Chapter 190 The Herdsmen Have Their Own Skills

After replying to Sima Yi this time, it took almost another year before I received Sima Yi's letter.

The two were too far apart. When Sima Yi received the letter, he was a minor official again and was in office.

Of course, it was impossible for him to abandon his official position and join Er Gouzi.

Moreover, Sima Yi told Er Gouzi tactfully in the letter.

His goal was the entire Great Zhou Dynasty, and he had long since left his personal safety and honor behind.

When the Sima family was exterminated, he had already regarded himself as a dead man.

He was alive again, not caring about his life, not seeking money, but only wanted to change this world of upside-down black and white.

He was not afraid of death, so why should he be afraid of dismissal!

After reading Sima Yi's letter, Er Gouzi didn't know how to reply.

This may be the difference between people.

If he was oppressed by someone, he would keep silent, remember it silently in his heart, and take revenge and kill the other party when he got the chance.

If there was no chance of revenge, he would endure it. If he didn't have this tolerance, he would have died in the hands of his aunt.

Looking back, Da Gou just couldn't help it at first...

Sima Yi's idea is completely different from Er Gouzi's.

He was framed by County Magistrate Xia, and his family was exterminated, but in the end he thought it was the problem of the entire Great Zhou Dynasty.

Forget it, everyone has their own aspirations, and they can't be forced, just respect each other.

Er Gouzi's reply to Sima Yi only said that Sanyang County had another bumper harvest this year.

He is now the only landlord in Sanyang County, and more than 200,000 people in the county are all his tenants.

The letter told Sima Yi that if he couldn't make it and had no food to eat one day, he could come to Sanyang County to be a tenant, and he would definitely rent him the most fertile land.

Er Gouzi wrote the letter, sent it to the post station, and sent it out.

He guessed that when Sima Yi received the letter, he should have been dismissed again.

The two of them traveled too far, and Sima Yi was dismissed too quickly.

The communication almost once a year was far behind Sima Yi's pace.

In the past year, Sanyang County has undergone tremendous changes.

The dozens of landlords in the area originally had to pay various taxes every year, which required 30% of the land income.

With a rent of more than 20% in Sanyang County, it was impossible to hire tenants, and it was not as good as being a tenant to farm by yourself.

In the end, these landlords could only sell their land to Er Gouzi and find another way to make a living.

Now, the land of the whole county belongs to one family, and he has become the first person in Sanyang County in name and in reality.

Er Gouzi has been a pig feeder and firewood maker since he was a child. He only knows how to farm and has never been an official. He has extremely little experience in how to herd people.

Because he was too poor, he didn't even raise cattle and horses.

He could only apply some of the concepts of growing crops to the daily management of Sanyang County.

First of all, farming without manure is equivalent to messing around.

If you want crops to grow well, fertilizer and water are indispensable!

In Er Gouzi's mind, he simply regards all the tenants in the county as crops in his own fields.

He had actually done this a long time ago. He only collected 20% of the rent, and the tenants still had 80% of the harvest, which was enough for them to have enough food.

Even during festivals, they could eat meat.

For the tenants, the fertilizer and water were enough, and they lived better than some small landlords.

Under his jurisdiction, no one in Sanyang County starved to death, which was absolutely a miracle in the entire Zhou Dynasty.

Second, if you want the crops to grow lushly, you can't just pull a handful of leaves today and dig some roots tomorrow.

In order to protect the growth of crops and let the tenants farm with peace of mind.

Er Gouzi specially organized several teams to patrol and arrest thieves in various places, and strictly prohibited his men from disturbing the people.

These men were all from poor backgrounds. Er Gouzi gave them a life, but they may have been used to a good life over the years.

Some people have learned the tricks of the officials.

Some time ago, there was a person who harassed and beat tenants at will.

When Er Gouzi found out, he hung up this subordinate and beat him in public.

Then he was put in prison and starved for ten days to let him recall the feeling of being hungry.

Anyone who dared to destroy the crops in the field would cut off Er Gouzi's way of making money and would be irreconcilable with him.

From then on, the people of the whole county would always mention Zhang Qingtian.

Now there is no need for Er Gouzi to specifically promote it, his reputation as a great Qingtian has spread to several surrounding states and counties.

For Er Gouzi, it was a completely unexpected gain. He originally just copied the way of growing crops.

Let the tenants of the whole county farm with peace of mind, so that he can collect more rent, which is completely out of selfishness.

After this success, Er Gouzi felt that being a great Qingtian didn't seem so difficult, and he was a little bit arrogant.

It made him more confident in his theory of growing crops and feeding pigs.

He thought about the past, when he had suffered enough from insufficient population and no one to farm, he wanted to encourage tenants to have more children and cultivate more land.

