Chapter 547. Giant Farmstead (2/2)
Madam Liu pursed her lips and revealed a smile, “I wasn’t the one who started the comparison. You were the one who first brought up the topic of raising pigs, so Mother will not take this fall! Finish everything on the table, otherwise, I won’t allow you to eat any more snacks today or tomorrow!”
Yu Xiaocao looked at the two steamed meat buns that were bigger than the size of her fist and the large bowl full of congee. She immediately began to pout and complained, “Mother, let’s make a deal. Let me just eat one meat bun, okay?”
“No deal! Last night, you only ate half a small bowl of noodles, so you need to eat more this morning. Do you think you’re an immortal and can live off of air ah?!” Madam Liu sternly refused her suggestion, “Eat it now while it’s hot. The meat buns were made using the meat from that roe deer you caught, so it’s very fresh and tasty!”
Yu Xiaocao’s eyes flickered and roved around. She suddenly revealed a bright smile at Zhu Junyang, who had been watching the mother and daughter pair from the side, “Ruizhi——you haven’t eaten breakfast, right? Eating together is more enjoyable!”
Madam Liu pushed away the hand that was offering a meat bun towards Zhu Junyang and sternly looked at her daughter, “Royal Prince Yang has already eaten with us, so don’t try to make him eat for you. I’ve already calculated everything. If you eat everything here, you’ll just have a slightly rounded belly but you won’t be bloated!”
Yu Xiaocao glanced at Zhu Junyang with a pathetic look on her face. However, Zhu Junyang was currently being eyed by his future mother-in-law, so he could only make a helpless gesture at the little lass. As he was sandwiched between his future mother-in-law and future wife, he could only lower his head and pretend to be busy as he continued to peel the nuts.
Yu Xiaocao became resigned to her fate and picked up a steamed meat bun and began to chew on it angrily. She paired the buns with some tasty side dishes and ended up finishing both meat buns. Following that, she poured the nuts Zhu Junyang had peeled into her bowl of congee and then added some raisins and pieces of dried hawthorn cake to it before she gulped the bowl down. Brrp——after letting out a burp, Xiaocao rubbed at her little belly and wondered if she should make a bowl of digestive soup to drink.
Madam Liu noticed that her youngest daughter was now sprawled on the kang bed and glared at her in amusement, “The weather is nice today. You can rest for a bit and then take Royal Prince Yang for a stroll in the village, which will help you digest your food. At noon, I’ll make your favorite seafood feast. There will be braised prawns, salt and pepper small yellow croakers, steamed scallops in broth, stir-fried calamari…”
In her previous life, Yu Xiaocao didn’t have much opportunity to eat seafood. After transmigrating over, she obtained a deep fondness for eating seafood and her mother also cooked seafood very well. When she heard that there would be a seafood feast, her eyes began to shine with excitement and the saliva pooled in her mouth. In order to make some room in her stomach to eat seafood later, Xiaocao pulled Zhu Junyang along and walked several round trips from the mountain villa to her family’s residence. She originally wanted to stroll around the village too, but after encountering too many curious and inquisitive looks from the villagers, she changed the plan.
Since Royal Prince Yang was visiting his feudal lands, it was natural for the officials of the Tanggu area to come see him. He also checked the taxation records while he was here. After the Yu Family’s greenhouse growing business began, it also stimulated the growth of other commerce in Tanggu Town. Consequently, the amount of taxes received also increased by almost two times compared to the previous year.
Yu Xiaocao had already told him her idea of transforming the lands around Tanggu into a seed-breeding business and obtained Zhu Junyang’s complete favor. As for her proposal in opening up fallow land, he also decided to adopt it. Zhu Junyang directly expropriated farmland from the scholars and landlords who owned them in the nearby area by telling them they would get decreased taxes. This won the approval of everyone involved. Some merchant families thought that this could be quite a profitable endeavor for them and even took out all of their farmsteads to see if the prince wanted them. Naturally, the ones that were too far from the Yu Family’s farmstead were summarily rejected.
After the summer harvest and when it was time to plant corn, the Yu Family farmstead had expanded considerably. They now had twenty thousand mu of top-notch farming land alone, and the average and more poor quality land was also around the same number. With a forty thousand mu farmstead, they naturally could increase the amount of crops they harvested every year.
There were some officials at court who regarded this with pure envy and did their best to complain voraciously to the emperor about Yu Xiaocao. They claimed that she wasn’t doing her duties to the court properly and was abusing her power to enrichen her family members. Consequently, those who were close to Xiaocao defended her just as adamantly. They stated that everything she was doing to help the imperial court in advancing the production of high-yield crops as quickly as she could. Thus, the debates at court stormed for a period of time and the court officials argued furiously over Xiaocao’s conduct and actions.
However, Yu Xiaocao didn’t take any of the political squabbles to heart. Prior to expanding her base of agricultural operations at Tanggu Town, she had reported to the emperor and gotten his full permission to go ahead. The earlier they could push out more high-yield corn and winter wheat to the people, the earlier that the emperor’s people would be able to throw off the shackles of poverty and starvation and walk in the direction of health and happiness.
As long as her ‘big boss’ was on her side, it didn’t matter to her what other people claimed. She wasn't in this for the sake of obtaining a false reputation. In fact, weren’t those people accusing her of misconduct only doing so because they were jealous of her ability to make money? She planned on making even more money so that their jealousy could eat them alive!
Yu Hai currently had a bunch of experienced tenant farmers working under him. Although the operations in Tanggu Town were quite massive now, Xiaocao didn’t actually need to personally handle much there. Her responsibility was to make sure that all of the seeds they were going to use were appropriately infused with spiritual energy in advance.
This was quite an easy process but it was very necessary. Yu Xiaocao had the little divine stone take its golden kitten form and had it run a few times in the granaries that held their seeds. She instructed it to play around, spit some saliva, or pee a bit——the little divine stone vehemently opposed the last suggestion she had. It claimed that it was a cultured and refined divine stone, so how could it do something so uncouth and crude?
In short, the breeding base for high-yield seeds were now in the capable hands of Yu Hai as the head of the management. With Yu Hang helping and some other stewards working on things, the work on the expanded farmstead was going in good order. In addition, they had Royal Prince Yang as their backer, so they naturally had no issues getting the green light to continue and everything seemed to be going smoothly…