Chapter 356 An Unusual Sucker
She spent about an hour thinking and writing, and finally wrote down some precautions for planting these three crops.
After she finished writing, she stretched and went to the side room.
The two rough-looking old women who had been keeping an eye on things quickly brought her hot water.
Xie Wanniang sent them away and then comfortably closed the door to take a bath.
The next day, after a good night's sleep, Xie Wanniang summoned Steward Cao and instructed him: "Go to the city immediately and purchase three sturdy and spacious carriages specifically for transporting these sweet potatoes, potatoes, and corn. Be sure to take good care of them and don't damage them."
"I'll take care of it right away." Steward Cao accepted the order and left.
Several days passed in the blink of an eye, and the caravan heading north was ready to depart. Xie Wanniang stood at the gate of her mansion, watching the carriages loaded with goods, gifts, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and corn slowly leave, a gratified smile on her face.
Persistence pays off. After so many years in this world, she has finally found the crops she has been longing for.
Hopefully, her estate manager and tenants will not disappoint her, and that she will be able to enjoy the delicious food she has been longing for this autumn.
Although she couldn't let her family and friends eat as much as they wanted in order to promote it as quickly as possible and solve the problem of food and clothing for the people, she felt that it was still okay if it was just their small family secretly eating the small portion that was not suitable for reproduction.
While secretly swallowing her saliva, Xie Wanniang turned around and walked towards the second courtyard.
The manager and staff will help her sell the goods she purchased according to the plan.
The gifts she prepared for her relatives and friends would be delivered to their homes by the manager and staff according to the list.
The guards and bodyguards would take all the students from the academies that her father had previously sent back to Baoding Prefecture.
The manager will bring her the profits from her several shops in Baoding Prefecture, along with the account books.
The steward would personally hand over the three crop seeds she valued most, along with her handwritten planting instructions, to the head of the estate.
With all the trivial matters settled, Xie Wanniang calmed down and once again threw herself into the work of compiling teaching materials.
This busy period lasted for several months. Spring came and autumn went, and winter arrived in the blink of an eye. Xie Wanniang finally got the corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes she could eat.
As she said, the good-quality pigs that could be kept for breeding were all carefully preserved by the head of the farm. Only those that did not grow very well or were damaged during the harvest were picked out and disposed of according to Xie Wanniang's requirements.
In addition to the portion he sent to Xie Wanniang via the caravan, he also had some delivered to Mingfu Village and Xie Family Village.
After reading the letter from the head of the farm, Xie Wanniang expressed great satisfaction with the yield per mu of the three crops.
To accelerate the promotion of planting, she once again purchased sweet potatoes and potatoes that local farmers had just harvested not long ago.
The purchase price was certainly not as high as in the spring. After careful consideration, Xie Wanniang set a price similar to that of broken rice.
The price isn't particularly tempting, but it's enough to buy back the sweet potatoes and potatoes that the farmers originally wanted to keep for their own consumption.
Xie Wanniang is still buying up corn, which is relatively rare, at high prices.
There's no way around it; this stuff is scarce to begin with, and nobody in the vicinity grows it. If she doesn't raise the price a bit and spread the word that "there's an unusual sucker here," those foreigners probably won't be willing to bring these crop seeds, which are prone to failure, over again.
Xie Wanniang had no intention of buying their expensive glass beads. If she had to choose something to rip off, she would choose various crops that could improve her personal diet and the living standards of the people of Dawei.
It is worth mentioning that Xie Wanniang's "search for raw materials" is progressing quite smoothly. When the weather warms up next spring, she will be able to arrange for people to help her build a workshop nearby.
She even found a group of master craftsmen who used to specialize in firing ceramics and bricks, and hired them at a high price to pass on their skills.
As for the recipients of her instruction, they were naturally clever servants she had selected in advance and who had already signed a life-or-death contract with her.
These people would naturally be willing to do anything that allows them to avoid serving others and instead learn a trade from a master craftsman, leading to a more comfortable, wealthy, and dignified life.
They put in their utmost effort and thought, trying to learn as quickly and well as possible, because Xie Wanniang said that whoever learns the fastest and best now will be paid more wages once the workshop is up and running, and she would also consider arranging for them to be a junior manager.
Material rewards are always better than empty promises. With Xie Wanniang's promise, everyone put in their best effort to show off.
Xie Wanniang was very satisfied with this. She had already planned that once her workshop earned its first pot of gold, she would exchange her glassmaking technology for a meritorious service with the emperor before others, out of envy, would try to take advantage of her and try to get a piece of the action.
Incidentally, she also wanted to mention ideas for utilizing cement, rubber, springs, steam engines, and water and wind power. If the imperial court could pay attention to these ideas, her skeletal frame wouldn't have to be repeatedly shaken apart and reassembled when she traveled in the future.
And who knows, she might even be able to use electric lights in her lifetime.
Thinking about it this way, even the daily task of writing textbooks at my desk became interesting because of her wonderful idea.
Full of energy, Xie Wanniang finished writing the last part of the series of teaching materials. She wrapped all the bound booklets tightly in oil paper and put them into an extremely sturdy box.
Just then, Jiang Yuan had a memorial to send to the capital, so Xie Wanniang simply let him "use his public office for private gain" and sent her box of textbooks, along with an accompanying action plan on "popularizing scientific knowledge and vigorously developing the economy," along with it.
Those around them, unaware of the situation, assumed that the large box was also something Jiang Yuan was going to deliver to the emperor. Only those who opened the box knew that the large box was actually a box of smuggled goods that Jiang Yuan, that henpecked husband, had helped his wife carry.
The officials in the capital who were well-informed about what Xie Wanniang had done in her earlier years had all heard about it. So, although not all of them agreed with Xie Wanniang's so-called plan, none of them dared to directly confiscate or throw away that box of things on the grounds that it was "not in accordance with the rules".
After all, their emperor was not one to tolerate his subjects deceiving him or acting on their own initiative.
They can impeach Jiang Yuan for this matter, but they cannot follow suit and violate the emperor's taboos just because Jiang Yuan broke the rules.
So even though some people were cursing in their hearts, they still had to obediently help Xie Wanniang deliver those things.
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