Chapter 629: The Imperial Examination Family-Building System (38)

Xie Yang's dowry farm has been brought to life!

With the promotion from the Wealthy Philanthropist's wife, several wives and young ladies from wealthy households in town came to visit her farm under the guise of spring outings, hiking, picnicking, and admiring the lotus flowers by the pond, only to leave with baskets of rare fruits and vegetables they had never seen before.

Of course, this was a private farm after all, and the dowry farm of a scholar's wife at that; these ladies and young misses never arrived empty-handed, either bringing several bolts of the latest fashionable fabrics from town or carrying boxes of the mansion's cook's signature pastries or exquisite dishes.

However, as the weather grew hotter, the pastries and dishes spoiled easily, and seeing that the Song scholar's family had only been allocated an acre of poor land during the family division, with no high-quality Paddy Field to grow rice or Wheat, they simply started bringing high-quality rice and flour instead.

Seeing them so sensible, Xie Yang naturally wouldn't turn away such proactive customers; she not only entertained them warmly, treating them to a feast of fresh lake produce from the farm, but also packed a basket of colorful fruits and vegetables for each family upon their departure.

Once the melons in the melon patch began to ripen one after another, an extra basket of melons was added; in short, she made sure they had a great time, ate to their satisfaction, and were left wanting more after they left.

With this network consisting mainly of wealthy wives, the lambs and calves Xie Yang wanted to inquire about were soon located.

Before long, there were a few more livestock on the sunny slope, contentedly eating alfalfa.

The cattle and sheep pens on the farm were finally no longer empty, with each stall having its own occupant.

The chicken and duck coops were the first to be fully occupied.

At the beginning of spring, Xie Yang had the farm manager buy a batch of newly hatched chicks, ducklings, and goslings; after feeding them diluted Spirit Spring Water several times to ensure they wouldn't easily fall ill or die, she stopped worrying about them. Now, three or four months later, the young hens, young ducks, and young geese among them had actually started laying eggs.

The young hens laid one egg a day in the nesting boxes, but the young ducks and young geese were unpredictable; sometimes they laid in the nests, sometimes by the grass near the lake, and she had even found a few in the mulberry trees or in the thin bamboo thickets by the public toilet wall—they were essentially doing whatever they pleased, even more lively than those old mother ducks.

The manpower on the farm was clearly no longer enough!

Xie Yang pondered that it was time to buy some domestic servants.

The farm manager and the hired laborers were, after all, in an employment relationship; during the initial phase of building the farm, she had frequently come to inspect it herself, so no problems had surfaced. But as the farm's supporting infrastructure became more mature and the output that made outsiders envious grew, a purely employment-based relationship could not guarantee that problems wouldn't arise.

She had noticed more than once that the maids and matrons under those ladies and young misses would always try to chat and get close to the farm manager; for now, because there wasn't much mature produce and the tea and medicinal herbs on the mountain hadn't reached harvest time, she was perfectly clear about the farm's output, and even if the farm manager secretly picked things to give away or sell, she would be able to detect it, but what about in the future?

She could not stay in this small mountain village forever; as Song Yanqing continued to pass the examinations, she would definitely have to go to Jingcheng with him to develop. This farm was her dowry, and she might return here to retire in the future; selling it was out of the question, but the person entrusted to manage it had to be a trusted confidant.

Thus, Xie Yang had a serious talk with the farm manager and the existing hired laborers, asking if they were willing to sign a contract. Either a temporary or permanent contract would do, but if they didn't sign, she didn't intend to continue employing them.

"Employer, I am willing!"

"Employer, I am also willing!"

Two of the four hired laborers expressed their willingness to sign a temporary contract.

They were brothers from the north who had fled south due to the chaos of war and only settled down in this area; after their parents died of illness, only the two brothers were left to rely on each other. Because they were poor, they were twenty-six or twenty-seven and still hadn't married.

They had previously worked at a rice shop near the pier, but the employer heard from somewhere that outsiders were light-fingered and, worried they would steal grain from the shop, fired them.

Later, they met the farm manager and followed him around to build farms and houses for wealthy families. But these types of jobs were short-term, and once one was finished, they had to wait for the next.

