 350 catties.

The same low-grade thin land, after his care, can become a medium-sized good land, and the poor level of farming is the high-grade fertile land, which can also be tossed into low-grade thin land.

Farming is really a technical job, not a simple job that can be done.

If you want to grow a piece of land well, you need to cultivate it intensively, you need to spend your mind and effort, but also you need a lot of experience and, most importantly, hard work.

That's right, industrious!

Zhang Gufeng is a very hard-working farmer.

During the growth of rice, others only pull weeds three times, but he will pull them five times, or even seven times, two or three times more than others.

During the rice jointing period, when there is a drought and lack of water, others only pick water during the day and rest at night, but he will be busy until midnight.

During the rice filling period, others will put 100 catties of manure on the field, and he will apply about 200 catties, and he will collect human and animal manure everywhere for this purpose.

In addition, his family also raises more than 50 chickens and ducks, which he often drives away to eat pests in the field and reduce the damage of pests to crops.

But even if he is an outstanding peasant representative of the land of China, even if his family has twelve and a half acres of high-grade fertile land, and can beat more than 40 stones of millet every year, which is reasonably enough to feed a family of ten, but in the past few years, his family's life has become more and more difficult, and the rice jar at home has never been full, only more and more empty.

There are fewer and fewer days to eat and more days of semi-starvation.

Why is this happening?

Obviously, he is already very diligent, but at the age of 38, he is already tired to the point of half gray hair.

There are three main reasons.

One, the climate has been abnormal in these years, and there are frequent droughts, and the yield of the fields has really been affected.

Second, the imperial court has more and more additions, in the past, the summer tax of one acre of high-quality fertile land was said to be only one-thirtieth, as long as one bucket and two liters of tax was paid, but in fact, at least two buckets and five liters were collected, and there were unspoken rules such as drenching and kicking, and the actual burden was about one-tenth of the harvest, which did not include the Ding tax (that is, the poll tax), as well as the government's forced labor showdown, and the burden was already very large.

What now?

Liao Xiang added one cent and two cents of silver per mu of land, which seems to be not much, but in the autumn harvest season, this bit of silver from profiteers can buy two buckets of grain.

Coupled with all kinds of miscellaneous taxes, apportionments, and indiscriminate taxes, one-third of the peasants' total harvest does not belong to them.

Third, since the Wanli period Zhang Juzheng implemented the "one whip law", the fields were changed from levying grain to levying silver, and the government no longer directly collected grain taxes, but only collected silver to offset taxes, which gave profiteers the opportunity to exploit loopholes.

Due to the Chongzhen period, the inflow of overseas silver into the Ming Dynasty decreased significantly, resulting in the scarcity of silver circulating in the market, deflation, and the price for farmers to obtain silver was higher.

A combination of factors.

Peasants like Zhang Gufeng, who used to live a good life, have increased their burden from one-third to at least half.

In addition, the population of the family is also relatively large, and the life has become more and more difficult over the years.

Although since the establishment of Xujiazhuang, last year he also managed to buy a kind of high-quality rice seeds called "lazy rice 80", directly sprinkled the seeds in the field, out of caution, he only planted one acre of lazy rice, and harvested 540 catties of rice that year, setting his personal yield record per mu.

However, the increase of more than 100 catties of rice not only did not allow him to eat for two more days, because last year several villagers in the village entrusted their fields to Zhang Juren's name, and the government increased his family's apportionment in order to complete the task of expropriation, and he was a farmer and did not have any capital to fight with the old man, and as a result, his family ran out of food from October last year.

After selling all the more than 50 chickens and ducks, replacing them with grain and wild vegetables, they could barely support until December.

I had to go to Xujiazhuang to borrow a few buckets of rice, and barely survived.

This year, Xujiazhuang expanded, Zhang Gufeng didn't think much and hesitated, he joined Xujiazhuang, the reason is very simple, he is so diligent, the end he faces is still starvation, what can he do if he doesn't join the collective estate? At least the harvest here is guaranteed by drought and flood, and it is unlikely that they will starve to death.

However, after joining the collective estate.

Regarding the business model of the manor, Zhang Gufeng can see the good aspects and thinks that it is very advanced.

For example, the comprehensive leveling of land, the eradication of ridges, the demolition of some village houses, and the consolidation of villages have increased the area of effective cultivated land by at least 25 percent.

But he also took out one-third of the precious land for pasture land and used it for animal husbandry, which he really couldn't understand, and now there is not enough food for people to eat, where is there still land to grow fodder for the livestock to eat, isn't this a waste of the fields?

What kind of work division system, every day from 8 o'clock in the morning to 5 o'clock in the afternoon, only nine hours a day, as long as the workload is completed, you can get 10 points of work equivalent to a penny of silver, this is simply doing a good hall, only to do such a little work, how is it worth a penny of silver? You have to work at least 14 hours a day, otherwise the estate will collapse sooner or later, because the owner will not settle accounts at all.

Thinking of this, Zhang Gufeng was worried, he felt that Xu Jiazhuang was really good, and the owner of Xu Zhuang was a good person like a Bodhisattva, but if he continued like this, it was estimated that he would not last long, and he didn't know what to do at that time.

Buzz~

A rumbling sound reached his ears.

Immediately afterwards, in the paddy field full of weeds not far away, he saw a huge steel monster spewing black smoke, while leaning on several huge wheels to move forward, and the metal rotary cutting device behind it was also rotating rapidly, cutting the weeds on the surface of the paddy field by root, and turning the soil under a foot to the surface, beating it into yellow mud, and completing the ploughing.

Then sow the lazy rice seeds evenly.

All the way.

Plough all the way.

Finish the planting all the way.

At a speed equivalent to human jogging, in a short time, most of the ploughing and sowing work was completed.

According to rough estimates, the working efficiency of one such steel monster is equivalent to at least 300 Zhuang workers!

"This ......"

"What a terrible farming monster this is?"

Zhang Gufeng was dumbfounded, his legs trembled, and he almost knelt down for these cultivators, while some village workers with narrow knowledge who had never seen this kind of agricultural machinery had already knelt on the ground, or kept kowtowing and bowing, as if they had seen a sacred object.