Chapter 455: Increasing Income and Reducing Expenditure (Please vote and subscribe)

Damn it, I spent so much manpower and material resources, and wasted several years to save these livestock, and you actually want to kill them for meat. Why don't you eat shit? This is really like a son selling his father's land without feeling sorry, Luo Chong couldn't help but curse in his heart.

After Luo Chong finished scolding the tree, he picked up the letter and read it. The more he read it, the angrier he got. Who said that primitive people are fools? I'll slap him to death. They are all a bunch of shameless things. This is clearly taking advantage of the public ownership system to take advantage of the Han tribe.

The construction of Liuyang County started last winter with site selection and land clearing, and then immediately recruited nearby tribes to start construction, and then mobilized nearly 7,000 people to join. With more labor, the speed of construction also increased, and then continued to recruit workers from the surrounding areas, while also attracting some tribes to join and join.

During this year, quite a few people joined the tribe, but compared with the sudden surge now, the number of people who joined in this year is nothing. Why didn't they join earlier or later, but joined like crazy when winter was about to come? Why? It's because they saw the disadvantages of public ownership.

What is public ownership? It's eating from a big pot. Although the Han tribe has long been divided into households and each family cooks their own food, the source of food is still distributed by the tribe. Most of the tribes that have come to join the tribe now have grasped this point.

It's autumn now, and all tribes are storing food for the winter, but some tribes may think that they can't store so much, or they are lazy and just want to eat for free. Isn't your Han tribe recruiting people? That's fine. We will go when winter comes. We don't have to do any work by then, and we can wait for the tribe to distribute food. Anyway, I have joined the Han tribe now, and I am a member of the Han tribe. You can't just watch me starve to death.

This is definitely premeditated.

They have been holding it back for a whole year. They didn't do any work for the Han tribe. Now winter is coming, and a lot of labor will stop. You've come with your family at this time. What did you do with the special brew? Isn't this just eating for free? !

Luo Chong was so angry that he slammed the table in an empty classroom, but what's the use of being angry? The problem still needs to be solved. There is only so much food reserve at the moment, but the population is surging. The same food has so many more mouths to feed. It is a foregone conclusion that there will not be enough food. Can these people who have been recruited with great difficulty by the Han tribe be starved to death again?

After being angry and scolding, Luo Chong's mood gradually calmed down. It has been said in the letter that according to this sudden surge, the population of Liuyang County will exceed 30,000. So how can the food in the warehouse now be used to feed more than 30,000 people?

This problem is very serious.

Because of the first year of construction in Liuyang County, there were not many fields that were reclaimed and cultivated for the first time, and the rice only produced one season. There was no way, it was planted too late. After the rice was harvested, although corn was planted again, Luo Chong was afraid that there was not enough time and the corn would not mature by then, but would waste these hard-earned seeds.

Therefore, the food was limited. Even if one more season of corn could be harvested before winter, it would not be of much use. There was no way, there were too many people.

The food was limited, but there was no way. If there was no food, there was still meat. The animal husbandry in Liuyang County was really amazing. There were tens of thousands of saiga antelopes and purchased sheep alone, and there were also a large number of cattle and horses. However, these cattle and horses were precious animal power and could not be slaughtered at will. There were also a large number of spotted pigs.

Since the Lu tribe came to Liuyang, Liuyang County has been trying to expand the scale of the breeding of spotted pigs. How to expand it? That is to raise them, breed more, but don't eat them. Now, a few months have passed, and the new batch of piglets are already half a meter long. All the spotted pigs, big and small, have increased from the original six or seven hundred to nearly 3,000 now.

There is no way, mainly because pigs are too fertile. Just from the two rows of scrotums on the belly, you can see that there are ten or eight in a litter, and sometimes thirteen or fourteen in a litter. Such a terrifying breeding number, and they only breed and don't eat, it's really hard not to have too many.

