Chapter 244: Tara Khan Spring (middle)
What does it take to build a prosperous territory?
First, there must be a hand.
However, what Tara Khan lacked most was manpower, or population.
Because of the three successive generations of Count Tarahan's rebellious actions before - mainly disregarding the people's efforts to promote the development order, consuming a large number of people to open up villages, and thus obtaining a number of knight titles that are of little significance in the eyes of the traversers - the leader of Tarahan The population is quite scarce. Population is not something that can be refreshed out of thin air like wild animals or monsters. Even a poor farmer needs to be raised by his mother and father, and he needs to grow a little bit from childhood to adulthood. Even if the traversers tried their best, there was no way to increase the population in a short period of time.
Since there is no way to increase the population, we have to tap the potential of the population as much as possible under the premise of the existing population base.
This requires enough food, after all, people have to eat enough to work.
Until then, the source of food has always been an issue. Even if the traversers are powerful, they cannot provide enough food to support a territory, even if they only need to provide food from the area directly under the earl's jurisdiction, it is beyond their ability.
But after getting that huge sum of money, that problem disappeared. No matter in the southern region of the kingdom or the Molai Commercial Federation in the southwest of the Western Continent, you can buy enough food. If you really can't, you can go a long way to the West Brunei Republic, where fisheries and agriculture are very developed, to buy enough seafood.
In this world, food is relatively expensive, but no matter how expensive it is, the money from the panda and the soldiers alone is enough for the people of the entire area directly under the jurisdiction of Earl Tarakhan to eat for ten or eight years.
After so long, the problem must have been solved long ago.
When the first batch of grain was bought, it was just before the New Year. At this time, it has reached the stage of relative food shortage, and many poor people are beginning to starve. But Anthony did not engage in opening a warehouse to release grain, but engaged in a "grain loan".
All farmers who want to receive relief food must put their fingerprints on the labor agreement. They do not need to pay back the money, but they must do the designated work before they can calculate the remuneration and offset the food payment with their labor.
For this requirement, the peasants were apprehensive, but they had no other choice.
Either sign the agreement, get food, and work, or starve. It's very simple to choose one, and everyone knows how to choose.
So they quickly got enough food to survive the famine, and then according to the count's unified plan, they began to build roads and water conservancy in the territory during the winter slack season.
Several passers-by, such as the little eggplant, didn't understand, and asked why they didn't directly give food to the poor? Anthony smiled slightly and said something like "You are all too young and too innocent! You need to improve your knowledge level". Said that they were cloudy and foggy, dizzy, and even more confused.
In the end, Harmony still couldn't understand it, so I explained it to them in detail - laziness is human nature, if you can't give enough motivation, the farmers will only be full and sunburnt. Don't expect them to be willing to withstand the cold wind. work. To get them to do things, instead of relying on the lord's coercive orders, it is better to mobilize their own enthusiasm.
"This is to mobilize their enthusiasm?" Little Eggplant asked in confusion.
"Probably." Harmony is not very sure, "Anyway, I have an impression that officials who can do things respect food for work. It has been recognized as a good method since ancient times, even if it is not very correct, at least it will not go wrong. If you don't believe me, you can go and observe and see how their mental state is."
So Little Eggplant, Xingzhao and the others ran to the working peasants and lurked in the dark to observe their mental state.
After observation, they had to admit that Anthony's method seemed to work really well. Although the farmers worked every day, their mental state was not bad because they could earn food through work. Especially when they find that the better the job is done, the more compensation is calculated, and the workers who do the best work every day even get some meat as a reward, they are more motivated.
Under such circumstances, the infrastructure construction in the area directly under the jurisdiction of Earl Tarahan can finally be fully launched.
On the other hand, in some areas where the basic conditions are better and farmers do not have to worry about starvation in winter, the greenhouse mushroom cultivation is also progressing smoothly.
After several failures, Liu Daoqing and others who were in charge of this work finally figured out a suitable plan. He mixed a little cow and sheep dung with rotting sawdust, fermented it to kill poison, and then moved wild mushrooms into it along with the wood or soil from which they were produced. Through Druid spells, these mushrooms can be brought into the breeding season. Mushroom spores, invisible to the naked eye, spread in the conservatory and soon grew up.
In about a month and a half to two months, a new batch of mushrooms will be able to grow. As long as the roots are not digged up when picking, these mushrooms will continue to grow, endlessly.
It took them almost a year to explore these experiences. In the end, when the shelves in the conservatory were covered with big snow-white mushrooms, not to mention the peasants who participated in the work weeping with joy, even the passers-by couldn't help themselves, singing and dancing, as if they had made a fortune. .
Although these experiences cannot be promoted for the time being - building a greenhouse is not easy, and ordinary farmers really do not have this condition, and can only start mushroom cultivation along the way after the spring flowers bloom. But this did not prevent them from taking out this batch of harvested mushrooms and participating in the most important festival of Tara Khan in the late winter and early spring every year, the New Year Festival.
This year's New Year Festival, the atmosphere is much more lively than in previous years. The Count generously took out a lot of food to hold the celebration, especially those big white mushrooms that were fat and tender, so that everyone who saw them couldn't help but move their index fingers.
In this world, it is really not easy to eat vegetables and fruits in winter. Not to mention ordinary people, even knights often have to spend carefully before they can buy some vegetables that are almost dehydrated.
As for the vegetables preserved by magic... Wouldn't it be nice to have some spare money to buy that kind of thing, prepare a little healing potion for yourself, or upgrade some equipment levels?
Are mushrooms considered vegetables? This is a somewhat complicated question. Biologically, it counts as a fungus. Fungi are neither plants nor animals, and since they are not plants, they are certainly not vegetables. However, in practice, no matter whether it is a housewife on Earth, or a farmer and knight in another world, this problem is completely ignored.
They only know that at the celebration of the New Year's Festival, in addition to the usual bread and barbecue, there is actually mushroom soup to drink!
Mushroom soup yay!
Vegetables!
Oye!
For the people who attended the New Year's Eve in Tara Khan City, the specific celebrations that were held that day were ignored; the content of the count's speech was also ignored; the thing that impressed them the most was the hot mushroom soup, which was Because they drank too much soup, dozens or hundreds of people urinated together by the bushes near the venue.
It's...awesome.