Chapter 209 I said this is how it should be done, so it should be done this way!
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Li Shiyue sat at the head of the table and waited for a while, deliberately giving everyone time to discuss the windmill.
Her senses were exceptional; although she was a bit far from Li Youfu, she still heard clearly what he and her eighth great-uncle were whispering to each other.
"...She is indeed a capable person."
"Hmph! So what?"
When she gets married in the future, won't Li Shi still belong to Shi Yang?
"By then, forget about windmills and stone mills; even the paper mill will be ours!"
Li Shiyue was speechless at what the two people said, but she just shook her head in her heart.
Feeling that the time was almost up, Li Shiyue clapped her hands and began to talk about the second matter to the crowd who were looking at her.
"If you want to do a good job, you must first have the right tools. If we want to do a good job in the autumn harvest, we must prepare all the tools and equipment we need."
I ordered some new farm tools in Qingsong Town in advance. I got fifty sickles from the blacksmith shop. They will be distributed according to the number of people. The family with more men will get more.
This thing is expensive, so I'll pay for it upfront. Whoever uses it will have to pay me the rental price. If anyone wants to buy it later, I'll charge them extra.
But don't worry, I've ordered a lot, so the price for you to buy just one is cheaper than buying it in town.
I also ordered winnowing baskets, wicker baskets, and a stone mill. There's a large stone mill that we'll put in the drying yard, and anyone from our village can use it.
This windmill, along with the rest of the money, is my personal contribution to the village, so I won't ask anyone for money.
Later, you guys discuss finding a few people to go to town and bring all of these back.”
Although everyone heard that they had to pay to use the sickle, they felt it was reasonable, since it was made of iron and they should be charged.
Then they heard Li Shiyue say that the windmill and millstone would no longer cost everyone money, but would be placed in the threshing ground so that everyone could use them. Some people in the crowd started talking about it.
"Wow, October is really going all out!"
They use those two things for spring plowing. Last time I went to the county town, I heard people say that the general summoned all the carpenters in the town and the county specifically to make those two things.”
"Does the Great General also use those two things?"
"That's right!"
There's quite a bit of land over there at the garrison post!
While some people are focused on windmills, others are focused on stone mills.
"How big of a millstone did October say it was?"
Looking at that picture, I can't understand it either. Our village's threshing ground is huge, so the windmill and stone mill must be huge too, right?
Erdan's mother sat down next to the woman with Erdan in her arms. The woman speaking was actually Wang Xiangxing, the eldest daughter-in-law of Eighth Uncle's family.
Logically speaking, the people sitting in this ancestral hall were also vaguely divided into three factions. One faction was naturally Li Shiyue's own people, led by Li Wangshui, Ma Zi, and Wei Zi.
The other faction consisted of other members of the Li clan who were dissatisfied with Li Shiyue, the woman's mother, and were led by Li Youfu and his eighth uncle.
The only middle-of-the-road options are the Wang family and the Liu family of three.
Therefore, at this moment, the three groups of people were roughly divided and occupied the left, center, and right sides of the ancestral hall respectively.
But just then, Wang Xiangxing sat down next to Erdan's mother.
It wasn't that Erdan's mother pulled Wang Xiangxing over to sit; rather, it was that Wang Xiangxing had been deliberately cultivating a relationship with Erdan's mother lately.
In fact, Erdan's mother was bothered by Wang Xiangxing, after all, Wang Xiangxing's father-in-law was her eighth great-uncle.
Don't say that Li Shiyue and Li Youfu's Eighth Uncle have made peace now, but that's just on the surface. Others may be genuinely reconciled, but with the hatred of the severed finger still there, how could the Eighth Uncle truly reconcile with Li Shiyue?
However, Wang Xiangxing is really a clingy person; if you agree to one of her statements, she can talk to you for three more.
That's not all. Wang Xiangxing also let her son Huzi play with Erdan at the school. Since the children were playing together, the adults naturally wouldn't separate them or tell them about the feud between the two families.
In this way, Erdan's mother gradually became able to have a proper conversation with Wang Xiangxing, and later she would even wait for Wang Xiangxing to go to the river to wash clothes together.
So, Wang Xiangxing sat down with Erdan's mother.
"That must be quite a lot. Didn't you hear October say that we had to get people to rush a cart to bring it back?"
"If it were a small person, who could she order to be pulled back?"
At this moment, Li Shiyue, who was sitting at the head of the table, felt that the discussion among the people below had gone on for a while, so he clapped his hands again and began to talk about the third matter.
"The last thing I plan to do is to use the method we used during the spring plowing season to gather manpower, animal power, and tools and divide them into twenty teams."
The men will be divided into ten teams, and they will mainly be working in the fields.
The ten women's teams turned around and were on the drying ground.
With both sides working together, we will strive to harvest all the grain in the entire village in the shortest possible time.
Once we pay the autumn tax, we can properly prepare for the border trade and have a prosperous year!
After Li Shiyue finished speaking, she didn't give everyone time to react and directly signaled Li Qiutian and Li Xiatian to send the lists to the heads of each family.
Li Shiyue stood up at this moment: "I have already arranged the teams on the list. Take a look. If you are not happy with any of them, find someone to replace them as soon as possible."
During the autumn harvest, the paper mills and schools would close, reopening after the harvest.
Seeing the unwilling expressions on the faces of several men around her eighth uncle, Li Shiyue glared at them and said, "I'm not asking for your consent, I'm informing you!"
Anyone who disagrees with working together for the autumn harvest should shut up!
"I said we should do it this way, so we'll do it this way!"
The men looked at each other, none of them wanting to stand up for Li Shiyue when he frowned. No one dared to stand up and oppose him.
And so, the autumn harvest in Liujiatun was settled.
Jiang Huai sat up and watched Li Shiyue standing there discussing the autumn harvest with Li Wangshui and the others. Then he looked up at Li Youfu, who had a gloomy face.
After most of the people in the ancestral hall had left, Jiang Huai stood up, asked Li Xiatian for a blueprint of the windmill, and then left the ancestral hall.
Li Shiyue specifically told him that during the autumn harvest in the village, Jiang Huai would be given a few days off and someone would be sent to take him back to the prefectural city for a visit.
Jiang Huai naturally listened to Li Shiyue's words, and when he left, he only carried a small bundle on his back.
And inside this bundle were the four letters he had written beforehand.
Li Wangshui accepted the job of taking Jiang Huai to the prefectural city. He drove the cart, and Jiang Huai was sitting on the other side of the cart shaft.
The cart behind was also piled with many things, including wooden boxes used by the paper mill, which contained good paper specially given to Jiang Huai for visiting relatives and friends, and two pheasants with beautiful tail feathers, which Li Xiatian had specially shot with arrows on Dahei Mountain and given to Jiang Huai, who was returning to his clan.
Li Wangshui, wearing a straw hat, pulled the reins and drove the mule out of Liujiatun. He was not a talkative person, but he couldn't resist Jiang Huai's reputation as a scholar, and Dazhuang and Xiaozhuang were studying under him.
So Jiang Huai asked, "...How did you manage to settle down in Andong?"
Li Wangshui didn't stutter at all and immediately began to recount how the people of Lijia Village had fled the famine.
"...Who would have thought those refugees were actually..."
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