On September 20th, Echigo Naoetsu Port, the largest port in Echigo, has undergone earth-shaking changes in more than half a year. Thanks to the efforts of the Kira family members, the port facilities that have been gradually expanded since early April have been completed.
At the same time, the Sekikawa dam reinforcement project and the Sekikawa dredging project are also under construction in full swing.
From Kinai, merchants passing by Uyo were surprised to find that the famous Echigo port had turned into a large construction site at some point. There were countless large and small projects being built everywhere. There were almost no idle townspeople in the town. The old people gathered together.
Rolling hemp rope means weaving bamboo baskets and straw mats, while women spin spinning wheels to spin strands of hemp thread.
Children near Joetsu were organized by the Kira family samurai to receive basic education. This was non-compulsory education, mainly simple literacy and moral cultivation, so that they knew from an early age that it was the obligation of the citizens to abide by the decrees of the king, and at the same time, they also
There will be some group sports, such as eagle catching chickens, wrestling and other sports that children like. As long as children are willing to accept these educations, they can enjoy the special treatment of extra lunch.
To this day, no one in Echigo doubts the financial strength of the Kira family. From the beginning of the year when a large amount of grain was exchanged for soybeans and tea seeds, until the earthquake and flood, they have shown extremely strong economic strength, and the Kira family is also famous for its food.
It is so delicious that every one hundred children can share a large bucket of delicious fish soup and hot soup cakes one finger thick and three palms wide. The children who have been hungry all year round can no longer resist the temptation of food.
, one after another fell into the arms of the Kira family.
In the entire Kasugayama, Sekikawa, and Naoetsu areas, there are more than 9,000 children under 12 years old, including refugees, and more than 3,000 minors between 12 and 15 years old. In addition to children under 12 years old, they receive simple education.
In addition, these teenagers aged 12 to 15 will receive paramilitary training. Depending on their age, they will receive various trainings such as lining up, holding guns, and thrusting in the Kira family's military camp three to six days a week. During the training period, they will be provided with daily
Three meals.
Although farmers and townspeople are not willing to let their children do such dangerous things, they really can't resist the children's urge to eat well and eat well, so they can only let them go unhappily. The life of farmers' families in this era is very difficult.
, it is also very difficult to raise children. Things like half-grown children eating me to death are not new. In the teenage years, when it is time to grow, if you starve all day long, let alone grow, your health will not be good.
Along the river from Naoetsu to the south are new-style towns that stand on both sides. People living in the new towns no longer care about their original origins. No matter which country in Kanto you come from, whether you were a farmer or a craftsman before, you will be hired without discrimination.
, River dredging is an important job, which requires large ships to manually use iron rakes mounted on winches to penetrate into the river water with long iron rods to dredge the river.
The iron rake stirs in the river water to lift up the silt and then it is washed away by the river water. In order to ensure the dredging effect, it is necessary to repeatedly dredge back and forth between the river channels. This process may take more than a month. Compared with the manual dredging of the river channels,
The construction of the embankment is limited and requires the participation of all the people. Tens of thousands of people board the embankment, and the excavation and carting of soil must be carried out in one step.
The mud at the bottom of the river is a very good fertilizer. Under the vigorous publicity of the followers, many farmers followed suit and dug river mud to make fertilizer. It didn't take long for them to find that the soil in the new fields that had caught up with the river mud became very soft and fertile.
The crops are also growing exceptionally well, and more and more farmers are rushing to dig out river mud. Many local servants even led a villager to draw a large piece of the river to reserve the river mud, and declared that no one could grab it.
River mud is not only found in rivers. Compared with the center of the river where the current is fast and unsuitable for salvage, those ponds and lakes are more popular with farmers. Especially the previously uninhabited river mudflats have been dug out. In the end, the organization still pursues the idea that the public cannot see it.
They dug river mud in an organized manner.
If you want to dig the tidal flats near the river, you can, but the big holes must be excavated and backfilled. Otherwise, the followers will order punishment. This measure still has a good effect. Villagers who know the rules push flatbed trucks and sacks to the slopes.
Digging dirt from the river bank and exchanging it for river mud has achieved good results.
Just digging river mud to use as fertilizer is not enough. The promotion of high-temperature composting methods is still in progress. Fortunately, the Echigo coastline is very long and there are swamps and wetlands suitable for migratory birds. There are also many migratory birds that come here to escape the summer heat. I don’t know how many fish have accumulated over the years.
