February 28, 1647, the hilly area in the west of the lake.

Since the careful cleanup of the local Guarani indigenous people last year, the area of ​​Hekou Township in New Konisburg has been much more stable, and the once very common Guarani guerrillas are no longer visible. These people are outsiders, but now they are not able to persist here for a long time without effective supplies. In addition, the fierce war broke out between the East Coast and Spain, many Guarani religious people were transferred to the Parana River Basin to resist the offensive of the East Coast army, which has almost solved the security problem of the past long-standing problems that once plagued New Konisburg.

With the arrival of 500 farmers in the northern Ming Dynasty, the population of New Konisburg has exceeded 1,500, of which more than 1,000 are strong men. Three veterans who have been discharged from the army due to injuries and seven or eight graduates from the Corps and Fort administrative majors have supported the local government agencies, and they organize everyone to build houses, dig wells, cut big trees, dig ditches, and grow grain every day. With everyone's efforts, the originally deserted New Konisburg has now changed a lot after a year of hard work.

Neat houses built with red bricks, three meters thick city walls, artificial reservoirs with rippling waves (renovation of small pools), artillery towers every few hundred meters outside the city, logging grounds on the edge of the forest and freight stations at the end of Highway 2. In short, there is already a settlement here that should look like.

The only thing that is lacking is agricultural planting. The grain here is still unsupportive and needs to be transported from Hekou Township along Road 2 by heavy freight carriage. The local residents have only opened up some vegetable fields and bean fields along the outer edge of the city wall, and the harvest is extremely limited. After the security situation here improves, the next step is to expand outward to open up arable land. The soil texture here is pretty good, and the harvest will not be bad whether it is wheat or alfalfa. It would be a pity not to develop it well.

In this era, especially in the New World region where modern fertilizers, pesticides, breeding technology and systematic agricultural knowledge, the level of grain harvest is really all about whether God gives you face. Of course, the East Coast people are not the old mainland farmers who are content with the status quo. The Ministry of Agriculture has been spending a lot of effort to summarize, summarize agricultural knowledge and improve agricultural technology for more than ten years. They even borrowed weather data from various parts of the East Coast from the Navy over the past decade (mainly temperature, sunshine, rainfall, and humidity measured by feeling) so that experts from the Ministry of Agriculture can summarize some technologies and experiences more accurately.

For example, they concluded that the humidity of wheat before autumn sowing in May every year is better than that of normal years; the temperature should not be too high (no more than 10℃) in autumn and winter (June-August), the humidity should be kept dry, and it is best to have some light snow and no strong winds; there should be no frost after the wheat starts to grow in September and October, with sufficient sunshine and appropriate amount of rain; there is appropriate amount of rain in November and December, but the temperature should not be too high; there is no precipitation after entering the flowering period in January of the following year; there is sufficient sunshine and dryness during the maturity period in February. The deviation of any of the above factors will cause the wheat yield to drop to a certain extent in that year, for this reason. They also made a rough and rough table of correlation coefficients between various weather factors and wheat yield through a large amount of data to infer the grain output of that year, so as to formulate various policies and measures in advance to maintain the stability of the grain market.

This is the case with wheat, and the grape planting industry in Zhenhai County is no exception. The temperature, precipitation, and frost in winter and spring are of significant impact on the yield and quality of grapes. The weather during the brewing season has an extremely important impact on the taste of wine. Regarding this, the French immigrants from Provence and Languedoc have long known this. The Ministry of Agriculture has recorded their experiences in a book and confirmed this through a large amount of practical data, and then began to promote it nationwide.

"The first batch of farmers in New Konisburg were Latvians from the Principal of Prussia, which produces grains. Their agricultural technology is pretty good. In addition, a small number of farmers from England, which have the most advanced agricultural technology in Europe. After the preparations last year, it is no wonder that the township government will be determined to reclaim 40,000 acres of wasteland outside the city in order to achieve self-sufficiency as soon as possible - although this possibility is as small as hitting a rabbit with a flintlock a hundred meters away." Wang Youcai, who had just been transferred to the South Duck Lake Regional Branch of the Northwest Reclamation Bank, stood in the undulating fields and joked at the young people who were busy in the fields.

Wang Youcai was originally the supervisor of the Zhenyuan Township Branch of Dongfang County, Northwest Reclamation Bank. Last year, due to his outstanding performance (the branch office's annual profit was 557 yuan and 485 sheep, totaling about 2,000 yuan), he was promoted to the position of president of the Nanyazihu ​​District Branch this year. Anderson, the son of his late comrade, also contributed some credit. He was promoted to the position of supervisor of the newly established Xinkoness Township Branch.