However, Luo Chong still doesn't want to slaughter them wantonly, because this is the foundation of the entire Han tribe. He has been here for more than three years, and he has found that the only tribe that has domesticated pigs is the Lu tribe. These domesticated pigs are all provided by them, and no other breeds have been found so far. Otherwise, Luo Chong would not treasure these pigs so much. These will be promoted throughout the Han Dynasty in the future. How can they be killed casually like this?

In this case, we can only start by increasing revenue and reducing expenditure. The first thing is to reduce expenditure. With a larger population, there are naturally more mouths to feed. So we can no longer eat and drink as lavishly as before. We must learn to be frugal and eat sparingly.

In the past, when there were not so many people, Liuyang County could still have three meals a day, at least two meals of white rice. Perhaps this is why so many shameless people were attracted here, but now it can't be like this. We must save money, save money drastically, so that these people can't be so happy eating for free. Well, then change it to two bowls of porridge a day.

In addition, it is to increase income. If there is not enough food, then use other foods. Liuyang County is worthy of the name of the 'Sheep-Retaining County'. There are really many sheep, and they reproduce very fast. These are things that can reach sexual maturity at one year old and reproduce offspring at one and a half years old. It would be a pity not to kill a batch of them, and killing them early can save more fodder for other livestock to survive the winter. Well, then kill half of them first, 5,000 heads, starting with the old, weak and sick, and then pickle them with salt as soon as possible, and then keep them for cooking meat porridge in winter.

As for other livestock, they naturally cannot be slaughtered on such a large scale, so Kaiyuan cannot only start with livestock, but also find ways from other places. In this season, for a tribe that lives on water, what is the most suitable thing to store food, that is naturally the fish in the river.

This time is the day when sea fish migrate in large quantities. Luo Chong has discovered that the fish in the river have returned in the past few days, and Hanyang City has also divided people to start fishing. The number of fish caught is very large, too many to count. However, Luo Chong has observed these for three years and has made some achievements.

That is, this fish is a seawater fish. In autumn, it will return to fresh water to reproduce. However, after these fish lay eggs, they will never return to the sea. They will wander in fresh water every day until they die, and then the newly born fish will be raised in the river. After they have survived the severe winter, they will follow the ancestral law and return to the sea again.

Therefore, even if Luo Chong does not catch these fish after reproduction, they can never return to the sea. It would be a waste not to catch them since they don't cost money anyway.

Another point is that there are fish in the river in Hanyang City, and many can be caught every day. Liuyang County should follow suit, but according to the information Luo Chong received, there are still some discrepancies.

Dashu has tried to fish in Liuyang County, but the situation there is quite different from that in Hanyang City. The small river in Hanyang City is really small, no more than ten meters wide and no more than five or six meters deep. It is easy to fish here. Anyway, the river is so big and there are so many fish. Where can you run?

But the river in Liuyang County is 180 meters wide and several feet deep. There are more fish, but the capacity is too large. Even if there are many fish, most of them are in the middle of the river. Those fish are not stupid. Who would run to the shallows by the river for no reason? This also adds difficulty to Dashu and his team's fishing.

Can the fish be caught? Of course, it can be caught, but there are too few. The fishery output of Liuyang County can only allow the residents in the city to have a snack. It is too difficult to use fish as reserve food. This is not to say that Luo Chong's fishing method is useless. The main reason is that the population is different now. Can 100 people eat 2,000 fish at the beginning and 20,000 or 30,000 people eat 1,000 fish now?

Luo Chong rubbed his temples. Seeing so much meat hidden under the water, he couldn't get it up. How could this be possible? If you want to catch fish in the big river, the most urgent thing is to build a boat. At least you need three or four boats, and then cast a wide net in the middle of the river. In this way, the fish will naturally have no way to escape.

However, the biggest difficulty of this plan is the problem of no boats. Liuyang County is a new city. There is a windmill sawmill there, but it is too late to produce various building materials and tools, so there is no time to build a boat. Before, a small boat was built, which was specially used to contact the Ling tribe. Besides, it was a drop in the bucket. The lonely boat was even more desolate.