It was rare to find an employer who, after building a farm, still needed to hire people to farm, grow vegetables, and clear the hills, with the compensation being room and board plus an additional five hundred wen per month. The brothers were happier than anyone and wished they could work here until the end of time.

So when Xie Yang mentioned signing a contract, the brothers agreed without hesitation.

The farm manager's expression was complex; he had actually guessed long ago that this job wouldn't last long—after all, whose farm was permanently run by hired labor? Buying servants required a large initial expenditure, but there was no need to spend money later, and since the employer held the deed of sale, if they didn't work well, she could deny them food; who would dare to slack off?

That was why he hadn't put his heart into it, only doing what the employer told him to do. Unlike these two silly boys, who worked harder than anyone even when the employer didn't say anything.

"A Da, A Er, are you really staying? Once this contract is signed, it won't be easy to leave in the future?"

These two silly boys were brought by him, and he was truly a bit reluctant to see them go. It wasn't that he had developed deep feelings for them, but rather that they were strong and worked hard; with two such people around, he, as the middleman, didn't have to worry about not getting work.

Who would have thought these two boys would grin and say, "Zhong Shu, it's quite good here! We can eat our fill and sleep well; without a contract, we were always worried about when the employer would fire us, but signing one makes us feel at ease instead."

"..."

The farm manager choked, pulled them into a corner, and urged them with a sense of frustration, "You two are fools! If you don't plan for yourselves, you should at least plan for the next generation! Or are you saying you don't intend to marry? If you marry, signing this contract makes you servants of the master's house, not free men! At that time, what girl from a clean family background would be willing to marry you? Even if you do marry, it will be another servant, and what about the next generation? Do you want them to be born as servants?"

The brothers scratched their heads: "But we were always free men before, and weren't we still too poor to marry? At least now we can save up a few coins."

"..."

The farm manager spent a long time trying to persuade the two brothers to no avail, then flicked his sleeves and left in annoyance, taking the other two hired laborers with him.

The moment they left, Xie Yang filled the vacancies.

She bought six new servants, two women and four men; among them, one woman and two men were a family of three—the couple was not yet thirty, and their twelve-year-old son, Xiaohu, had been sold by a cruel stepmother after their family fell into ruin.

Xie Yang had the woman manage the farm kitchen, the man who could read and write take over the farm manager's position, and she decided to observe Xiaohu, who had been tutored for a few years, for a while; if he was suitable, she would have him serve as Song Yanqing's book boy. He was going to the Provincial Capital this August to take the Provincial Examination, and he still needed someone to run errands, do chores, and gather information.

As for the remaining woman and two men, the woman was originally an embroiderer for a wealthy family who had been made a scapegoat after a fire in the embroidery room; Xie Yang put her in charge of the farm staff's work uniforms and daily mending. Of the two men, one was in his early forties, whose wife had died and who had been kicked out by his unfilial son and daughter-in-law, leaving him with nowhere to go but to sell himself; the other was about the same age as A Da and A Er, sold by an official's family in the Provincial Capital—on the surface, it appeared he had offended his master, but in reality, he was a scapegoat.

Xie Yang had the Main System conduct background checks on all these people; they were all honest people who had been backstabbed, bullied, or made scapegoats simply because they were too honest.

Xie Yang provided them with pre-job training, and once they were familiar with the farm's procedures, she let them handle the work.

The cook was responsible for the farm's three meals a day; the embroiderer was responsible for the staff's clothing and mending, and when she had time, she would sew shoes and insoles for the employer; the farm manager was in charge of everything, while Xiaohu was not assigned tasks yet and was told to learn from his father; A Da and the other three were each responsible for the poor land, the vegetable patch, the hills, and the livestock.

To reduce the labor intensity in the planting area, Xie Yang set up a Bamboo Pipe Drip Irrigation system for the farm, including the hills; as long as they checked regularly for blockages or breaks, there was no need to laboriously carry water for irrigation.

However, tilling the fields and weeding still required human labor, but the farm tools provided were brand new and, having been modified by Xie Yang, a former "senior mechanical engineer," they saved much more effort than the old-fashioned tools.