Chapter 252: How to Improve the Soil's Tilth?

"I'm not asking for high wages. I only want to work for the County Lieutenant, to repay a kindness from years past that I never got to return…"

Ju had been the stable clerk for the township. Now he had reached retirement age and left his post at the township stables, but his body was still sturdy, so he hoped to come raise cattle and horses for Heifu.

"The County Lieutenant now has a great household and vast estate, over a thousand mu of land. You'll surely need to buy horses and plow oxen. I hope you can take me in. This old man doesn't mean to boast, but among the horse-judgers and ox-judgers in this county, I count myself among the very best!"

As he spoke, he demonstrated his skill on the spot. He walked straight into the stable, pried open the mouths of the oxen and horses, and based on the growth and wear of their teeth, accurately reported the ages of Heifu's six horses and three oxen, even rattling off their breeds like he was counting his family treasures.

Ju's eye was piercingly sharp, as if he could see right through the hide of an ox or horse and make out every muscle, even every bone, with perfect clarity.

"What rescued those women was the law, not me."

Heifu meant to decline, but he could not dissuade the stubborn old man. In the end, Ju actually knelt before Heifu, so he had no choice but to agree.

Thinking it over carefully, what Ju said did make sense. His household truly needed to acquire quite a few more livestock. Without a professional, it would be easy to get cheated, and hard to raise them well. He might as well keep the man on.

Heifu knew Ju's ability well. He was not only skilled at judging horses and oxen, but the horses he raised were also excellent. That horse "Red Heart" he had bought from Ju had carried him across a thousand li and was deeply cherished by Heifu.

Besides Ju, his daughter Yuan, who had already married into a good family, also hoped to come work in Heifu's household. Heifu still remembered that young woman. At the village chief's house in Blind Mountain, if she had not cleverly run out to seek help, that day might have ended very differently.

So Heifu hired Ju at a wage of four dan of millet per month, putting him in charge of his ox and horse stables. His daughter Yuan would come to help oversee the servants and bondwomen, with two dan of grain per month for her…

After settling this matter, Heifu secretly counted on his fingers: "An ordinary ox or horse costs over ten thousand cash. An adult bondservant, over four thousand cash. And then there's the furniture. From now on, I'll also have to feed over twenty people and more than ten oxen and horses. Reckoning it all up, over a hundred thousand cash gone, just like that!"

Heifu could not help but feel the sting. With that, the seventy thousand cash in reward money he had earned from the last war was nearly gone. From now on, he could only count on the two brothers' official salaries, and the grain from the land…

It was the same old saying: no matter how much money you have, it's never enough to spend. Heifu now urgently needed a path to long-term profit. It seemed he had to get the brown sugar enterprise going as soon as possible. That was the one thing he still held in his hands, not yet handed over to exchange for noble ranks for himself and his relatives.

…

After the meal, while there was still daylight, Zhong again called Heifu to walk with him to the nearby fields. Pointing at the bondservants busy in the paddies, he said:

"These were originally the Yun clan's rice paddies. Now they've become public fields. The seventh month is the critical time when the rice is forming ears. Not only must we irrigate with enough water, we also need to apply a top-dressing of ear fertilizer."

Heifu knew that the fertilizing techniques of this era included base fertilizer and top-dressing, three types in all.

Base fertilizer was broadcast over the main field to increase soil fertility. Seed fertilizer meant applying fertilizer along with the seeds at sowing time. Top-dressing was applied when the crop was forming ears, using silkworm droppings and human waste that had been rotted and fermented, spread upon the land. This was a method newly researched and developed after the invention of compost and retting techniques.

Zhong told Heifu that the methods of compost and retting fertilizer had already begun to spread through Anlu County.

"However, it has only been applied to the public fields near the county seat. The private fields cannot yet be extended to."

Although the Qin state, ever since Lord Shang's reforms, had abolished the well-field system and granted state-owned land to individual households, there was still a great deal of farmland directly controlled by the government offices, also called public fields.

The public fields used convicts and bondservants as labor, in very large numbers. In Anlu alone there were several hundred; over in Jiangling there were over a thousand field slaves. And the harvest from these fields all belonged to the government offices…

Although the compost and retting fertilizer methods had been approved and promoted by the Commandery Governor, considering the speed at which information spread in this era, full-scale promotion was still difficult.

In most counties, all they could do was have the county Field Overseer and Assistant Field Clerk first implement it on the public fields near the county seat. Once there were results from this autumn's harvest, they would then have the Field Regulators of each hamlet proclaim it to the common people and encourage them to follow suit. This was equivalent to those "bring technology to the countryside" campaigns of later ages…

Therefore, when the Commandery Governor Teng Le toured the counties in the fourth month, his optimistic estimate that "the Southern Commandery would increase production by three to four million dan of grain" would likely fall far short. Calculating by the ratio of public to private fields in each county, a million dan would already be quite good.

"Besides the difficulty of spreading it to remote backwaters, we have also encountered another problem."

Zhong pointed at the bondservants top-dressing the paddies and said with vexation: "There is not enough manure!"

From Zhong's account, Heifu learned that to fertilize one mu of land required at least several hundred jin of manure. For a hundred mu, that was tens of thousands of jin. Any less and there would be no marked effect. When they had only been planting a tiny bit at home, or using the resources of a single county to supply a few hundred mu, this problem had not been prominent. But as this method spread, manure was becoming stretched to the limit.

Faced with this problem, the field officials of Anlu County had thought of many solutions, such as throwing grasses and plants into the manure pit to rot together, increasing the volume of fertilizer.

