nucmednet Chapter 289 Busy Autumn
Chapter 289 Busy Autumn
In the letter, Bai Jingzhou first thanked Mu Hanzhi again for his care for them, and then told him and Mu Jingzhi that he had many new books, which he would copy out and share with them later.
After talking about their trip to Haizhou, Bai Jingzhou asked Mu Hanzhi as usual whether he wanted more wine this year.
At the end of the letter, Bai Jingzhou once again asked Mu Hanzhi and Mu Jingzhi to help find crop seeds that were not available in Xingzhou in the capital.
He gave the letter and the Mid-Autumn Festival gift to the steward of the Mu Mansion, who treated them to a sumptuous dinner, and then gave Bai Jingzhou the gift for Bai Jingzhou and the others that Mu Hanzhi had asked him to prepare long ago.
Bai Jingzhou did not stay in the provincial capital for long. After distributing some holiday benefits to the servants guarding the house, he took Fang Youfu and others back to Baijia Village.
On the morning of the second day after he got home, he delivered the generous holiday gifts he bought from the provincial capital to Gu Wenxuan's home.
The holiday gifts he sent to Gu Wenxuan's family this year were more generous than last year. When Gu Wenxuan's grandparents saw it, they also returned a gift to the Bai family that was more generous than in previous years.
Now that the lives of both families have become better, there are things in the household that can be used as gifts, so it is not difficult for the Gu family to add some extra gifts to the originally prepared return gifts.
After finishing these trivial matters of interpersonal relationships, Gu Wenxuan and her colleagues threw themselves into the busy work of harvesting.
The two men first went to the mountains with a few helpers to make wine, and then they split up to watch the people in several villages continue the autumn harvest.
Grain, fruits and vegetables, lotus roots, fish, shrimp, cotton...all kinds of crops were collected back into the warehouse one after another, and the joy of the harvest infected everyone.
What made the villagers happiest was that the new dynasty not only abolished the summer tax, but also reduced the autumn tax by about 10% compared to the previous amount. Most importantly, the court also abolished military service and regular service.
The burdens on the people were suddenly lightened by more than half, and they had hope in life. Everyone was so happy that they began to sing praises to the new dynasty and the emperor in the simplest language.
Although Bai Jingzhou and Gu Wenxuan did not show their joy as others did, they were very happy in their hearts that a peaceful and prosperous era was about to come.
After they finished all the matters related to the autumn harvest, they met the heads of various villages, farmers with outstanding performance, and the families of the two coachmen who had accompanied them to Haizhou before.
The two men picked out a total of sixteen young men and women between the ages of ten and twenty from the village head, farmers and the two rickshaw drivers, and signed employment contracts with them with a working period of three to fifty years.
Neither the Gu family nor the Bai family had any scholars, juren or jinshi with official titles, so they could not use slaves who had signed death indentures. Fortunately, Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou did not mind this.
Although they have experienced the chaos, darkness, and apocalypse of natural disasters, even in the apocalypse, what they most often see is still employment relationships, rather than treating people as objects to be bought and sold.
Taking into consideration the ages, personalities, and specialties of these sixteen people, Gu Wenxuan and Bai Jingzhou sent ten of them to work in the workshop, and the remaining six were sent to the Bai and Gu families to run errands and do odd jobs.
There is enough cotton this year, so they plan to open a large weaving and dyeing workshop dedicated to processing cotton products.
The cotton cloth processing process generally includes the following steps:
1. Screening cotton. Screening cotton is the first step in cotton processing. Its main function is to screen out impurities and residual roots. In the process of screening cotton, be careful not to over-clean the cotton, otherwise it will destroy the integrity of cotton seeds and short fibers and affect the subsequent processing effect.
2. Rough cleaning: Rough cleaning refers to removing large impurities from the cotton, such as cotton husks, garbage, stones, sawdust, etc. After the rough cleaning, the cotton roots and fetal bags and other debris must also be removed.
3. Drying: The purpose of drying is to remove moisture from the cotton to ensure the quality and efficiency of subsequent processing.
4. Combing Cotton Combing refers to splitting the cotton longitudinally to remove the impurities, short fibers and cotton seeds inside it, making it into thinner cotton strips.
5. Spinning. The cotton strips are pulled into yarn and their strength and fineness are controlled. Spinning is a key step in the entire processing process.
6. Weaving. Use a loom to turn cotton yarn into cotton cloth. Depending on the needs, the loom can be adjusted to control the density, pattern and color of the woven cloth.
In addition to cotton cloth, cotton can also be made into cotton thread, medical gauze, etc., and it has a wide range of uses.
While Bai Jingzhou racked his brains to recall the processing procedures of cotton products and adjusted the procedures in light of the productivity of the current society, he also did not forget to use shells to make wind chimes and various small ornaments for Gu Wenxuan.
Gu Wenxuan, together with Bai Jingzhou, Gu Yongming, Jia Guizhi, Fang Youfu and others, went into the mountains to collect mountain products and hunt moderately, and at the same time, took care of other chores in the workshop in the village.
These chores included but were not limited to asking the village head to buy a piece of wasteland that was large enough and close enough to their two families, asking Bai Jingzhou's uncle and eldest cousin to help make all the necessary tools, ordering the necessary bricks, stones and wood in advance, finding management and technical personnel for the workshop, etc.
It is worth mentioning that since all the tools they are going to make are improvements made by Bai Jingzhou based on the existing tools, they do not plan to take the drawings directly to Bai Jingzhou's uncle's house. Instead, they plan to invite Bai Jingzhou's uncle and eldest cousin to work in the workshop after the workshop is built.
In addition to arranging to open a workshop in the village, Gu Wenxuan and his colleagues also plan to set up a school in the village so that the children in the village can receive a better education.
There are so many things to do that you can't rush them. You can only do them one by one and slowly.
They finally stopped collecting mountain products and doing some moderate hunting to follow up the autumn harvest, and the day for Bai Jingzhou's third cousin Bai Jingkang to get married arrived.
He got married in late autumn and early winter. Two days before his wedding day, Bai Jingzhou put aside other things and went with his family to help his second uncle's family.
It is worth mentioning that not only is his third cousin getting married, but his eldest cousin has also been engaged to Han Dajiang’s eldest son Han Yong in June this year.
When Bai Jingzhou just came back from Haizhou, he heard from Ning Cuizhi that his eldest cousin Bai Jingyan had been engaged. Bai Jingzhou was shocked at the time. He asked Ning Cuizhi, "Is it the Han family who came to propose marriage?"
It was obvious that even if his second uncle's family didn't expect their daughter to marry into a wealthy family, they would at least find her a family whose financial situation was not too different from their own. Although the Han family had land and houses and no worries about food and clothing, they were still far behind the second uncle Bai's family and could not be the best choice for the second uncle Bai and his wife.
As expected, Ning Cuizhi nodded and said to him, "Your second aunt asked your aunt to be a matchmaker for your cousin. After the Han family found out, they went to find your second uncle and second aunt privately."