North and South groceries

In mid-May of the eighth year of Zhenguan, after more than 20 days of trekking, Zhao Chen and others finally returned to Shuozhou City. It was very difficult to eat and sleep on the road, but it was also rewarding.

The grain they bought from Lishi County earlier was sold by them when they arrived in Taiyuan City. By the way, they also sold a few cows and a few carts at a better price, and bought another batch from Taiyuan City The cloth, transported back to Shuozhou City and resold, naturally made a fortune.

After working hard all the way, they finally came back, so they handed over the rest of the matter to the brothers who stayed in Shuozhou and didn't go out recently to clean up, and just went to rest by themselves.

Only Zhao Chen couldn't wait to wash off the dust all over his body, so he went into the house to talk with his father Zhao Qi.

……

"You mean, Luo Sanlang not only taught you the skill of making bean paste, but also said that he will also deliver the fermented bean curd used for changing wool next year?" Hearing what the eldest son said, Zhao Qi was very surprised.

"Exactly, I have learned that skill now." Zhao Chen said solemnly.

"Why?" Zhao Qi was puzzled.Their Zhao family has no friendship with Luo Sanlang, why did the other party teach them the method of making bean paste for nothing?

"San Lang Road is a long way, and it is too difficult and inconvenient to go back and forth to get the sauce." Zhao Chen said.

Hearing this, Zhao Qi was silent.

Their Zhao family started their business by trading merchants, and the children of the family traveled all over the world. After 30 or [-] years, they have accumulated the current family business.

That is to say, in this city of Shuozhou, for the Zhao family, there are those who despise them, those who envy them, and those who are jealous.It's just that they all only saw the current appearance of the Zhao family, but few of them thought carefully about what kind of hardships their Zhao family children had gone through before they could be where they are today.

The journey is long and the journey is difficult. For these words, there is no one who can understand these words more deeply than the Zhao family.

In the early years, the brothers went deep into the grasslands to do business with the nomads on the grasslands. It was fine if they met those who were kind and honest. It is also a common thing, his two elder brothers even fell on the grassland, and the servants followed him even less.

Now the Zhao family can have today's foundation, relying on the business road they opened up on the grassland, this road paved with blood...

"Luo Gong is kind!" Zhao Qi sighed.

Thinking of those hard times in the early years, his eyes were already red at this time. As the years got older, the aggressiveness in his bones had been worn away by the years, but he became a little sentimental. Comfortable.

"So, I will go to the grassland again in the next few days, and say hello to those brothers on the grassland, telling them not to sell wool to others." After a moment of silence, Zhao Qi said again.

"Aye!" Zhao Chen was surprised. His father had been in Shuozhou City for the past few years and rarely went out for a walk. Now he wants to kiss the grassland again?

The grasslands are not comparable to the land of the Central Plains. Although some grassland peoples have proclaimed their vassals to the Tang Dynasty on the surface, they still practice the plundering behind their backs.Even though their Zhao family had their own business roads in the nearby grassland, it was still full of dangers.

"This old bone has been at ease for a long time, and it's time to go out and walk around with those brothers on the grassland." Zhao Qi said that he had made up his mind.

The people on the prairie need food, salt and cloth. When this commercial road was first opened up, there were many young and strong people on the prairie who fought against bandits together with them.

Living on the grassland is much more difficult than their side.I am also afraid that the water and grass will not be plentiful, and I am afraid that thieves will rob me, and I am afraid of encountering wolves...

In a blink of an eye, I haven't seen him for many years. I don't know if those old guys are still alive.

·

at this time.Xipo Village, Lishi County, Shizhou.

Luo Sanlang is fertilizing the wheat on the field together with several of his disciples.

These days, he has burned a lot of soil dung on the barren slope near his home, mostly hay and fine soil, with some dried pig manure and straw mixed in the middle, and the soil dung burned from these dried dung Heap, the fertilizer is very fertile, and the smell is different. The villagers all say that the smell is good, needless to say, it is greedy for fertilizer.

The burnt dung piles were poured with pig urine and then placed on the slopes. In order to prevent the rainwater from taking away the fertility, Luo Yong also covered them with straw curtains.

