Chapter 217 Buying Land (Part 2)
The Xia family was busy making winter clothes, stuffing quilts, pickling sauerkraut, making soybean paste, drying vegetables, cleaning old household items, and taking apart and washing old cotton-padded clothes and quilts. They were so busy from morning to night that they were almost exhausted.
Xia Xuejiao brought a group of people to do embroidery work in the house, making handkerchiefs, purses, fan covers, and small embroidered screens, and they were very busy.
Xia Daohua and his team also want to make spicy cabbage and pickled radish.
I had to move things around, wash things, sprinkle ingredients according to proportion, and stir them desperately until all the dishes were mixed evenly. Only then could I take a break. I was so tired that I was sweating all over.
Living in the same compound, the landlord family, the Hu family, and the Zhao family could not help but be moved by the Xia family's enthusiasm. So the families also started to take care of their own affairs.
Although the land has not been secured yet, sufficient preparations have been made for this year's winter.
After looking at Xiaoliu together for a month, they still hadn't found a piece of land that they liked. Grandpa Xia and Mrs. Zhou became anxious and couldn't help but secretly slip a handful of copper coins to the broker, begging him to think more about his own family and remember to keep it for his family when he found the right land.
The brokers received extra benefits and started to work extra hard.
Finally, when the first snow fell, a medium-quality piece of farmland was found for the Xia family.
The land is not big. Even including the edges and corners, it is only about 26 acres. It is located in Fengwei Village, the suburb closest to Jixiang County.
This Fengwei Village is known for its beautiful women, including the wife of a former emperor.
Of course, he was born in a humble family, held a low position, and died within a few years of being favored, but the common people didn't care about that.
If a queen appeared hundreds of years ago, they would still talk about it with great relish.
What’s more, this person’s meteoric rise to fame happened only a few decades ago.
After the empress became the empress, her family moved out of Fengwei Village and moved into the capital city, where they lived in the house that the empress had bought for them.
But Fengwei Village’s reputation for producing beautiful women spread.
The villagers do not discriminate against girls as much as people in other places do. Instead, they cherish both boys and girls equally.
When the girls in this village are thirteen or fourteen years old, wealthy families will come here to look for them. If they meet a girl who is pretty and has a good temperament, they will solemnly take her in as a concubine or even marry her.
The villagers will also move away.
Those who are reluctant to leave their homeland will move to live in auspicious counties;
Those who are reluctant to leave their daughters behind will move to the city where their daughter’s husband’s family lives.
Because of this tradition left by the empress who was favored by the previous emperor, there is land for sale in this village.
After the Xia family went to see it, they felt that this was a rare opportunity, so Grandpa Xia and Mrs. Zhou nodded without hesitation and bought the land.
But the price of this land is not cheap.
According to the market conditions in Beiguan Village, an acre of good land is only worth four or five taels of silver.
But in Fengwei Village, this one mu of land was priced at ten taels of silver. It was clearly just a medium-quality field, but it was priced at the price of a top-quality field!
The Xia family was somewhat reluctant when they heard this.
However, the broker secretly told them that although the price was a little high, it was only slightly higher than the market price, and if they could bargain down to eight taels of silver, that would be the lowest price.
Because land of this quality could be sold for twelve taels of silver per acre in late summer or early autumn.
The family was in a hurry to move, so they didn't ask for twelve taels.
The Xia family frowned and calculated. If they calculated it at 10 taels of silver, the 26 mu of land would cost 260 taels of silver. This did not include the commission for the broker and the taxes paid when signing the deed with the government.
If we can bargain for eight taels of silver, that would be two hundred and eight taels...
Although that family was in a hurry to sell, the Xia family was also somewhat anxious to buy. After some negotiations, they finally bargained down the price to nine taels of silver per acre of land. However, the family's original house next to the field was given to the Xia family as a bonus.
Including the land and the house, it cost 234 taels of silver. Signing the red deed, paying taxes, and paying commission and thanks to the broker cost another 4 taels of silver.
After paying out this money, the old couple’s wallets were almost empty.
The old couple were excited but also heartbroken, with very complicated emotions.
Twenty-six acres of land, even if it is just medium-quality farmland, can only produce 200 kilograms of grain per acre, which is almost enough to provide food for the Xia family.
When the old couple considered this matter, they seemed to have completely forgotten that the Xia family had already split up, and they still considered the whole family together.
However, if we simply rely on the harvest from this land, it will not be enough.
Because the harvested grain has to be used to pay taxes, labor service, and levies, all of which have to come from the fields.
So even though the Xia family bought the land, Grandpa Xia only made two trips with his four sons and then handed over the matters concerning the land to Xia Yougui, which did not stop them from continuing to look for land elsewhere.
Old Master Xia and Mrs. Zhou didn't know that almost all of their sons, except Xia Youtian, had set their eyes on this piece of land.
This piece of land is the closest to Jixiang County. Even if you don't grow crops yourself, you can rent it out to others to grow crops. If you want to go and take a look at the land, it's better to be close to the farm.
It would be so beautiful if the old couple were willing to give this land to me!
For a time, starting with Xia Yougui and Sun, several sons and daughters-in-law seemed to have suddenly become inexplicably filial.
At the same time, Xia Youtian and Jiang Shi also took a fancy to a piece of land, but the location was much farther than Fengwei Village. Fengwei Village was less than fifty miles away from the city wall of Jixiang County.
The piece of land that the fourth couple took a fancy to was located in Huangtao Village.
There are many wild yellow peach trees growing on the local hillsides. Although we can't see the peaches now, we can see large areas of peach trees. Just thinking about the scenes of blooming in spring and bearing fruit in summer and autumn makes people can't help but be fascinated.
It’s a pity that Huangtao Village is quite far away from Jixiang County, about a hundred miles away.
The fourth room and his wife liked that place, mainly because it looked very much like Beiguan Village. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides and faced the water on one side. There were not many people in the village, and the transportation was not very convenient, but the roads were not difficult to travel.
When the couple from the fourth room saw the land, they liked it very much, but they also had some conflicts.
They always felt that they should inform the old couple, but the old couple had just bought the land in Fengwei Village. If the old couple also took a fancy to this place, they were afraid that the money they had would not be enough.
Moreover, if he told the old couple, they might even involve the Hu family and the Zhao family to buy it together. For some reason, Xia Youtian instinctively didn't want to go with those two families.
This piece of land is a full sixty acres in size, and is also a medium-sized field. It is relatively close to a water source, and the seller just quoted a price of twelve taels of silver per acre.
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(End of this chapter)
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