Anderson, who had just gotten married a few months ago, moved his family here. His wife is the daughter of a Zhuanghu family from Luanzhou, Daming. She is just 17 years old this year. She was snatched away by Shuai Mo and was sent to the East Coast after several turns.

His father-in-law was a small landlord with dozens of acres of land in the Ming Dynasty, but he actually lived a very poor life. Not to mention the chaos and the taxes were heavy, just talking about the seventy or eighty acres of land, they could not even find people to rent it to others to plant. In the end, he had to abandon the land on a large scale. The family of four picked half of the land and planted wheat. In this way, when the harvest was harvested, the yield per mu was often only forty or fifty kilograms, but the seeds were still not deducted. It was so frustrating.

After deducting the seeds from such grain production, it is really enough for the whole family to make a living. Well, you may have to prepare some wild vegetables and some brans to eat, otherwise it may not be enough. After coming to the east coast, their four-year-old adults have been working in the southern Luocha leather factory. At the beginning of this year, New Konisburg recruited some old citizens to farm land. The family was cruel to sign up here. No matter what savage attacks he had, as long as he distributed the land to me, I would not care!

This year, the New Konisburg Township Government plans to reclaim 40,000 mu of farmland, while only more than 1,500 local people. After removing some personnel and families from government, commercial and military departments, each pioneer farmer will be allocated to 30 mu of wasteland on average, which has touched the upper limit set by the government for individuals to own cultivated land (forest land and slope land are not included).

It is naturally impossible for an adult to cultivate 30 acres of land. However, considering that the east coast now has a large number of livestock and agricultural machinery, and the harvesting speed is dozens of times that of the past, all this seems to be a little more likely. However, in this way, it is naturally impossible to cultivate carefully, and the daily care of farmland is naturally not as detailed as when he was in his hometown of Daming.

When Wang Youcai said this, Anderson, who was bundling alfalfa in the field, smiled and said: "Reclaiming 40,000 acres of wasteland is a arduous project, but the subsequent farming activities are even several times more difficult than reclamation itself. However, it is comforting that although the reclamation area is so large, in fact, everyone's farming area has not become too large this year, because the above has introduced a new farming system - the three-crop rotation system. In other words, we only need to cultivate twenty acres of land every year and another ten acres of fallow, of course this is still a very heavy manual labor."

The so-called three-crop rotation system refers to the system of dividing arable land into three parts and falling for one year within three years to preserve the fertility of the arable land so that it will not be overdrawn. Cereals (usually wheat) are planted on the land that is normally cultivated (two parts), and there is no regulation on what to plant on the land that is fallow (one part), and villagers can choose freely. However, in order to facilitate mechanized and unified harvesting, the fallow land in a village should generally try to plant the same crop. The Ministry of Agriculture recommends that everyone grow alfalfa or legume crops, because these two crops can increase the nitrogen content in the soil to quickly replenish the nutrients lost in the arable land in a year, and at the same time, they can also obtain a large amount of feed to raise livestock.

This farming system has a well-known name in later generations, called the "Norfolk Crop Rotation System". This system is of great significance for ensuring the fertility of arable land and improving grain yield. The general process is as follows: Winter wheat is planted on the land that is normally cultivated, and a crop of potatoes or sweet potatoes and other short-term crops such as fallow potatoes are planted immediately after harvesting; at this time, alfalfa is planted on the land that fallow is generally planned to be in the same place. At this time, pens can be set up around the fallow field and use this fallow land as a pasture to support livestock (usually vegetable cattle or dairy cows). The pasture can last until the end of May or early June of the following year, lasting nine to ten months. If the weather is beautiful during this period and the sunshine temperature and precipitation are appropriate, the starch content in the forage should be very high, which is of great significance to promoting livestock fattening.

"When autumn sowing begins, 20 acres of these 30 acres will be planted with wheat, and the other ten acres will continue to plant alfalfa. A while ago, I bought six cattle and two dairy cows. Well, it is the cheap cattle I got from La Plata. The yield of these ten acres of alfalfa will definitely not be too high in the first year, but with those potatoes, the sweet potatoes are almost enough to feed." Anderson skillfully baled the grass, saying like a nagging farmer.

In fact, he is the supervisor of the local bank branch office, and has a non-agricultural household registration, so he is not qualified to divide the land. The thirty acres of land he is currently working on are actually his wife, that is, the Ming girl from Luanzhou. However, New Konisburg has only been newly built for a year, so where can we get so many loan business? Therefore, he often helps at home and asks his wife to chop grass and feed livestock at home. After all, these jobs are easier. Anyway, if someone wants to borrow money, they basically know where to find him, and it is basically impossible to make a mistake.

After strapping the last bunch of grass, Anderson drove a flatbed carriage with Wang Youcai's help and headed to his home at the entrance of the village.
Chapter completed!