At this time, some villagers began to regret that they did not listen to Luo Sanlang's words and raised a few pigs at home. If they could build a pigsty like Luo's, raising a few pigs would not seem so troublesome.As long as the urine in the pigsty can be discharged in time, the final fertilizer won't be as dirty and muddy as they used to think.

If you are afraid that the yard will stink, you can build the pigsty a little farther away from your own yard.Originally, many people in their village also built thatched huts outside, and they only needed to put one or two wooden buckets at home and wash them frequently.

After making tofu for the past few months, every household in Xipo Village has accumulated some savings. At this time, someone came up with the idea of ​​buying a piglet or two to raise.

When buying two boars, follow Luo Sanlang's example, cull the pigs, and feed them with hot food twice a day. In the end, not only can we get two fat pigs, but also a lot of manure.

It's just that in this season, the crops in the field are at a critical time. If you want to raise pigs to make manure, it may be too late for a while.

Besides, the family really can't separate the hands of those who have to farm and make tofu. They already have no skills at all. Some people's families are really short of manpower, so they have to stop the tofu business for a few days.

"Sanlang, do you want to sell your pig manure?" When the villagers asked about this, they felt a little embarrassed. When Sanlang told them to raise pigs, all of these people thought that raising pigs was dirty, smelly and useless. , Now that he started to think about his pig manure again, it's really shameless.

"If you want, you can exchange a load of bean dregs for two loads of pig manure, how about it?" Luo Yong was easy to talk about.

Speaking of it, his eight pigs are still relatively small now, and the fertilizer they produce is not too much. The ten acres of land in his family is enough, but there is not much.

It's just that in the whole village, if other people's houses don't have enough fertilizer, he alone will grow the crops in the field to be fat and strong. Even if it grows three or four hundred catties, what's the point?

As long as he has money in his hands and the villagers have food in their homes, if he is short of food, he can use the money to buy it, so why bother to hold on to the little fertilizer and refuse to distribute it to others.

"If you have more, I'll exchange a few loads with you." The villagers didn't really want to compete with Luo Yong for fertilizer, they just thought that if the other party had more, they would exchange a few loads with him.

In the days that followed, occasionally villagers brought bean dregs to Luo for pig manure.

There are also villagers who spend money and food to ask Luo to use those apprentices to help repair the pigsty. They really can't spare any manpower. In addition, the pigsty built by those people is really good. Three or five young and strong can build a pigsty together. Soon, in order to make these pigpens more durable, the villagers asked them to build higher stone walls underneath.

After the pigsty was repaired and piglets were bought, someone asked Luo Sanlang to go and slaughter the pigs.

Luo Yong has no intention of eating this bowl of rice, so naturally he has no secrets about this piggy's craftsmanship. Whoever wants to see it, just come over and learn the skill quickly, and don't need to ask him to come over next time It's a pig.

"hiss!"

Luo went down with a knife, and there were several hissing sounds behind him, as if the knife had cut them.

"hiss!"

Luo Yong went down with another knife, and there was another sound of inhalation behind him.

……

"Master, let me try." After waiting for a few times, a disciple finally proposed the idea of ​​trying it himself.

"Okay, then you have a try." Luo Sanlang felt very relieved.

The disciple who spoke was named Liu Huo, which shows the simplicity of his parents' wishes, nothing else but his survival.

Liu Huo is not good-looking, not tall, and somewhat thin. He is only 25 years old, but he looks like he is in his 30s.

When Luo Yong was chatting with him earlier, he heard something from him. He was born in less than ten months of pregnancy, and it was in the early spring when he was green and yellow, and his nutrition did not keep up, so he grew thin and short. Those uncles and brothers in his family, All of them are tall and strong.

People like him have deficiencies from birth to endowment. With such a physique, he must carry things like others and go to the countryside to sell them.

Let's talk about the group of disciples that Luo used.

Most of these people who can go to Taiyuan City to lay kangs for people in winter are those who are quick-witted and courageous, and they can come back in time to help Luo use the farmland at the beginning of spring , It shows that they are also men who know how to repay their kindness and can afford it.

Most of these people came here with the three brothers of the Xu family, and later rushed over in twos and threes, and they were among them.

