Chapter 60 You Are Master Huo (Part 3)
On the tenth day of February in 1718, Huo Chong returned from the seaside with a large amount of agar powder. Zhangdian is only 200 miles away from the seaside in a straight line. Huo Chong doubted whether the people who participated in picking hornwort at the seaside covered more than 100 miles of coastline.
Every fisherman who participated complained that Huo Chong came too late. The coast was covered with a thick layer of hornwort in autumn, and there was as much as they wanted. There was no need to collect it so hard.
Some people also said that it was fortunate that Huo Chong came at this time. If he had come later, he would have to wait until the end of summer to start seeing the cowpea.
Huo Chong could hear displeasure and anticipation in such complaints. He could only promise again that autumn would come early this year.
After returning home and putting down his things, Huo Chong went straight to Zhujia Village. He handed a letter to Uncle Zhu. Uncle Zhu asked excitedly, "Huo Chong, how is my husband?"
"The teacher is in good health." Huo Chong introduced the situation of his fourth uncle. There have never been any decent scholars in Zhangdian. If there were any Jinshi or Juren here, the tax payment would have been taken over by someone long ago.
Fourth Uncle Zhu was one of the students who studied hard in Zhangdian. In order to find a good teacher, his family sent him to a private school in another province. Although Fourth Uncle Zhu did not make any achievements in his studies, he still remembered that there was a sunflower in his teacher's home.
Huo Chong thought that Fourth Uncle Zhu was carrying a letter and went to the teacher. The teacher had no impression of Fourth Uncle Zhu. When he heard that Huo Chong actually wanted sunflower seeds, he readily gave Huo Chong some. Huo Chong did not even reveal his official identity.
However, the teacher also warned Huo Chong that eating too many sunflower seeds could cause miscarriage. This statement surprised Huo Chong. Huo Chong had never heard of such a thing. In the 21st century, expectant mothers eat sunflower seeds in various ways, but never heard of such a thing.
Huo Chong couldn't help but think that this might be the reason why sunflower seeds have not become popular in China.
After returning from Uncle Zhu's place, Huo Chong found the tenant Liu Sijin, gave him some sunflower seeds and peanut seeds, and asked him to try to grow them.
The source of the peanuts was a moneylender in Linzi County, who had received some peanuts from a debtor when collecting debts. When the moneylender mentioned peanuts, he looked unhappy, saying that the peanuts often tasted bitter and moldy, making people sick.
Huo Chong had also encountered this and understood the horror of moldy peanuts.
But these are not important, what is important is that both of them can be used to extract oil. Sunflowers can also provide a lot of honey during their growth.
Oil crops are an important part of Huo Chong's crop plan. In addition to oil crops, alfalfa, which can provide nitrogen fertilizer, is also very important. However, it is not yet time to start introducing it.
The farmers would naturally arrange their own farm work, and Huo Chong would not intervene. Huo Chong sent the young people assigned to him by the shareholders of the "joint venture winery" to go door to door to ask everyone if they were willing to join Huo Chong's tax payment group.
Those who are willing to participate are of course welcome, and those who are unwilling to participate will not be forced.
All those who participated in the planting of blessings joined the payment group, and the rich people also joined. Half of the remaining villagers, who accounted for about 80% of the population, chose to join, and the other half were still waiting and watching.
Before the group could think about it, the police came to collect taxes. Taxes are collected twice a year, the first time in February. It is said that they will collect at least half of the annual tax. The second time is probably in July or August. They will collect all the remaining taxes.
Of course, the county would collect taxes from the townships at irregular intervals every year under various pretexts. These were various exorbitant taxes and levies made up of various pretexts.
The taxes in February, July and August are regular taxes, which are completely different from this one.
After listening to the list given by Huo Chong, Li took out the corresponding tax bill with his name from a thick stack of tax bills. Huo Chong took the opportunity to ask about the tax bills and found out that this standard tax bill was printed in triplicate. One copy was kept by the Ministry of Revenue, one copy was kept by the government, and one copy was given to the taxpayer.
Huo Chong was surprised by this tax model. The last time he received a tax bill, Huo Chong thought it was very delicate. But he did not expect that the Qing Dynasty's taxation was so formal. It was really beyond his expectations.
Even if he was not a tax payer, even if he just had an official position, Huo Chong could pay taxes with silver instead of having to collect a large amount of copper coins.
Captain Li said with a smile: "Master Huo, why don't you pay all these taxes at once?"
Because the imperial court issued an order to try to distribute the tax according to the land in Shandong. In the future, tax collectors will no longer collect head tax, but only tax the land. Captain Li hoped that Huo Chong could pay the tax for the year in one go. For the police, they can save a lot of time and energy.
Huo Chong still had the silver given by the Fourteenth Master, so he was happy to do so.
After the two sides settled the accounts, the policemen began to collect taxes from the people who did not participate in the payment plan. Soon, only a dozen of the remaining 40% of the people in the three villages who were unwilling to participate in the payment plan paid the taxes on their own. The rest of the families came to Huo Chong to ask for payment on their behalf.
