Great Tang Idyll Volume 01 Chapter 64

Shout out to Dan for commissioning this extra chapter release!

Chapter 64 New Tricks To Make More Money

While being busy, time flew by quickly. Six days have passed since the spring equinox, but not a single reward from the higher ups have been received yet. Never mind the physical gifts, not a single word was delivered.

"Bureaucracy, this is bureaucracy. Every one of them knew that the plough was so useful, but they fought each other endlessly out of their own personal interests. I heard that within two days of Magistrate sending away the memorial, other counties in this prefecture began to craft the curved-plough too. This meant that they got the tasks done and kept the benefits to be shared between themselves."

Wang Juan sat on a stool with her chin in her hands and ranted to Zhang Xiao’bao. Zhang Xiao’bao also knew about this but he didn't care about it and his face remained calm. He was more concerned that it hasn’t been raining at all these days.

The little amount of water that the creek gained when the snow melted was gone now. From what it seems, even if they did build “Between the Water and Clouds”, it would have been useless since the water would be dried up. What joy would there be to experience?

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"Xiao’bao, think of a plan. If the people in the prefecture took the credit, and only a little bit is given to Magistrate Cheng, then doesn’t that mean we don’t even get anything??" Wang Juan tapped Zhang Xiao’bao.

"Okay, I’ll think of something. This kind of thing is actually not that difficult. Call Er’niu over." Zhang Xiao’bao saw that Wang Juan wanted him to solve this problem, so he had to temporarily put aside the restaurant business.

Er'niuiu brought the other two people too. After several days of fighting hard, they finally finished dealing with all the stones. Other than the ones Zhang Xiao’bao requested to leave untouched, there were no rocks that remained whole.

He had nothing to do in the past two days, so he helped his family make fermented bean paste. Just when he finished blending the bean slurry, someone came looking for him saying that it was about the Young Master’s affairs. Er’niu didn’t dare to make delays so he set down his work at hand and rushed over to his master’s estate. After Zhang Xiao’bao gave him a few words of instruction, he left the estate and disappeared from the farmers' field of sight again.

After dealing with this matter, Zhang Xiao’bao and Wang Juan went to where Ying’tao was. Yesterday, a chicken had laid eggs, and today, it seemed like more chickens will lay eggs. The chicken’s first eggs were small and cannot be hatched but the eggs could be sold for money.

It was originally supposed to be put on for sale at the market here, but everyone was busy and there was no time to go to the market to sell it. Zhang Xiao’bao and Wang Juan wanted to see if the eggs were actually that small; if it was, then the eggs could be used temporarily for other sales.

Ying’tao’s current place was a separate singular courtyard and the inside was full of chicken coops. Ying’tao didn’t handle miscellaneous tasks so the house chores were completed by other people.

Before Zhang Xiao’bao and Wang Juan have even entered the place, they heard the messy noise inside. It was the cooing sound chickens made after laying eggs, so it seems that many chickens have laid eggs today.

Standing outside the yard, the smell was not as pungent as they expected, but Zhang Xiao’bao and Wang Juan both frowned at the same time because they felt that hygiene maintenance would be hard.

"Young Master, Young Miss, why have you come here? The smell here is too strong, go back quickly, what if it the smell sticks to you?" While Ying’tao checked the eggs, someone from the door came over to report to her. She quickly put down her work at hand and greeted them. She tried to persuade Zhang Xiao’bao to go back.

"It's okay, Ying’tao. Did you set up the special livestock manure dump that I instructed? Why does It still smell?" Zhang Xiao’bao waved his hand dismissively and asked Ying’tao.

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"It's built, it's built already. I followed your instructions. Every day I washed it once with water, but the chickens were always eating and pooping. There was no good way to deal with it.” Ying’tao was also a bit at loss as to what to do. With this many chickens, it was very messy to manage.

Disregarding the situation inside the chicken coop, even handling the situation outside made her feel clueless. With more than 6,000 chickens that are constantly eating and pooping all along the roaming range, there was chicken poop everywhere. Now she didn’t even know where she should let the chickens roam anymore.

Zhang Xiao'bao and Wang Juan started work on figuring out a solution. There are more than 6,000 chickens. Under normal circumstances, this wasn’t considered many so why was it so difficult to handle.

"Can you use sand to cover the ground up?" Wang Juan was the first to come up with an idea.

"That idea works, but the main problem is when letting chickens out to roam. The chicken can’t be encaged all day in the coop, but where can they roam?” Zhang Xiao’bao also thought that it was a good idea to cover the ground with a layer of sand, but he was still worried about the chicken’s roaming area.

Wang Juan thought about it again; her eyes lit up, and she said, "How about we bring them to the mountains. We can trim the chickens' wing feathers short, then choose a good place on the mountain, and enclose the area with fishing net. That was what I saw other people do when raising smaller, brown chickens.

Hmm, it’s decided. Ying’tao, go buy some fishing nets later and then enclose a large area on the mountain with the nets. During the day, lead the chickens to that place and then at night, bring them back. If that doesn’t work, then build chicken coops there. "

Ying’tao nodded and noted it down. This was indeed a good plan. Zhang Xiao’bao also spoke, "Additionally, go buy some lime powder and sprinkle some on the mountain every day. This way, the chickens won’t get sick as easily. Bring some eggs over, we want to have a look."

Ying’tao also noted this down in her mind. She turned around and brought a basin over. Inside was a pile of chicken egg.