Later, some craftsmen who learned the pan kang wanted to recognize Luo Sanlang's disciples, but the former disciples let it out, saying that the master did not want to recruit many disciples, since you have learned the craft from him, it is also necessary to respect him in your heart In the same way, it is not necessary for everyone to perform the ceremony of master and apprentice with him.

This is what Luo Yong meant. He really needs some helpers around him, but he doesn't want to make too much noise. After all, this is a feudal dynasty. , or a soldier, could it be that they want to rebel?

Besides, when there are more people, there will be more troubles. There are more than [-] people coming and going like now, which is enough. If you want to expand in the future, let's wait until the future.

In a blink of an eye, it was late May.

On the twenty-fifth day, people came in and out of Luo's yard. They were all villagers who came to buy cakes, and some came from the county with ox carts and horse-drawn carts. Their place is not very cheap, but there are still a lot of people who can afford it, especially when they only do it on the fifth day of the month, and only three times a month, so there are still a lot of people who are willing to eat.

On the other side of the backyard, Luo Yong's disciples were sitting in a row in the yard, each holding a wooden bucket, holding Luo Yong's new egg beater in his hand, beating the egg liquid until they were sent to their master's request Then, he covered the barrel with a clean sackcloth and sent it to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Aunt Luo and Erniang Luo were in charge of mixing the beaten eggs with red dates, brown sugar, flour, date paste, bean paste, etc. Lin Xingle was in charge of lighting the fire, and he was also in charge of moving the steamed date cakes to the canteen.

The small shop is really lively, and there is an endless stream of people who come to buy cakes.The voices of people, cows and horses can be heard endlessly.

The swallow that was hatching eggs under the eaves poked its black head out of the mud nest to look down from time to time, and the other one went out to look for food, and every time it came back, it had to turn around in the yard a few times go again.

When Luo used to cut cakes to collect money, there was no time when he was free, and Siniang and Wulang were also very helpful.

As for the two youngest, they were locked up in the backyard, given jujube cakes to eat, told to play with Mai Qingdou Lier, and the disciples who were breaking eggs to help watch, Luo Yong and the others felt more at ease.

It is said that in the early morning of the twenty-fifth day, two people rode all the way into Lishi County, and asked the people in the city, which way they should go to Xipo Village.

The people in the city pointed to the direction of the city gate and said, "You two go out of the city and see which road has the most pedestrians and horses, then go there. When you reach the most lively village nearby, it will be Xipo Village. gone."

According to what the guide said, the two found Xipo Village very smoothly, and saw that the small courtyard at the entrance of the village was full of people entering and leaving. After asking, it was indeed Na Luo Sanlang's house.

So the two of them divided the work, and one of them guarded the horses here, and let the two horses graze nearby. Seeing the people coming and going in the Naluo's yard, they probably couldn't squeeze in the two big horses right now. The horse is gone.

The other took the token and went to Naluo Sanlang, asked him to explain their purpose of coming this time, and bought some cashmere socks from him.The two of them planned to return to Lishi County after buying the socks, stay there overnight, and leave for Chang'an early tomorrow morning.

The two agreed, so the person in charge of watching the horses found a grass field outside the village for the horses to graze. By the way, he also found a place to sit down and rest, watching the lively scene of people coming and going at the entrance of the village. Some novelty.

The two of them rode all the way from Chang'an City. Although they passed through some towns, they did not expect to see such a lively and noisy scene in this small Xipo Village.

At this time, the land was vast and sparsely populated, and the entire Tang Dynasty had a population of about 3000 to 21 million. How could it not be desolate? People at this time may not feel anything when they are used to it. Coming here, I feel very desolate in my eyes.

Chang'an City is indeed lively, but how many Chang'an cities can there be in this world.

"Why haven't you come yet? Could it be that Luo Sanlang doesn't recognize the token?" After waiting and waiting, he didn't wait for his companion to come out from the courtyard of Na Luo's house. The man in charge of watching the horses was also a little anxious, but there were these two horses around. , it is not easy for him to run to see what happened.

After waiting for a while, the guy hurried towards him with a bunch of things in his arms, and shouted loudly at him while running:

"Hahaha! You must have never imagined that this small mountain village has such good food! This cake is really more delicious than Chang'an Mifangzhai's dim sum! A piece only costs one penny, you say it's cheap... "