King of German Mercenaries

In the ancient agricultural society, spring ploughing was definitely a top priority. Therefore, the lord Marin must be present to participate in the ceremony. Although it is not like the East with the pig's head to sacrifice to the sky, it is necessary to organize everyone to pray or something, and hope that God will bless you.

This spring ploughing involved more than 800 draught horses and more than 200 cattle. The animal power was sufficient, and the labor-saving and efficient curved plough was used, so the ploughing speed was very fast.

In the process of cultivating the land, Marin discovered a very interesting phenomenon-that is, when Haider was in charge of plowing the land, he asked the cattle to try not to turn. Moreover, the length of each tillage is strictly regulated, and the cattle are not allowed to turn before the specified tillage length. Because, turning too frequently will affect the farming efficiency.

According to Heidel, this is to increase the efficiency of arable land. Moreover, he talked about a very interesting thing - that is, the origin of the acre.

It turned out that when Haider was in college, a classmate from the UK told Haider the origin of Acre...

The English word acre (acre) is a unit of measurement used by the British. An acre is roughly equal to 6 acres. By definition, the area of ​​an acre is equal to the area of ​​a rectangle that is a furlong in length and a chain in width. A furlong is 660 feet and a chain is 66 feet. Seeing this, everyone may not feel it, but if we understand the historical origin of the units of measurement such as acre (acre), wave (furlong) and chain (chain), we can understand how long and how big it is.

In ancient England, a pair of oxen were usually used to pull a plough when ploughing the land. The pair of oxen pulled the plow without resting in the middle, and the distance they could plough in one breath is called furlong (wave, also translated as furlong), which is actually the abbreviation of furrowlong (furrow length). After ploughing a wave of distance in one go, let the cattle rest for a while, then turn around and plough again, and go back and forth in this way until the end of the day, and the area ploughed on that day is one acre. If the cattle are turned around before the length of a wave has been ploughed, the number of turns will be increased, and the area of ​​cattle farming will be reduced. This is why the definition of acre takes furlong as the side length.

That is to say, if the farming is arranged reasonably, the area that two cows can cultivate in a day is one acre (6 mu of land). However, the Wadden Islands used better curved ploughs than in Europe at this time, and they were much more efficient. Therefore, even though one cow is used to pull it, 5 mu of land can still be cultivated every day.

Of course, this is the standard achieved after borrowing from the British method of plowing a wave and turning again. And if it is a small plot like Huaxia with frequent turns, a cow can only cultivate about 4 mu of land a day.

The ploughing of the land by horses is more efficient than that of cows. For example, after using the ploughing method of one wave and one stop, plus the use of a curved plough, the French draught horse in Marin's hands can plough 6 acres of land a day, which is exactly one acre.

However, horses are more squeamish than cows. During the ploughing period, although the speed of the horse-drawn plow is faster than that of the ox, it needs to rest for a while after a while, otherwise, the horse's body will not be able to bear it. If you don't take good care of the horse's body, the horse will soon collapse or even die.

Moreover, during the farming period, the horses don't eat grass, they all eat oatmeal, and they also eat more eggs, which is very expensive. The cattle, although they are also fed some oats and eggs during the farming period, are still mainly forage. Oatmeal and eggs can only be regarded as snacks, supplementing nutrition.

Therefore, there is not much difference between cattle farming or horse farming. Of course, in terms of efficiency, horses are still faster, and in terms of cost, cattle are still cheap...

With more than 800 draught horses and more than 200 cattle, these animals can farm nearly 1,000 acres a day, or 500 Ugrams.

On the archipelago, the total developed arable land is only 11,400 Ugrams, and the archipelago has been cultivated since February.

Therefore, by mid-March, all the cultivated land on the island was finished.

Then, Marin just purified some potash, mixed it into the manure tank, and applied it as a base fertilizer. The island now has a population of 16,000, but many of them are mercenaries with no non-resident population. Therefore, Marin also keeps the fertilizer secret, so as not to spread the fertilization process.

So, during the fertilization period, Marin ordered Schwartz and Franzberg to pull the army out for training, away from the agricultural areas. The army is mainly in the southern half of East Vliland, where there is no freshwater river, it is not suitable for arable land, and there is no arable land scene. Only the first group of people who followed Marin, who had their own arable land on the island, were allowed to stay at home and participate in the spring ploughing.

