I Was Called a Poor Widow, But I Relied on My Supernatural Powers To Fight Back In Ancient Times

Chapter 21 Opening up wasteland

Bai Yunxi's face darkened when he saw the fourth child sobbing.

 “Shut up, Fourth Brother, do you still know that you are a brother? If you want to be a brother, you have to act like one. Don’t let your brother see the joke.”

Xion Zai, you still want to fish in troubled waters like before, but there is no way.

"Although we have nothing now, as long as we work hard, we will never die of hunger. Mom has already thought about it. From tomorrow on, we will open up wasteland in the back mountains together."

The Song Dynasty had laws. As long as it was an ownerless wasteland, whoever cleared it would own it. Opening up the wasteland was a great achievement.

 So, after being registered, you can be exempted from paying land tax for three years.

Even so, families with extra money would rather spend money to buy fertile land than go to the trouble of clearing wasteland.

 Because the wasteland is barren and labor-intensive, the yield has not yet increased. The output value of one acre of land is not enough for one person's rations.

Even if the land tax is exempted for three years, no one would be willing to do it.

Sure enough, when they heard about land reclamation, the sons were stunned.

“Mom, the wasteland is not so easy to grow. Besides, the current wasteland is not close to a water source, and it is overgrown with weeds and cannot grow food at all.”

Bai Anyan frowned and was the first to disagree.

“My son feels that if he has the time to open up wasteland, he might as well rent a few acres of good land as a tenant. Even if it is harder work, after paying the rent, at least there will be some left over.”

“Mom, my second brother is right. Opening up wasteland is tiring and hard work, and in the end there is no harvest. It’s just thankless.”

This time Bai Anyi didn't cause trouble and just agreed directly. I don't know if he was overthinking it, but he felt that her mother was different since she kowtowed.

　　‘I must let my mother put down the idea of ​​opening up wasteland. I am confused, but they are awake. ’

Bai Yunxi looked at the expressions of resistance one or two, and his face darkened.

"In order to treat your father, our farmland has been sold. Now we only have two acres of dry land left. We can grow some beans, sweet potatoes and the like. It's just a supplement. If we want to rely on it to fill our stomachs, it's better to just dream about it." Faster."

Since he has decided to open up wasteland, Baiyunxi will not give a few cheap sons a chance to intervene.

"As the second brother said, you can lease the land. This is indeed a way, but as far as I know, you need to pay 55% of the rent for one acre of land. After a year of hard work, the harvest is less than half."

"Compared with land reclamation, the income from renting is just a little more than what you see before you, but the land you plant is not yours after all. As a farmer, what does it mean if you don't have land in your hands? Do you have to be a tenant all your life?"

“But mother, the wasteland is full of weeds. It’s hard to clean up, and it’s not necessarily profitable. If you work hard for a year and harvest nothing, wouldn’t it be a waste of time?”

Bai Anyi said, stretched out his arm to touch Bai Laoer,

 “Second brother, what do you think?”

"Ahem~, mother, what the fourth brother said makes sense. The risk of opening up wasteland is too great. What we need most now is food. If we rent the land as tenants, we can borrow food from the landlord. Although we will pay half a percent interest when we pay it back, we can do it now. Make sure the whole family doesn’t go hungry.”

Bai Yunxi looked at the sweat on Lao Er's anxious forehead and knew that the method she thought of was the safest.

 But she didn't want to accept it. This family had lived too comfortably before and had no sense of urgency at all.

"You also said that there is interest on borrowing grain, so you do the math. Now is the summer season. If we want to rent, we have to wait until after the autumn harvest. The paddy fields need to be cultivated in winter. Only by transplanting rice seedlings next year can we have a good harvest. The harvest will not be until the end of June. ”

 (End of this chapter)