"They’re indeed small.  For egg of these size, there are at least eleven eggs per half kilogram. Good, that’s not bad. Wait two days, and after more eggs are collected, arrange for someone to visit the county seat." Wang Juan looked at the eggs, which still had some blood on it, and nodded her head with satisfactions.

Ying’tao didn’t know what the Young Miss and Young Master were planning to do with these eggs. Normally, no one wanted to buy such little eggs. Half a kilogram had so many individual eggs, just the shell alone took up a fair bit of weight. She originally planned to make these little eggs into salted eggs and then sell them for a low price at the market.

Zhang Xiao’bao and Wang Juan didn’t explain much to Ying’tao either. After they finished looking, they left the place to go elsewhere. Not only did they raise chickens this year, but also got the farmers to raise more pigs. Lotus plants were planted into the ponds, and they added fishes to the ponds too. They made sure to buy fishes there were about three inches in size because if the fishes were too small, they will be eaten by ducks and geese.

When they raise pigs, their manure can be used to feed the fish. At the end of the year, the fish will be fished out. The bottom of the pond of the pond can be cleaned out, and that stuff can be used as fertilizer for the next year’s spring tillage.

Zhang Xiao'bao and Wang Juan didn’t understand the matter of catching pigs, so they let the farmers come up a plan themselves. When they needed money, the master’s household will pay for it first and when it was time to slaughter the pigs at the end of the year and sell them, the farmers had to pay back the principal and a little bit of interest. The two of them didn’t reject the idea, but they lowered the interest by a lot.

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When the two of them passed by the small river in front of the yard, they found that the water level there had dropped again. Both of them became nervous, and they couldn’t be concerned about other matters anymore. They found people to continue to dig the pond and even destroyed a piece of land.

A few days later, in the county seat of San’shui County, a few women and their children that pushed small carts appeared on several streets. They found a few places that had a lot of people passing by and stopped their carts there; they also took care to not block the fronts of other shops.  They set up their stalls, lit up their fire pits, and began their sales.

"Savory crepes , savory crepes for two coins each. Accepting soybeans and accepting charcoal."

This kind of hollering began to appear in San’shui County, and there were so many that appeared at once, people were curious about what it was. It seemed that it was something to be eaten. The price wasn’t expensive so those that had a bit of loose change on them took out their money out to buy one and have a taste.

They watched the woman first scooped a spoon of batter and then poured it on top of a pancake griddle. Then, she swept it with a small bamboo stick and a flat crepe was formed. On top of the crepe, she added an egg and then flipped the crepe over. She spread a type of spicy sauce on top of it and added two fried dough sticks. It was ready after she wrapped it in paper. If the person wanted to, a bit of spring onions and coriander was also added.

When the buyer received the crepe, it was warm when the person took a bite. It was crispy, spicy, salty and sweet, and all of these flavors were brought into his mouth. It didn’t take the person a long time to finish eating it; he didn’t feel satiated so he bought another one.

With one person that has already taken the initiative to try it first,  others followed suit to try this new flavor. As a result, all the batter and eggs on the cart were sold out by the end of the day. In addition to earning money, they also got quite a fair bit of charcoal and soybeans in exchange.

The women were happy now. They have made more than 20 coins within a day. The charcoal they received can be used in the fire pit next day when they made more crepes. As for the soybeans, when they have collected enough, they will send them altogether to the storage room near the administrative office. Whatever remained was theirs to keep.

Magistrate Cheng was also concerned about this matter today. He randomly asked a savory crepe seller a few questions, and after he got his answers, he let them go along their way.  He told his assistant, "The Zhang Estate has done us a great favor again. These women would normally have nothing to do at home, but with this extra income, the tax money that I can collect can increase by quite a bit."

"What my lord has said is right. Their farm’s chickens has just begun to lay eggs, but they were all small eggs so it was the most cost effective idea to sell them like this. With the life quality of the people improved, there are fewer troublemakers. The Zhang family would have made quite a bit of money too. To sell savory crepes, they need to have fried dough sticks and to have fried dough sticka, they need to buy oil from them. The eggs had to be bought from them too. The soybeans they collected was used to repay back the costs of the cart and griddle. Only until they finish paying it off could they set out on their own to sell the crepes."

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The magistrate assistant also praised them. Their ability was extraordinary. It seems that they had let others reap all the benefits, but in reality, they found a bunch of people to help the estate make money. As long as the crepe seller made money, the estate also made money. The more sellers there were, the more money the estate earned.

"It's good to make money. It also helped us solve a lot of things. This year's tax revenue is going to be a lot higher than the previous years. I don't believe that the higher ups can also steal this credit too, can they?"

While talking, Magistrate Cheng brought up the topic of stealing merit again. Not only did the people in the prefecture division had spread the method of making the curved plough to the whole prefecture, but they also sent a report of this to the Emperor. As for the two memorials that the San’shui County had submitted, the prefecture division rejected them and sent the reports back and told them to rewrite it.

Although they didn’t specify why the memorials needed to be rewritten, the Magistrate and the Secretary General both understood. They wanted all the merits to be given to them and none to people at the county division since there was not enough to share. Thus, the matter was delayed and the higher ups were not at all concerned.

"My lord does not need to worry. The officials in the imperial court will naturally know; even if the people in prefecture division wants to hide the truth, they won’t be able to. When the imperial court sends people to here, we will tell them the truth."

The magistrate assistant comforted the Magistrate Cheng. His words made it seem simple, but in his mind he knew clearly that the matter wasn’t as straightforward as described.

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