A few days later, the smell of the excrement had almost disappeared, and the seeds could be planted before Marin asked the army to bring the army back to Denburg...

Of course, Marin supplies food every day to support these soldiers, and will not let them be too idle. They don't need them to go down to the ground, but these big-headed soldiers can help build roads, but there is no problem. To this end, Marin sent ships to the mainland to buy a lot of stones and wooden hammers, and let these soldiers participate in road construction. The main thing is to build the passage between the new farms and to the wharf.

The soldiers first irrigated the ground with water and softened the ground. Then, the wooden hammer was vigorously rammed, and the foundation was rammed. Then, sprinkle with stones, water again, and then hit with a wooden hammer, try to smash the soil and stones together to make the road stronger...

In this regard, Marin also euphemistically called it - this is an exercise of arm strength, and it is also a kind of military training...

Smashing the ground with a hammer is considered military training? If you were a person in the 21st century, you would have long been dissatisfied. But the soldiers in this year are basically illiterate and have little knowledge, so they can only listen to Marin's fooling. They really thought that this was also a kind of military training. After all, it was really good to practice arm strength by swinging the hammer too much... Besides, Marin, shameless, even fooled them into saying that when swinging the hammer to the ground, the ground must be smashed. He Shizi is imagined as an enemy wearing plate armor, and the duty of the soldiers is to overturn the enemy, stun or even kill the enemy knights in the plate armor...

Then, this group of uneducated and stupid soldiers really believed it. When you hit the ground with the hammer, it was a hard work... While smashing, he shouted - "What about the knight, I smashed you with a hammer!"

Schwartz and Frenzberg, who acted as supervisors, rolled their eyes when they heard it - paralyzed, I am a knight, do you really want to smash me? I remember you, I want you to look good next time I train...

Because there are no drills, sowing in this era is done by hand. Of course, broadcasting is not very good. After all, it's easy to "shake your hand" when spreading, and then spread unevenly. Therefore, the most reliable way is to dig a hole and broadcast on demand.

But there are only so many serfs on the island, and the land of more than 10,000 Eugrams is very laborious. So Marin ordered that all the strong men and strong women of the fishermen's families on the island come to help sow grains of wheat.

These rye grains, under the arrangement of Marin, were selected and soaked in salt water, and they were all good seeds with full grains. Under Marin's arrangement, most of the strong men on the island came to participate in the on-demand wheat seeding.

The specific process is that every small straight line distance, a strong man will take a sharpened wooden stick and poke a not too deep hole in the ploughed land. Then, the women who follow will throw the wheat seed into the hole, and pull it with their hands, cover the wheat seed with soil, and simply press it down, not too tight or loose... and so on and so forth...

Although there is no seed drill, Marin requires that the seeds be planted in rows. The spacing is similar to the spacing when transplanting rice in Marin's hometown in later generations, but it should be denser.

Because, Marin knows, the planting is not as close as possible, but still needs to maintain some spacing. Because each wheat plant has its own root system, it needs a certain space to grow and take root. If several wheat plants grow together, there will be serious competition. Their root systems can become tangled and compete for territory and nutrients in this small area. The end result is that none of these wheat plants grow well, or only one plant barely grows better.

Therefore, it is better to separate the plants to avoid the competition between the plants for root sites and nutrients, resulting in everyone not growing well. However, there is more than one grain of wheat sown in each pit. Because, you cannot guarantee that every seed will germinate.

Because there is more than one seed in each pit, after germination, more than one wheat seedling will emerge from these points. At that time, according to the growth of the wheat seedlings, the wheat seedlings that grow too badly and are entangled with other wheat seedlings can be pulled out as weeds, giving the excellent wheat seedlings enough space to survive and absorb nutrients...

During the spring ploughing season, Marin gathered the serfs for dinner every night, and after each dinner, he publicized these agricultural knowledge to everyone, making the serfs stunned. Even a college student like Haider was stunned. However, as an official in charge of government affairs, Haider understands that he must also master agricultural knowledge, otherwise, he will not be able to guide others. Therefore, Haider used the knowledge of later generations to brag in Marin, always taking out a notebook and recording Marin's quotations...

Later, relying on this notebook, Haider also became a senior official proficient in agriculture, and became the Minister of Agriculture of Marin...

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