There are a lot of guano soils accumulated from bones and guano, and they are widely distributed from Haetsu to Haetsu, especially Haetsu, Chuetsu and Sado Island have the largest reserves. They are all very high-quality fertilizers.
One of the core of the high-temperature composting method is to raise livestock. A large breeding area must be established near each new field to raise cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks and other livestock. The simplest way is to encircle a forest in the nearby mountains and hills, and then erect the surrounding areas.
Put up fences and protective nets to prevent livestock from escaping, and then use shepherd dogs to guard the livestock grazing in the mountains.
The first type of investment is relatively large. Fortunately, the Kira family is not short of money, and Echigo is not short of labor and rural women who are idle at home. As long as they are given labor money, these farmers can fence the entire hilltop in half a month.
, cow dung, sheep dung and other livestock dung will be sent to nearby fields as raw materials for high-temperature composting as soon as possible, combined with the ubiquitous guano soil and dead fish, dead shrimps, and aquatic plants caught in the dense river ditches of Echigo
With river mud, there is no shortage of fertilizer raw materials.
In addition, according to the plan set by Hosokawa Fujitaka, a large number of saplings need to be planted under the dam after spring sowing next year before the rainy season begins, relying on the roots of the trees to support the stability of the dam. Although this approach is slow to achieve results, it is better than doing nothing.
Many people can only hope that in a few years strong improvements will be able to withstand the flooding.
In a new town south of Naoetsu Town, close to Kasugayama Castle Town, a young monk sat on the porch in front of his monastery to meditate. This was a quiet bamboo monastery, and the cool autumn breeze made the wind chimes on the porch jingle.
There was a sound, and the young monk who was meditating with his eyes closed immediately smiled faintly.
"Tan Yue, stay here! When the poor monk saw Tan Yue's face, he couldn't help but say a few words. Tan Yue's heavenly palace is full, the ground pavilion is round, his eyebrows are handsome, and his bones are so unique that the poor monk was shocked at the first sight... Tan Yue, look!
This is the calligraphy copybook written by Master Denjiao. The poor monk has a fate with Tan Yue. He only needs fifty strings... of course this is impossible, twenty strings! As long as twenty strings are used, Master Zengcheng's copybook can be taken home. Do you want to consider it?
one time?"
"Hey! It turns out that Tan Yue doesn't have so much money to offer! So be it! The poor monk also has a valuable Buddhist treasure here, Dan Yue, let's take a look! This is the wooden fish used by Kobo Daishi Kukai. It has been used by all the Shingon sect masters to communicate with spirits. As long as
Ten...it only takes five guans to belong to Tan Yue!"
A tall and rough-looking monk was holding a bunch of things to passers-by and selling them around. He had thick eyebrows, big eyes, a tall nose and a wide mouth, and his Chinese-character face had an extraordinary appearance, but he always had a gangster air and was a bit fierce.
His appearance, especially the beard, tall man, and shiny bald head makes him look a bit like the flowery monk Lu Zhishen.
After selling a round, the rude monk walked into the Bamboo Forest Abode with a few strings of copper coins in his hands. When he saw the young monk sitting on the corridor meditating, he threw a few strings of copper coins on the corridor and walked into the monastery for a while.
He came out with two cups of tea and said to the young monk: "Zen Master Zongyi has been meditating for half a day! How can you meditate with an empty stomach? How about drinking some tea while I go out for a walk?"
This young monk is Kuai Shouji, a disciple of Kaichuan Shaoxi. He has only been here for seven or eight days, and the rude monk is Asayama Hichijo who is swindling in Shiga County. This monk's common name is Asayama Zaemon.
, Taboo Zenshige, was originally the son of Asayama Keizuna, the lord of Izumo Kingdom and Nizi's retainer.
When he was young, he divorced his wife because of poverty. Later, he had a dispute with his colleagues over his position and killed someone in anger. Afterwards, he fled overnight because he was afraid of the Nizi family's pursuit. For this reason, he shaved his head, changed his clothes, changed his living habits, and wore sheepskin.
Dressed as a Yamabushi monk, he traveled around the country, and at some point he wandered to Mount Kinai to practice spiritual practice.
