Chapter 13 Two Thousand Acres of Land

When the chill of the early morning dissipated due to the rising sun, Roman also arrived at Sige Town.

The people had been waiting in front of the common land for a long time.

Roman had no intention of giving a lecture today.

When he saw the residents' awed expressions and gentle eyes, he knew that they had surrendered.

The more ignorant they are, the more they must be restrained by tough means, otherwise it would be easy to cause trouble.

Roman got off his horse and asked Moore to move out part of this year's grain.

He planned to plant spring wheat, which was also a continuation of the planting habits of Sige Town.

About 15 to 20 kilograms of seeds should be planted per acre, but Roman wanted to increase the sowing rate to more than 30 kilograms.

This must be done for spring wheat, and the sowing amount must be increased, otherwise the yield will not be high.

In the previous life, one acre of land could cultivate 50 kilograms of seeds and produce 1,000 kilograms per acre, because the cultivated land was fertile, with sufficient fertilizer and suitable climate.

Don't even think about it in this era.

Roman upgraded [Planting] to level 2, unlocking a lot of basic agricultural knowledge, and knew that the most common method of seed screening was soaking in salt water.

But in the conditions of Sage Town, salt was a luxury, and it was impossible to use salt water to select seeds - at least not before he found the salt mine.

So Roman had to throw mud into the wooden barrel and blend the mud into the water to achieve the same effect as salt water, but the disadvantage was that it needed to be stirred constantly.

After adjusting the mud-water ratio, he asked two farmers to take turns to stir.

His approach was just to give a standard template and let others follow his method.

Because there were too many seeds to be soaked, it was far from enough to rely on just one wooden barrel, and it was better to build a huge pool.

It was just that this confusing approach made others quite surprised.

Roman did not explain. When More came over and asked carefully why, he got this answer from Roman.

"Don't ask why, you don't deserve to know, you are just farm tools, and farm tools don't need to understand why their owners swing them like this!"

Roman believed that any explanation was redundant before the effect appeared.

As a lord, does he have to go through the trouble of explaining scientific planting to a group of ignorant medieval peasants?

Roman's expression was quite calm, and his red eyes were very cohesive. More began to sweat again. He found that he had no resistance to the seemingly calm but domineering lord in front of him.

...

Roman made an inference based on the harvest data of Sige Town.

The total cultivated land area of ​​all residents in Sige Town and its villages last year was about 10,000 acres, which made Roman a little dazed.

Just making a preliminary calculation almost burned Roman's head.

Many of them were scattered cultivated lands, and they were separated by forests, grasslands, hillsides, swamps and other areas that could not be cultivated.

Of course, those cultivated lands were not all cultivated lands, and some of them were not taken care of, but only sown with grain seeds.

In Roman's eyes, can the "cultivated land" that the residents of Sige Town think of be called cultivated land?

Don't insult cultivated land!

That is clearly a large piece of wasteland!

Before the soil is improved, it has no real effective output value.

According to the mapping of the real land in [Story of Life], Roman will prepare to mark out a 2,000-mu fertile land, which just corresponds to the nearly 2,000 people in Sige Town.

This is a rectangular land with a length of about 1.3 kilometers and a width of 1 kilometer.

This is a large-scale collective planting movement, with 60,000 kilograms of seeds alone.

Then he mobilized all the rest of the people to collect all the feces that could be found in Sige Town and its surroundings.

When Roman estimated the cultivated land, he once thought that the total land cultivated by the residents of Sige Town was likely to reach more than 30,000 mu, and even 40,000 mu was not impossible.

Because the fertility of the land is limited, the land planted this year will not be planted next year, and it will be left fallow until a few years later when the fertility of the land naturally recovers and continues to be planted.

This is also the reason why Sige Town wants to build a village somewhere else, because the land is vast and sparsely populated, and the land area is too vast, and it takes a lot of time to travel a day. A single settlement cannot accommodate a large population.

Otherwise, staying in one place for a long time and overdrawing the fertility of the land is equivalent to being exploded by the mushroom of destruction, which will cause devastating consequences.

Roman wants to use feces to ferment fertilizer to improve the soil, abandon most of the wasteland, and turn a small part of the raw land into mature land.

In the future, there will be a great demand for fertilizer, and even if all the feces in the town are found, it may not be enough.

So Roman also has to collect rotten thatch, straw, dead grass, and silt, and throw everything that can be decomposed into it.

There are many ways to make fertilizer naturally, and the shortest one takes half a month.

There are a lot of preparations for farming in the early stage, or farming itself is a tedious and long task.

At least don't think about sowing before the manure is made.

If you want to do your job well, you must first sharpen your tools.

Roman plans to complete the preparations for spring plowing in the shortest 20 days and the longest 30 days.

If he didn't intervene, could the farmers in Sige Town clean up all 10,000 acres of land in a month?

You know, with the addition of the variable of the lord's manor - that is, an additional exploiter, the burden on the farmers in Sige Town has become heavier. If they don't quickly plant 10% more harvests, people will starve to death this year under high taxes.

In this way, except for the farmers who screened the seeds, most of the laborers were driven to pick up manure.

Roman didn't do much, but half of the morning had passed in the blink of an eye.

Roman looked at the sun and called More over again.

He said to More: "You need to find 80 peasant women and prepare enough rations for everyone, including slaves. Each person should have half a pound of dry food, three slices of bread as thick as a knuckle, a bowl of oatmeal porridge and mixed vegetable soup, and a lot of clean water boiled by the fire. This is my lunch, and I won't allow anyone to deduct this ration!"

Morr was stunned.

Is what you are saying a human language?

Where does the ration come from?

What do you mean by lunch you also have to eat?

You noble lords eat this, so what do you want me to eat?

What do you want those farmers to eat?

Are you going to rebel?

More hesitated to speak, but had to nod under Roman's gaze.

Although the farmers in Sig Town were starving every day, Sig Town really did not lack food.

As an agricultural officer, More would sell surplus grain every year, otherwise he would have no money to buy oxen. Who do you think would be the one to cut off the leeks if he completed primitive accumulation by relying on agriculture alone?

Roman would not ask about this matter, and More did not dare to say it.

This was a tacit understanding between them, and the previous accounts were written off.

It was not a good thing for More to be too fat. He should lose some weight, otherwise Roman would have to help him lose weight manually, and he could lose the amount of a pig's head at a time.

He roughly calculated that there were about 1,100 to 2,000 farmers and slaves with working ability, including both adult men and women. This number was obtained by excluding children under 15 years old and the elderly who could not move.

Roman gestured and said, "In the future, there will be such a meal at noon every day, and no one is allowed to go home. If there are children and elderly people who cannot walk at home, bring them out to eat, and then leave all the children to the care of the 80 peasant women who cook. This will be done every day in the future. You must inform everyone about this as soon as possible."