These families had little money and had to pay with copper coins. There was a 15% exchange rate difference between paying taxes with copper coins and paying taxes with silver. For ordinary people, this was an extra expense that they were absolutely unwilling to bear.
It took only four days to complete the tax collection work in the three villages. The officers happily said goodbye to Huo Chong and went to the next place.
Huo Chong looked at the backs of these people, and he never expected that things would be so simple. Just under the simple trend of interests, Huo Chong became the leading figure in this area. It was so simple that it made people feel like playing house.
As soon as the tax collector left, someone came to Huo Chong and asked with a smile, "Master Huo, can you lend me some money?"
"Borrow money?" Huo Chong was overjoyed and asked, "How much?"
The person who borrowed the money was from Liujia Village. His expression was full of expectation and uneasiness. "Two hundred coins."
Huo Chong asked: "I don't want to ask you what you want to borrow money for. I just want to ask you if you are willing to do some work in the village to earn this little money?"
"Mr. Huo, don't you want to lend me money?" The eldest brother of the Liu family was shocked.
Huo Chong smiled and said, "Of course I can lend you the money. But I also want to help you plan how to pay it back."
"Mr. Huo, I'm in urgent need of money." The eldest brother of the Liu family avoided talking about participating in labor.
Huo Chong said nothing and asked Qian Qing to go to the storehouse to get 200 coins and give them to Brother Liu. He also asked the six brothers to sign the loan note. Watching Brother Liu leave in a hurry, Huo Chong felt that things were becoming more and more interesting.
More and more people came to Huo Chong to borrow money. Most of them refused to tell the reason, but a few did. They borrowed money to pay taxes, and now they heard that Huo Chong had money, so they came to borrow money to pay back those people.
Since March, there have been more and more farmland tasks. Huo Chong's work on making solid alcohol has also become more and more urgent. Fortunately, with so much agar, Huo Chong made solid alcohol mixed with agar and alcohol.
The Fourteenth Master was very satisfied with this. By the beginning of April, all 30,000 kilograms of agar had been transported to the county town, and the Shandong prefect sent people to transport it to the capital.
Huo Chong had no interest in the transportation industry and focused on his own business. This year, the bean planting volume in the three villages can be said to have grown from nothing to something. In addition to a few whole plots of land, the people who participated in the planting blessing planted a few ridges and I planted a few points. The total area was about 20 acres.
The durability of the sunflower seeds was beyond Huo Chong's imagination. Except for the dozens of seeds that were kept for seeds, most of the hundreds of sunflower seeds actually sprouted. The peanuts also sprouted, but the growth was not optimistic.
The real breakthrough was Huo Chong's rabbit farm. After receiving Huo Chong's order, Hunter Liu began to catch rabbits in various ways. During this period, a large number . These were the rabbits that unfortunately died during the capture operation. Those rabbits that did not die were all sent to Huo Chong's breeding farm.
There are now more than 400 rabbits born in Huo Chong's farm. Huo Chong found that his home could not be used as a farm. Rabbits are indeed cute, but the smell of rabbits is really terrible. Many villagers have publicly expressed that the smell is not right. Huo Chong can only look for a place outside the village that is suitable for a rabbit farm.
In this kind of hilly area, the land with people living on it is a minority, and the land without people living on it is the majority. Huo Chong quickly found a piece of land and asked who it belonged to, but the answer he got was "This land belongs to the government."
Seeing that there were few people living in this wasteland, Huo Chong did not want to bother the government, so he immediately started to build a breeding farm. In theory, a breeding farm is very simple, just to provide a place for the rabbits to be sheltered from the wind and rain, and preferably with heating facilities in winter. In addition, it is also necessary to provide convenient feed and drinking water for the rabbits.
Through the intelligence network established by Huo Chong, the villagers in the three villages soon knew that Huo Chong was going to hire people. The wages were paid on the same day. At this time, the crops had grown and the farmers had entered a relatively relaxed stage. It was indeed a good thing to have some extra income at this time, especially those who had borrowed money from Huo Chong, and they all signed up.
When Huo Chong was asking his men to build a rabbit farm according to the blueprint, several people came from the village. They were all riding horses, and the one who led the way was a money lender from Linzi County. He introduced Huo Chong to him and asked, "You are Mr. Huo. I have heard of you for a long time."
Huo Chong smiled secretly in his heart. He had only been famous for a few days, so there was no need to be so hypocritical. He asked, "Brother Feng, what can I do for you?"
Brother Feng took out a lining made of rabbit skin and asked, "Is this lining made by Master Huo?"
Huo Chong had imagined that someone would come to buy wine, glass fire, and even glassware. He never expected that the first person to come to his door would be to ask about rabbit skins.
There were obvious wounds on the rabbits' skins, and the fur was mottled, just like wild rabbits should be. Huo Chong took it, looked at it carefully, and pinched it, and replied, "This is what I made."
"Mr. Huo, how many do you have? I'll buy them all." Brother Feng said readily.
