Fortunately, Cheng Shi and his wife did not remain apprehensive for long before they saw the village head and his constables escorting a tall and handsome young man as he gracefully approached.
Wow, this young man is so good-looking!
Wang Guixiang suddenly realized that this official wasn't so scary after all! Look, he's being quite friendly to the village head behind him, who's bowing and scraping!
In her mind, officials were all middle-aged men who were majestic and dignified, with steady steps. She never expected that this was not the case at all. Look at this official, his stature and bearing are so impressive that no one in the surrounding area has ever seen such a handsome person!
Seeing the two of them standing there like statues waiting for their husbands, Chen Sheng frowned. "You two, when you see the Minister of Agriculture, why don't you kneel down and pay your respects!"
Kneeling? Is it kneeling?
Cheng Shi, who had never met such a high-ranking official as the Minister of Agriculture before, was momentarily stunned. Fortunately, his actions were faster than his thoughts, and he had already bowed down.
"Greetings...Greetings, Sir...Agricultural Official!"
Qi Yuchen was in a good mood, so she smiled and told them to get up quickly, that there was no need for such a grand ceremony.
Normally, common people don't need to kneel and bow when they see the Minister of Agriculture. Although the Minister of Agriculture has an official rank, it's not as prestigious as that of the county magistrate. But he was originally from a prominent family. If he hadn't taken a minor position as Minister of Agriculture here, even Magistrate Jia in the capital would have had to treat him with great respect.
"I heard that your fields are planted using the new rice transplanting method. I wonder what the yield per acre is this year?" Qi Yuchen asked, trying to be even more amiable. He never imagined that one day he would be personally involved in farming! He really wanted to show his cronies that he truly deserved the title of Minister of Agriculture!
After the previous buffer, and seeing that Qin San Niang was still following behind, they immediately felt more confident. With Da Wa's mother here, she would definitely not let anything happen to them. So Cheng Shi tried his best to calm down and answered calmly.
"Reporting to you, sir, my family has a total of three mu of farmland, one mu of which is paddy field cultivated using a new method. Yesterday, we weighed the harvest, and it was... less than three shi (a unit of dry measure)." Heaven knows, they worked all day yesterday, and they weighed the rice from the two mu of land together, but they knew the approximate value because the number of baskets was limited. The grain produced from this land took up twice as many baskets as the previous mu.
"What is your usual yield per acre?"
"About one and a half shi (a unit of dry measure)."
Qi Yuchen understood immediately; so the new planting method was indeed effective.
"Then why don't you use the rice transplanting method for all the land?" Qi Yuchen asked, puzzled. Since they had chosen the rice transplanting method, they must have a lot of faith in Madam Qin. Why not take a gamble and get a better harvest that way?
Qin San Niang felt utterly speechless. This idiot was truly a "let him eat meat porridge" kind of guy!
Look, Cheng Shi and his wife were instantly petrified. How were they supposed to answer the adults' questions? Wang Guixiang's gaze involuntarily turned towards Qin San Niang's direction.
Upon receiving the distress signal, Qin Sanniang had no choice but to step forward and respond, "Sir, this is also my suggestion. This rice planting method was something my family heard about from a wise man when we were fleeing. As for whether it actually works, we don't know."
I have a close relationship with Madam Cheng, so I advised her to try this method of planting. However, whether it will succeed or not, no one knows until the harvest. The Cheng family is doing this as a precaution.
Cai Bo covered his face. Their young master was used to living a life of luxury and had no idea that ordinary farmers relied on just a few acres of meager land to survive! Unlike those aristocratic families and gentry, who had thousands of acres of fertile land, as well as shops and restaurants, it would be a real illness if they used all of that for risky ventures!
"I see!" Qi Yuchen understood after hearing her explanation.
He thought to himself, "So that's how it is. I never imagined that people's lives were so difficult. A family of three only has three or four acres of land, and that's not even necessarily top-quality land."
As far as he knew, those high-ranking officials and nobles owned quite a few estates, some even having tens of thousands of acres, while others owned at least a thousand acres. Even his old father, a notoriously old-fashioned man, had managed to accumulate a thousand acres of fertile land over the years.
Although most of this fertile land was my mother's dowry and the result of her skillful management.
Moreover, the land owned by officials like them is exempt from taxes! Yet these farmers with only three or five acres of land have to pay taxes! No wonder his cronies always say that the people of the world are truly suffering.
For the first time in his life, Qi Yuchen felt that he knew so little, and he was also grateful that his family was well-off and could afford to send him to school for the imperial examinations...
Qin San Niang: Metamorphosis!
Afterwards, Qi Yuchen followed the village head and others to the fields of Uncle Chen Geng's family, who also planted two mu of new-method rice.
Yesterday, Mr. Chen, along with his son, daughter-in-law, grandson, and granddaughter-in-law, harvested the rice from their two mu (approximately 0.33 acres) of land. Holding the heavy, golden ears of rice in his hands, Mr. Chen's eyes welled up with tears. The family's harvest hadn't been this good in the past two years; this year, they were likely to have a good New Year!
Don't think he didn't know. At first, many people made sarcastic remarks, saying that it was ridiculous for an old farmer who had been farming all his life to believe in the farming methods of northerners!
Hmph, now it's your turn to cry, isn't it?
Look, my two acres of rice yield just as well as your two acres! That's called being a wise person when you know when to yield. You bunch of fools, you don't know anything!
From the very beginning, when his granddaughter-in-law and his wife came back and talked about this rice planting method, he thought it was feasible. Old Man Chen recalled something from a long time ago.
He was just a boy then, clearing wasteland with his father. That year, his father had to go to perform corvée labor, which delayed the clearing of the wasteland, but the rice should have been planted before it was cleared.
What could they do? Crops were the lifeblood of farmers; to ask them to give up this season's harvest was like a knife to their hearts! Left with no other choice, Old Man Chen planted rice on his two acres of land, planting them densely to avoid affecting the harvest. Only after clearing the wasteland did he transplant the rice seedlings one by one into the other paddy fields.
This resulted in a much higher density of rice seedlings in the paddy fields. Most farmers believed that since the yield per acre was already low, planting more sparsely would inevitably reduce the yield. However, in reality, their rice yield that year was not reduced at all; in fact, it was about the same as before!
Back then, because of the bumper harvest, his mother happily bought a pound of meat for the family—fatty meat! It was stewed so deliciously! He ate two big pieces! Those were some of the few happy times of his childhood.
After that, his father always thought it was for other reasons, perhaps because of their diligent fertilization, or perhaps because of the favorable weather that year, but no one thought about the method of transplanting rice seedlings.
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