Once at the Ouchi family's Yamaguchikan, he openly sold a bunch of Ming Dynasty clothes as "clothing for the emperor", and the sales were very good. Later, he went around Sakai Town and swindled, causing dissatisfaction among the Sakai Town congregation, and he complained to Miyoshi's family.
He was a spy from another family, so Matsunaga Hide arrested him, chained him to a wooden pillar, and locked him up next to the traffic thoroughfare in Sakai Town.
The original intention of the Miyoshi family was to intimidate Xiao Xiao and at the same time demonstrate the authority of the Miyoshi family over Sakai Town. If it were an ordinary person being tied to a wooden pillar with chains and allowed to be visited by merchants coming and going from Sakai Town, I am afraid that they would not be able to bear it long ago, but Chaoshan
Richeng was different from others. He was not afraid at all. On the contrary, he became more and more prosperous as time passed. He would argue with passers-by who were watching from all walks of life and became famous.
Slowly, more and more people stopped to watch. Many people would feed him food and water. He was locked up like this for a hundred days. As the name of Asayama Nichijo spread throughout the streets and alleys of Sakai Town, Matsunaga showed up.
If that didn't work, they let him go, apologized and sent him a letter of courtesy and sent him out of the country. The people of Sakai Town heard that the master was pardoned and he was given clothes, food, transportation and 8 volumes of the Lotus Sutra. From then on, he went to the mountains every day.
Became a monk of Nichiren Hokke Sect.
"Okay, where are you going, Master Nichiyana?" Torazai Zongyi took out a copper alms bowl. The Rinzai sect in Japan still retains the habit of begging when practicing outside. This is also a kind of practice experience.
"Okay! Then let's go to the nearby villages!" Both of them were action people, so they picked up the Zen staff and bowl and left.
It is the ninth month of the Wei Dynasty, and the order belongs to the third autumn, which means late autumn in September. It is just after the harvest season. In front of the villages, women, old and young, gather to dry grain. They talk and laugh in a low voice. This year's grain production has increased again.
Many of these farmers who have been cutting crops in the fields all year round looked at the plump golden ears of millet and smiled cheerfully. The whole month was like a festival, with the joy of harvest floating around.
Chaoshan Richeng curiously walked to a grain drying field and saw a group of old people breaking off a strange crop. He stepped forward and bowed and said, "This Tan Yue is so polite! I wonder what kind of crop this is?"
"Is this master asking the little old man?" The old man, who looked like he was seventy years old, stood up and said at a loss: "This is the crop that the Lord of the Kingdom asked us to plant, and its name is corn.
, this is a good thing! You may not believe it, but this corn is so precious, it can produce eight stones of corn!"
"It turns out that it's eight stones of corn that's against the ground..." Chaoshan Richeng was stunned and asked hurriedly: "Wait a minute! Just now, Tan Yue said it was against the ground?"
"Yes! The little old man would never dare to deceive the master! If you don't believe me, ask everyone if you are right?" The old man was afraid that this big and thick monk would not believe him, and if Monk Lu raised his fist as big as a sand bowl and hit him,
, then the gain outweighs the loss. Fortunately, they are all from their own village, and several old people immediately testified for the old man.
"Master! You may not believe it. The corn dried in this threshing floor is only mass-produced by five kilo of land. Fifty kilo of land produces four hundred shi of grain. Can you believe it? We couldn't believe it at the beginning!"
"Back then, the samurai gentlemen from Kyoto went to the fields to harvest grain. These noble gentlemen, who had never worked before, harvested bit by bit with sickles. The samurai from the lord's family also went to the fields to harvest. Finally, the grain produced in the land was weighed out to be ten stones and five measures.
These warrior gentlemen were jumping and shouting just like us country folk, and everyone even cried!"
Chaoshan Richeng still didn't believe it. He stared at the expressions of these old people and asked word for word: "Each land can produce eight shi of grain? Or is it only one land? Or how many grains can there be?"
"Each farm can produce more than eight shi of grain! And it's even more than that! The highest crop yield is nine shi and eight buckets of grain. According to the estimates of the masters, our village's average grain yield is around eight shi and five buckets of grain. There will definitely be no such thing.
Wrong!" The old man said with great certainty: "Please believe me, little old man. At that time, a master from Kyoto was holding strange things and calculating for a long time. This was the number he reported. The little old man was just right.
You can hear it clearly right here on Bianshan!" (To be continued.)