There is also a market in the town of Xihe, but most of the people who go to the market are farmers and workers.

Although they live in the same county, the natives of Kunshan and migrant workers are clearly divided. People in the county go to the Banshan Bridge in the county seat to attend the New Year market, while farm workers come to the town of Weihe. Of course, the really rich people go to Suzhou...

First, it is cheap, and second, you don't have to endure discrimination here. Actually, Kunshan is not bad. After all, it has been a beggar's den for many years, and many common people have lived with refugees for many years, so there is still some class feeling.

If this happened in other counties, it would not be as simple as just glaring at others. Verbal violence and physical beatings would be common.

There is nothing we can do about this. Locals don't like outsiders, and city dwellers look down on country folks. This has been going on for years. As the saying goes, no discrimination, no superiority... Forget it, it's New Year's Day, so let's not bring up something that will spoil the fun.

Wang Liu also brought his family and children to the market with his father. This Shandong old man who fled from Anqiu County, Qingzhou Prefecture, had been recruited to work on the Kunshan Farm for a whole year.

At first, they were desperate and the whole family was starving to death. So they listened to their fellow villagers and came to Kunshan with the idea of ​​trying their best to save the situation. They became a farmhand in Kunkaisi Farm 69.

The days that followed were like a dream for Wang Liu and his family. When they arrived at the farm, they had a house with a separate entrance and a family, and enough food to feed the whole family... Although the money was advanced by the farm, it was a one-for-one loan, with no interest! This was completely different from those black-hearted landlords, okay?

In addition, the costs of seeds, farm tools, fertilizers, and irrigation are all borne by the farm. They don't have to spend a penny and can just focus on farming.

This move by the farm immediately won the hearts of the farm workers. A group of people who were on the verge of despair suddenly grabbed a life-saving straw and did everything they could to do it. They were afraid that they would be fired by the farm if they did not do well.

However, the farm was too strict. There were strict rules for when to start and when to finish work, when to plant rice and when to turn the soil. There were even rules for the spacing between seedlings, how much fertilizer to apply per mu, and how much water to use. If the rules were violated, work points would be deducted.

At first, no one knew what work points were, but they soon realized that they were food and money!

Gradually some old farmers, who were used to being lax, became uncomfortable with the fussy regulations. Some began to slack off, and some turned a deaf ear to the agricultural technicians' requirements and said strange things, saying things like, "This is not how you plant the land," and "They have nothing better to do than to make fun of us."

In fact, not to mention them, even the farm managers and agricultural technicians didn’t understand why farming was so troublesome. It almost drove them crazy.

It was just that Ma Yilong was a high-ranking official, so they didn't dare to question him. Moreover, the company's rules were strict, and if the orders were not carried out properly, their wages would be deducted, so they had no choice but to grit their teeth and continue.

With this mentality, the old farm workers became their punching bags. Although the farm had regulations that prohibited corporal punishment of farm workers, scolding and nitpicking were inevitable.

After their work points were severely deducted, the farm workers were filled with resentment and instigated the farm workers in the same team to cause trouble.

Finally one day, when the agricultural technician of the fourth team of the 69th farm was about to have his work points deducted for a small matter, the farm workers pushed him into the manure and beat him. If Wang Liu and his team of three hadn't seen him and rushed over to rescue him, the agricultural technician would have drowned in the manure pit...

Seeing that they had caused trouble, the people in Team 4 wanted to run away. However, they had to take their families with them and were reluctant to leave their food, farm tools, and bedding at home, so they went back to the village to pack up their things first.

Wang Liu's father was wise enough to tell the team leader that if they ran away, Team 3 would be in trouble. When the team leader heard this, he quickly called on the team members to pick up hoes and block the road to the neighboring village to prevent them from leaving the village.

Soon, Director Ao arrived with the security team, surrounded the 694th village, and arrested the families of the several farm workers who led the riot. Those families disappeared from then on. The farm workers in the same team were also terminated from their contracts, driven out of the farm naked, and never hired again.

Afterwards, the Inspection and Supervision Commission sent people to investigate and found that the farm and agricultural technicians did not strictly control and failed to discover in time that twenty households among the farm workers in the four teams were from the same hometown!

Young Master Zhao knew the harm of people from the same hometown and clan sticking together, so he deliberately ordered Kunkaisi to disperse the farmers and workers and resettle them, so as not to let people from the same hometown and clan gather together!

Although most of the refugees came from Shandong, Henan and northern Jiangsu, it was truly a great fate to have so many fellow villagers assigned to one team.

Fortunately, no fraud was found in the process, but the charges of "lax supervision", "ineffective review" and "bad attitude of agricultural technicians" cannot be avoided.

Finally, Chairman Gu Dadong and General Manager Dai Gao both wrote self-criticisms to the group, and the entire management team was fined. This is also the reason why they were deducted points and ranked third in the group during the year-end summary.

After that, all farms carried out strict rectification, evaluated each production team one by one, and eliminated the bad apples. It was also strictly stipulated that there could be no more than three households from the same village in the same team, and if there was one more household, the team would be replaced immediately!

As for employees, all farm managers and agricultural technicians were gathered in the company and attended a three-day training course. They blushed and sweated, dug deep into their souls, and changed their work attitudes.