He also remembered that in the past, when cattle and horses in the village gave birth, the owners would feed them some concentrated feed.

Er Gouzi used this trick again, and recently issued a new decree.

He paid out of his own pocket and rewarded any tenant family with a new birth with one stone of grain.

All of a sudden, those tenants were as tired as dogs in the fields every day, and they had to cheer up and cultivate another piece of land when they returned home.

Obviously, except for bachelors, there were fewer people hanging out outside at night.

If those young wives did not have a big belly when they went out, the men in the family would not be able to lift their heads.

Others thought her men were not good enough.

This kind of shame is comparable to going out with a cuckold on your head.

The tenants have a very simple mind. If your land cannot be planted, you might as well lend it to me to plant it. You can't let the land go to waste.

In the year since the New Deal was promulgated, the birth rate has skyrocketed.

However, he soon discovered something was wrong.

The child was indeed born, and one stone of food was received.

But the children were not fed.

For every ten children born, almost six or seven are left without food to feed, and among the children without food to feed, the majority are girls.

Ergouzi looked at the population data compiled by Huang Laocai, his fingers trembling slightly.

"Tricky people!"

This is the first time since he took office that he has called his tenants unruly people.

Under normal circumstances, the birth mortality rate of infants in the Zhou Dynasty was about one-third.

Therefore, some landlords and wealthy families will celebrate when their children live to be 100 days old. This child can probably be fed.

But during that year, the infant mortality rate in Sanyang County doubled.

Er Gouzi has been used to seeing drowned and abandoned babies in Snake Creek Village since he was a child. Of course he knows where this extremely high mortality rate comes from.

"Master, do you want to stop our decree of rewarding one stone of grain?"

Huang Laocai is an old man, so he naturally understands better how these babies died, all because of that stone of food.

Ergouzi rubbed his forehead. In his past life experience, there was no way to deal with it.

These are never taught in the books of saints and sages that I have read.

"Huang Laocai."

"Let me ask you a question, what if some animals kill their own cubs?"

As the richest man in Snake Creek Village, Huang Laocai has raised many livestock and accumulated a lot of experience.

"Such animals do exist. I used to have a hen at home. Every time she laid an egg, she would break it open and eat it.

I asked the woman at home to stay by the henhouse every day and take away the eggs as soon as they were laid. "

"There are also some animals that will kill and eat the babies after they give birth. If you encounter such animals, you can only take the babies away and feed them alone..."

Huang Laocai talked about his experience in raising livestock, which was quite rich and he talked endlessly.

After hearing what Huang Laocai said, Er Gouzi suddenly became enlightened.

"I have an idea."

After having an in-depth conversation with Huang Laocai this time, he called Qiuyue over and gave her a large amount of money and food.

Let Qiuyue take this money and build 100 nurseries throughout the county.

The reward of one stone of grain will be distributed as usual. Those who have given birth to cubs and are unwilling to raise them will be collected by the Nursery.

At the same time, it was discovered that infants were drowned and abandoned, which was the same crime as murder.

It took Qiuyue several months to build the first batch of nurseries, but they soon received many babies and were full.

Ergouzi gave him more money and food and continued to build 100 more.

Most of the babies received by the nursery are newly born babies with extremely weak constitutions.

Without breast milk and just drinking some rice porridge, it is easy to die.

In order to enhance the survival rate of these babies, Ergouzi specially allocated a large amount of spiritual rice.

In addition, a small amount of goat milk and some meat were obtained, which were also distributed to the nursery.

After the infants ate porridge cooked with Lingmi, the mortality rate dropped significantly.

Moreover, these babies eat spiritual food since childhood, and their bodies are stronger...

…………

Ergouzi is based on the concept of growing crops. After several years of management, Sanyang County has become the richest county in Qingzhou.

Now it has a population of more than 600,000, and the annual land rent collected is nearly 2 million shi.

No one in the county died of hunger.

The legend of a wealthy man named Qingtian in Sanyang County has spread throughout the Zhou Dynasty.

It became a place that the people of the entire dynasty longed for, and there are still many people who travel thousands of miles and want to migrate to Sanyang County.

Especially now that the entire Zhou Dynasty is in dire straits and wars continue, Sanyang County becomes even more dazzling.

For this reason, Emperor Longxingsheng also specially drafted an imperial edict to praise Ergouzi.

Praise him for his skills as a herdsman!

However, neither the Xia family nor Emperor Longxing Sheng had any intention of letting Er Gouzi enjoy such a fat piece of meat.

Officials began to be placed in Sanyang County under various names.

The positions of more than a dozen county magistrates under his command have become popular.

As for the original blockade of Sanyang County by the Xia family, it had long been self-defeating after Ergouzi generously borrowed materials several times.