The only fishery now is supplied by this small boat. If they want to build a new boat, that's no problem, but there's not enough time and not much material. The craftsmen in Liuyang County don't have much experience in shipbuilding. It's estimated that they can build one boat in a month. By the time they build three or four boats, it's estimated that it will be snowing heavily and the river will be frozen. At that time, the boat will be useless.

Thinking of this, Luo Chong is no longer in a hurry. He just waits until the river freezes. It's not like there's no way to fish in winter. It's definitely better to go directly on the ice and fish by drilling holes to fish than rowing. After all, they are a group of landlubbers. It takes time for them to master driving a small boat. By the time they are almost trained, the river should be frozen.

Change three meals to two meals, all of which are porridge. Kill sheep and pickle meat for emergencies. Fishing along the river, it's better to wait until winter.

After finalizing the winter reserve plan for Liuyang County, Luo Chong sneered at Dashu's letter. You want to take advantage of me? Haha, I am the only one who takes advantage of others in my life, and you still want to take advantage of me.

Luo Chong sneered while taking out a white paper and writing quickly. He wanted to write back to Dashu. He first scolded him, then wrote down several measures he thought of, and finally Luo Chong's means of revenge, 'All newly joined tribesmen must cultivate ten acres of land before winter. Those who violate the rules will be expelled from the city and their food will be stopped. '

You are not being cunning and deliberately delaying your arrival until this time. Don't you want to work and get something for nothing? Well, now that you are here, make up for the work you haven't done. Look, whose food is not earned by their own labor, why do you want to eat and drink for free?

Don't you want to work? Well, the Han tribe doesn't need people like you. You can go back to where you came from. If you don't work with everyone, why should you eat the food grown by everyone?

After writing this letter, Luo Chong smiled complacently. He could almost see the angry faces of those people when they were reclaiming wasteland, but these guys would never leave, because if such a lazy person left, he would starve to death. Only by finding a way to stay in the Han tribe can he be guaranteed to survive. Now, let alone letting him cultivate ten acres of land, even twenty or thirty acres can be negotiated.

They will definitely like it. Luo Chong smiled coldly.

Now the cultivated land can be planted with a season of winter wheat, but the planting time of wheat is too long, and the yield is shockingly low. Large-scale planting is simply not feasible. Now is the founding stage of the Han Empire. It can be said that all aspects are trying, but wheat cannot be planted more. If wheat is planted, it will not produce so much food, and the Han Empire will be in chaos.

But this does not mean that everyone is isolated from wheat. Of course, it must be planted, and it must be continuously selected and cultivated to expand the yield per mu, reduce the planting time, and then promote it to the people.

Of course, unlike rice and corn, two high-yield crops, wheat is a vulnerable group, but as the saying goes, things are precious because they are scarce. Anyone with a brain can figure out how expensive this little bit of wheat will be when everyone is generally eating white rice and corn. Wheat is the most luxurious food in the Han Empire. Well, no problem.

So it is impossible to plant winter wheat, but there are also benefits to turning the land in advance. The original wasteland can be reclaimed into fertile fields. If there are insect eggs in the soil, then after turning it over, it will definitely freeze to death in winter. In the spring of next year, you just need to let them follow and let them plant what others plant.

Wheat was definitely not allowed in the early stages of the empire. Only when the warehouses were full of food could someone suggest planting wheat, because there would be no pressure. You definitely couldn't risk starving people to death by planting wheat. People like that would be absolutely stupid. Fortunately, Luo Chong

sent the letter away. Luo Chong also started to make arrangements for fishing, especially winter fishing, which requires a huge trawl net, preferably made of hemp fiber. In addition, there are special tools for drilling holes in the ice, ice picks, steel chisels, fish hooks, and other indescribable things. They all started to move under Luo Chong's command, and they looked so coordinated.

But even if it's faster, it will take three months, otherwise the river surface won't freeze solid, and there's no point in talking about winter fishing.

(End of this chapter)