As for the direct responsible persons, the agricultural technician of the fourth team was directly expelled, and the director Ao was also severely punished and demoted to agricultural technician, so that he could make meritorious contributions while serving his sentence. Before the punishment is revoked, he cannot participate in any awards or promotions.

The position of Aochangchang was replaced by Miao Pu, an agricultural technician from Team 3. This time, Team 3 saved the agricultural technicians from Team 4, prevented the situation from getting worse, and withstood the test, and was commended by the company. As the agricultural technician who managed them, Miao Pu was naturally entrusted with an important task.

The captain of the third team was also directly transferred to a formal employee, becoming an assistant agricultural technician, and temporarily led the new fourth team. I heard that he will be transferred to another place as an agricultural technician next year.

Wang Liu's father, Old Man Wang, took over the position of team leader of the third team. He never thought that he, an old farmer who had always been submissive, would become the team leader all of a sudden. He said that you should find someone else. But the farm manager Miao said that the farm had already decided that you would be the team leader...

Each farmer in the team was rewarded with 200 work points, so everyone was very happy and full of motivation!

Once he became an official, Old Man Wang became energetic. His waist was no longer hunched, his legs and feet were more flexible, he walked with a breeze, and he would recite a few lines of poetry at any time. With his close cooperation, the work of the production team became much easier, which comforted the hard-pressed Technician Ao.

In this way, it was time for the summer harvest. When the grain was harvested and counted, it was found that each acre of land had yielded an extra stone!

What's even more amazing is that because of the early planting of seedlings, the rice matured a month earlier than in previous years. If we hurry up, we can plant another season of late rice!

Now everyone was convinced. Those guys who claimed that they had been farming all their lives and thought that no one knew more about farming than themselves, all shut up obediently.

In stark contrast to the stereotype that small farmers are conservative and refuse to change, farmers are more enthusiastic about improving planting techniques than you might imagine. But the prerequisite is to convince them that this method can really bring more gains than the inherent experience, and then they will resolutely improve without hesitation!

Therefore, during the late rice planting process, the entire farm from top to bottom went out early and came back late, enthusiastically putting every bit of their energy into the fields.

Even Ao Gong adjusted his mindset and worked hard, taking the attitude of living in the fields and leading the farmers to farm scientifically.

Hard work pays off. The farm had another bumper harvest in the autumn, with the yield equal to the summer harvest... This made Ma Yilong exclaim in disbelief. Normally, each harvest of crops will inevitably take away some nutrients from the soil. The interval between the two rice seasons is very short, and there is no time to re-cultivate the land, so the yield of late rice should be lower than that of early rice.

However, thanks to the full efforts of the farm workers and agricultural technicians, and the county's sanitation campaign, a direct supply model of manure from toilets to fields was established, allowing farms to apply fertilizer vigorously, which achieved this small miracle.

As a result, after two seasons, the Wang family's 5 mu of paddy fields produced a total of 35 dan of grain. They also planted 3 mu of mulberry fields and 2 mu of cotton fields. The cotton and mulberry fields produced 50 dan of grain.

Out of the 85 shi, 10 shi was paid as tax and 10 shi as rent, and the rest was divided equally between the farm and the farmers, so the Wang family could get 32.5 shi.

But he had to return the 20 shi of rations that he had advanced to the farm, so in the end he only got 12.5 shi.

His family was one of the few with the least harvest in the whole team. There was no other way, because his family had too many people and too few laborers. Other families planted the same 10 mu of land as his family, but because they had fewer mouths to feed, they could borrow 5 or 6 dan less grain than his family. Families with more laborers could plant more than 10 or 20 mu of land, so of course they could harvest more.

But it didn't matter, as Old Man Wang was the production team leader, he earned 50 work points a month. Eighth Sister brought three children with her, carrying baskets to pick up manure, cut pig grass, dig river mud, and burn wood ash, and in a month, she could earn almost 50 work points.

Adding the 200 bonus points, at the end of the year, I had accumulated a total of 1,000 work points. One work point can be exchanged for 1 kilogram of brown rice, so 1,000 work points means 1,000 kilograms of rice.

There are also fish and ducks raised in rice fields, chickens raised at home, mulberry and hemp planted in the fields, and vegetables planted in front of and behind houses. These farms harvest all of them.

In the end, the net income for the year exceeded 20 taels of silver!

Although some other families earned 30 taels, Old Man Wang and his wife Wang Liu were both satisfied.

Old man Wang has never had so much money in his life.

When they were in Anqiu, they worked hard for a year but still couldn't pay off the hunger. As a result, they were in debt and had no choice but to abandon their homes and become refugees.

It was not until this moment that they realized the joy of farming!

And this is because mulberry cotton is not valuable this year. I heard that the sea trade has opened, and the price will increase a lot next year. By then, the income will definitely be higher!

Old man Wang was so happy that he gritted his teeth and took out 5 taels of silver. The whole family rushed to the town of Xihe. Everyone in the family made new clothes, bought candies, whips and meat for the grandchildren, bought perfume for his daughter-in-law and daughter, and bought wine for himself and Wang Liu! He wanted to take revenge for the poverty of the past!

After spending all that money, I only have two or three taels left...

Alas, it’s hard to change consumption habits.

So I bought some daily necessities and replaced all the junk in the house.

New year, new atmosphere, life will be better and better every year!