This was knowledge the farmers had long grasped. In the "Monthly Ordinances" that the Qin government offices issued to the Field Regulators of each hamlet, there was this passage: "In the last month of summer, the earth is moist and the heat is sweltering; great rains fall in season. It is beneficial to kill the grasses, as if with boiling water. One can use this to manure the fields and improve the soil's tilth…"

The farmers of this era would all gather wild grasses, leaves, and straw in the fourth month, using the summer's high heat and rainfall to rot the weeds and make green manure. Now, combined with retting fertilizer, this could double the amount of fertilizer.

"But it is still not enough."

Zhong said helplessly: "The dung and soil collected from the ox and horse stables near the county seat, plus the rotted weeds, can barely supply the public fields. By next year, I fear the amount will not even match this year's… And the manure from each farming household's privy is probably only enough to water their vegetable plots, of no help in increasing grain yields."

Heifu nodded. This was the limitation of the compost and retting fertilizer methods. It was precisely because of this limitation that this year's production increase in the Southern Commandery would be far lower than Governor Ye had anticipated. A million dan would be fortunate; it might even be as low as five or six hundred thousand dan.

"That old fox. No wonder he only gave Zhong a Third-Rank Ornamented Sash, and not the direct promotion to Fourth-Rank No Renewal he spoke of before…"

After pondering, Heifu asked: "Elder Brother, you said that the compost and retting fertilizer used in Anlu County this year was mainly dung and soil from the ox and horse stables?"

"That is so."

Zhong nodded: "Only these places are under the jurisdiction of the government offices, making it convenient to collect manure."

Heifu felt they seemed to have gotten something wrong: "Wait. Elder Brother, let me ask you: in Anlu, where are the most people, most concentrated?"

Zhong answered without thinking: "The county seat, naturally."

Heifu said: "The county seat has over a thousand households. Nearly ten thousand people, eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating every day, can produce twenty to thirty thousand jin of manure, enough to fertilize a hundred mu of fields. I have heard that the public fields near the county seat are no more than a hundred qing. Why then do you say it is not enough?"

Zhong blinked: "Second Brother, you do not know. The officials, prominent elders, and wealthy households have their own privies, which they use to water their own fields. There is no way to collect from them. And most of the poor people living on the left side of the hamlet gate have no privy at home. They relieve themselves directly in the wilds, under trees, or in gullies. Even less can be collected…"

"In other words, most people in the county seat are still defecating and urinating wherever they please!"

Heifu understood at once. There were two reasons for the manure shortage. First, the population in this era was too small; each household could not produce enough farmyard manure to fertilize their fields. Second, the government offices had not properly managed the collection and use of farmyard manure, wasting for nothing the manure produced by the large population of the city…

"Elder Brother's vexation, if you wish to solve it, is not so difficult."

Heifu suddenly burst into loud laughter. When Zhong pressed him for the solution, he deliberately kept him guessing and refused to answer, instead pointing toward the privy within his own household compound…

"In five more days, over a thousand garrison soldiers will assemble at the county seat. Seizing this opportunity, I happen to have an excellent method I learned in the army that can be implemented in Anlu! Not only can it fill the manure shortfall for next year, it can also turn Anlu into the cleanest, most decent city in the entire Southern Commandery, nay, the entire Qin state, the whole world!"

…

On the tenth day of the seventh month, as the autumn heat wave gradually receded, over a thousand conscripted soldiers from the Anlu county seat and its three townships arrived and assembled at the southern outskirts of the county seat.

Under Heifu's arrangements, two hundred county soldiers had already built a camp rampart here in advance. For the next month or so, over a thousand sons of good families would train here, forbidden to leave without permission. Eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating would all be resolved within the camp…

The First-Rank Soldier Quji from Zhaoyang Hamlet had long since lost his sickly look. He and the others from the same hamlet and same precinct formed the "Huyang Precinct Garrison." Their Precinct Chief was called Hua, one of the nine men who had followed Heifu to Wei and Chu and returned alive back then.

As a former subordinate of the County Lieutenant, and having spent the last half-year serving in Huyang Precinct, where the County Lieutenant had first risen, Hua felt that his garrison was a cut above the others! They were the direct line!

And because Quji had an old connection with Heifu, Hua appointed him Squad Leader. The group walked into the camp with considerable pride. Before they could even find their own encampment, they discovered that the several hundred men who had arrived earlier were all gathered around a building at the edge of the camp, clamoring and debating endlessly.

Hua and Quji squeezed through to a less crowded side and found a newly built earthen house standing there. It occupied a huge area, a full half-mu! Black tiles covered its top. The rammed-earth walls had many cross-shaped ventilation holes, closely resembling the arrow slits on a city wall. There was a door on the left and right. Soldiers kept going in and coming out. Those going in had faces full of novelty; those coming out were tying their sashes while praising it endlessly, saying they too had now enjoyed the kind of treatment found in the homes of officials and the wealthy…

"What is this building used for?" Quji asked curiously.

"Go look at the front yourself. There are words there, personally inscribed by the County Lieutenant."

The Second-Rank Soldier Yuan Bai said this with a hint of annoyance, then turned back to loudly praise the County Lieutenant's marvelous ingenuity to the person beside him.

"When I was a rotational conscript and lost several thousand cash to the County Lieutenant, it wasn't unjust at all!"

Faced with Yuan Bai's words, everyone merely said he was bragging. No one believed him. Who did he think the County Lieutenant was, that he would gamble and compete with you?

So Platoon Chief Hua and Squad Chief Quji had no choice but to circle around to the front where the crowd was even thicker, stand on tiptoe, and discover that on the whitewashed earthen wall, in the County Defender of Anlu's own handwriting, were two huge seal-script characters, each the size of a dou-measure:

"Public Latrine!"

PS: There'll be another chapter before midnight, though it might be as late as 1 a. m.

(End of chapter)